Month: July 2016

When Jackson Browne was at his most successful as a songwriter, he was not necessarily at his best. After all, he co-wrote “Take It Easy” with the Eagles’ Glenn Frey. Browne was a remarkable early bloomer as a songwriter; he was hired as a staff writer for Elektra Records’ publishing company before his 18^th birthday, and worked with Tim Buckley and with Nico, formerly of The Velvet Underground.

Browne and Nico were romantically linked (it seems that happened a lot), and Browne made major contributions to her debut album as a musician and writer, including the song “These Days.” Browne’s early songwriting work was recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tom Rush, Nico, Steve Noonan, Gregg Allman, Joan Baez, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, the Byrds, and others.

The flip side of the coin is that when Browne was at his best as a songwriter, he was usually not his most successful. In that category, I place “Fountain of Sorrow” and the title track from the album it is on, Late for the Sky. Lyric excerpts, the backstory, and more on the continuation page. Continue Reading →

The Kolacny brothers Stijn (conductor) and Steven (arranger and accompanist) founded a girls’ choir in Aarschot, in Flemish Belgium, in 1996. I believe that the choir’s name originally was “La Scala,” which kind of makes sense; but at some point, the “La” was dropped. Within four years Scala, under the guidance of the Kolacny brothers, had won the Belgian “Choir of the Year” competition. They excel at executing the fundamentals of choral singing: pitch, timbre, dynamics, ensemble blend, phrasing, and breathing. Lots of obsessive attention to detail is in evidence when they sing.

Scala & Kolacny Brothers’ “Unique Selling Proposition,” as stated on their website, is to “take classic rock and indie songs and reinvent them as elegiac hymns—to breathtaking effect—with the piano often the sole accompaniment to the voices.” Their breakthrough came in 2010 when a trailer for the film The Social Network included their cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.” That song, by the way, was in part unconsciously borrowed from The Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe,” and so members of The Hollies are jointly credited.

Being lucky is important in music; but, it’s hard to sustain success unless you are even better at your art than you are at being lucky. For proof of the pudding, here’s Scala’s cover of “California Dreamin’ ” from their DVD Live in Bruges. One friend, upon seeing this clip, asked in horror, “Who dresses them?” I deadpanned that they are a non-profit group, and they lucked into a really good price on the leftover costumes from the post-Apocalyptic movie The Road. He gave me a look to make sure I was joking.

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David Nadien (1926-2014) was the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic from 1966 to 1970. “Concertmaster” is the term for the leader of the first-section violins. In addition to other duties, the concertmaster plays the important violin solos in orchestral pieces; here Nadien plays the famous solo from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. This solo (apparently from an afternoon television broadcast) is legendary among string players for Nadien’s remarkably pristine execution in general, and especially for his smoothly flowing bow changes and beautifully musical phrasing.

Perhaps some eyebrows raised when Leonard Bernstein chose, as successor to John Corigliano Sr., David Nadien, who was a studio musician with little orchestral experience. But there can be no question that this is playing on the highest level. Indeed, Nadien’s playing often elicited comparisons with Jascha Heifetz, who was still active then.

Nadien recorded little, but one of his LP recordings (as far as I know, never reissued on CD) was recorded in 1958 by David Hancock, who made all the early John Marks Records recordings (such as Arturo Delmoni’s Songs My Mother Taught Me). David Hancock learned recording via on-the-job training with Peter Bartók, Béla Bartók’s second son. David Hancock began making recordings as a fallback, in view of the rather congested job market for freshly-minted Juilliard piano graduates. (Hyperion Knight has at least one joke about that.)

So, David Hancock not only recorded the music, he also played the piano in the Franck Sonata, Debussy’s sonata in G, and short pieces by Fauré and Ravel. One for the record books, to be sure. That recording has been put up on YouTube here, audio only. The sound is a bit closely-miked; but, both players are in top form–it’s an interpretation that can withstand comparison with the “greats.”

As of this writing, there is an LP copy up on eBay (Buy It Now) for about 12 coins of the realm–WNTL?

(The Nadien/Hancock LP shows up on eBay regularly–save a search for it, if you were not in time to snatch this one up.)

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