December 21st, 2022
By: Mark Ward
Which is actually quite odd, because Messiah was never intended by its composer as a Christmas piece - quite the opposite in fact. It was originally composed, in 1741, for performance at the most solemn time in the ecclesiastical calendar - Easter. The work tells the entirety of Christ’s story, culminating in His Crucifixion and Resurrection, with a meditation on the meaning of His life and death to Christians. So, this is hardly the stuff of Christmas levity.However,... Read More
December 15th, 2022
By: Jan Omdahl
A reappraisal of Low's Christmas (1999) and Double Negative (2018). In memory of singer Mimi Parker (1967-2022), who died in November.
Read MoreDecember 7th, 2022
By: Fred Kaplan
My main job is national-security columnist for Slate. Every December since joining, back in 2002, my editors have indulged me to write a piece on the year’s best jazz albums. Here’s a link to this year’s column, which, as usual, includes a mini-essay about each album and a sound clip of an entire track. Most of these I’ve reviewed either for Tracking Angle (those designated with an asterisk *) or for Stereophile when I was a staffer there (marked with two asterisks **). I should also note that most of these albums sound very good (the Jamal and Waldron sound good); a few (#1, 2, 3, and 5) sound superb.
November 25th, 2022
By: Joseph W. Washek
In 1960, Cadence Records created and funded a subsidiary, Candid Records so that Nat Hentoff, a writer and non-musician with no music business experience could do the fun stuff and be an Artists & Repertoire director/ jazz record producer. Hentoff (1925-2017), a jazz fan since his early teenage years, had enthusiasm as well as a love for and a deep knowledge of the music. He was a former jazz DJ, a former editor of Downbeat, a former editor of his own jazz... Read More
November 23rd, 2022
By: Willie Luncheonette
For a small third world country, Jamaica has produced an impressively large volume of exceptional music that has had an enormous impact on world consciousness. Bob Marley, in my opinion, is the 20th century's most important musical artist. Many Americans might not be aware of reggae's worldwide popularity since it had to compete over the U.S. airwaves with rock, disco and country music, but in major European countries including Spain, Germany, France and... Read More
October 5th, 2022
By: Michael Fremer
(This piece originally appeared in slightly different form in Issue 73, the September/October 1991 issue of The Absolute Sound. It has been edited and updated for Issue 5/6 of The Tracking Angle, Winter 1995/96.)Beginning with his eponymous 1970 debut, and continuing throughout 11 Warner Brothers solo albums, Ry Cooder has demonstrated that in addition to being an extraordinary folk/blues guitarist—particularly on bottleneck—and a serviceable though hardly... Read More