NEW
Steve Martin & Edie Brickell
Love Has Come For You
(Rounder, $15.98)
Ever since Steve Martin brought out his banjo in public again and
started touring with the Steep Canyon Rangers (and recorded two albums),
he’s been writing a whole bunch of tunes. He started sending his most
recent ones to old friend Edie Brickell, and a wonderful collaboration
began. On Love Has Come for You, Edie sings the lyrics she
wrote for Steve’s tunes: the songs are catchy, yet have a timeless
feeling with the old-timey clawhammer banjo and Edie’s heartfelt vocals.
Backing up Steve and Edie are jazz star Esperanza Spalding on bass,
Waddy Wachtel on guitar, Nickel Creek alumni Sara and Sean Watkins, as
well as the Steep Canyon Rangers.
NOTE: Steve Martin, Edie Brickell and the Steep Canyon Rangers will be at Wolf Trap on June 24.
Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom
No Morphine No Lilies
(Royal Potato Family, $11.98)
Drummer Allison Miller grew up in the DC area, and has been leading her
own groups, and collaborating with a host of musicians, both in jazz
(Shakers and Bakers, Dan Tepfer, Dr. Lonnie Smith) and pop (Ani DiFranco
and Brandi Carlile). Her second Boom Tic Boom album features some
great playing by pianist Myra Melford, violinist Jenny Scheinman, and
bassist Todd Sickafoose (and some guests) on mostly Allsion’s
tunes—some with melodic pizzicato (“Early Bird”), some post-bop (“Six
Nettles”), some funky (“Pork Belly”) or “free” (“Nuh-Uh, No Sir”).
NOTE: Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom will be performing at the
Strathmore Mansion on Friday, May 3, at 8 p.m., to celebrate the CD
release. The group will include Myra Melford, trumpeter Kirk Knuffke,
and Todd Sickafoose.
MUSIC PULITZER PRIZE
Violinist, vocalist and composer Caroline Shaw won the Pulitzer Prize for music last week for her Partita for 8 Voices. The Pulitzer board cited the work as an “inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects.”
Shaw wrote it for the new vocal octet, Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member.
The group uses a wide range of vocal traditions and techniques in
working on new pieces including Korean and Sardinian, Tuvan and Inuit,
yodeling, and text music. The group’s first album, Roomful of Teeth (New Amsterdam Records, $11.99), which came out last October, has the four movements of Partita for 8 Voices,
as well as compositions by Caleb Burhans, Merrill Garbus, Rinde
Echert, and New Amsterdam co-directors William Brittelle, Judd
Greenstein, and Sarah Kirkland Snider.
