Listening Back: cultural reflections on music
”Only the past matters, because it is the only thing that outlives everything and everyone.”
Aleksander Hemon, The World And All That It Holds
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The Klezmer Melting Pot
Only three players in this orchestra: Shloimke Beckerman on clarinet, Harry Raderman on trombone, and A. Nonymous on piano, but together they summon up the rowdy spontaneity of a full klezmer band. Not so unlike the rowdy spontaneity of a dixieland jazz band. In fact, Raderman makes use of the newly invented wah-wah mute here,…
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Schubert’s Unfinished Dance Band
A friendly collision in 1922 between a horse-drawn carriage from 1820s Vienna and an open-topped automobile in 1920s New York. The old world meets the new for a tipsy foxtrot in prohibition era America. A pre-echo of Kurt Weill who will soon bring his classical sensibilities to the sound-world of American dance bands and then…
Listening Back 