Finnders & Youngberg, Colorado’s premier Americana quintet, will add yet another honor to their impressive resume: they’ve been chosen as an official showcase act for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass conference in Nashville, Tenn., this fall. They are one of just 13 acts invited to perform during the bluegrass industry’s biggest and most important week.
Festival Mozaic has announced its 2012 summer season, which will take place July 12-22 in the most charismatic spaces across California's Central Coast including Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, Chapel Hill in wine country, Hearst Castle overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean, and Mission San Miguel . The theme, "In The Footsteps of Giants," will showcase a lineage of masterworks which inspired – and were inspired by – phenomenal composers over the ages.
The San Francisco Mandolin Orchestra with singers Susan Gundunas and Twila Ehmcke will be performing one of the gems of the Baroque music era, Stabat Mater, written in 1736 by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.
The Newport Festivals Foundation has announced the lineup for the 2012 Newport Folk Festival set to take place July 28-29 at Fort Adams State Park.
This album is sophisticated urban pop played with a combination of acoustic instruments usually found in bluegrass bands. Any further references to blugrass is hard to find on the album.
A neurological disorder called dystonia is estimated to have ended the careers of at least one member of every major American metropolitan orchestra. Dystonia has claimed the livelihoods of musicians across genres including the acclaimed pianist Leon Fleisher of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, former first oboist of the Chicago Symphony Alex Klein, acoustic guitarist Billy McLaughlin, classical guitarist Liona Boyd, keyboard player Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and others.
Luckily, Alexandra Coutinho and Rio Con Brio decided to make this a stand alone album. The plan was to feature Alexandra Coutinho on some tracks of Rio Con Brio's Caprice.
Caprice is an album by a guitar and mandolin duo playing mostly choro standards. It could be a challenge to make this fly. Rio Con Brio have pulled it off.
Watertown is an honest low cost production. All tracks but one are signed songwriter Cheryl J. Watson. Fellow musicians helped her by contributing takes from their home studios.
The expression Goat Rodeo is a description for an event where a hundred things must go right in order for the event to work. That is the concept for this cross genre production.
Magazine
New cajun universe
French rock star Feloche has created his own cajun universe. It's rooted in his Urban Bajou.
By Reidar Falch
Feloche
Feloche - Photo by Reidar Falch
It's late October and the weather is still pleasent midday in Lunel, south in France. While walking the streets, the rising rock star Feloche is talking about words.
Pescaluna means fishing for the moon, and identifies the people of Lunel. Feloche plays with the words Mandolines de Lunel and pescaluna. He want to use them in his music.
Feloche is playing the same night at the festival. Sitting down at a café, he is a bit anxious about the final set. He and the band will be playing with great musicians like David Kikoski, Josh Pinkham, Jarrod Walker and Olivier Roman Garcia.
"I got a lot of complexes with the mandolins here. I'm not at the same level as the other guys. I'm a singing and rocking French guy. I didn't practise to be a mandolinist," he laughs from the heart.
His eyes are sparkling in the sun. The laughter is friendly and contagious. He laughs all the time, "But I have other things. I have composition, my things that nobody else do. So I try to reassure myself, ha ha ha."
"First, I'm a musician, not a great mandolinist, but I do what I can. I love the mandolin, it's my first instrument. It's my instrument to compose and to be inspired by," he says.
Feloche studied cinema at the university. He wanted to be a sound engineer or director, "I love cinemas. But I played music and couldn't choose, music chose me."
12 years ago, he found a 50 Euro cheap mandolin in a store. The day after he recorded the first song of his album.
"It was La Vie Cajun. It is the name of both the album and the song. It was composed and recorded in my 8m2 student room. You can hear the fridge," he laughs.
He didn't remix it, "It went straight to the album, the producer loved the sound of this track. Everything began with that track. It was totally naive," he is shaking his head.
There is no mandolin in cajun music, "It's my own vision of cajun music. I lived in a district of Paris called la Marais, which means the swamps. I called it Urban Bajou. It was like a poetical vision of my bajou."
"I always loved history at school. When I discovered the cajun, French guys, French culture in the middle of America, it was like a mammoth frozen in ice. For me it was moving to hear the old French like it was preserved in the ice," he is dead serious for a moment.
Feloche - Photo by Reidar Falch
Feloche continues, "It was very emotional and moving to hear the testimony in the records. Wow, I'm travelling in the past. It's very inspiring. But I'm not a ethnomusicolog at all, I'm a musician from my time."
He had not been to Louisiana before making the album, "I made the album. At the end I sent a demo to Dr. John. It was crazy. I found his assistant on Myspace. His assistant said ok, let's record this song, come to Louisiana."
He writes most of the lyrics himself. "Sometimes they are abut love. It's French song. Sometimes it's sentimental, maybe. Sometimes I play with words. It's also about my dreams."
Feloche with his band, Léa Bulle and Christophe Malherbe on stage in Lunel - Photo by Reidar Falch
"There is no political message. I think art is sufficient enough. It has poetry inside. When you mix cultures, it's poetry. You don't have to say it, it's inside telling everything," he states.
"Of course the imagery is important. It's part of the music, part of the poetry. I wanted to create a place that doesn't exist. No future, no past. Like traditional music from the future. I don't know. I want to be totally free. My goal was to invent and play, and have fun with that," he laughs.
Feloche with his band, Léa Bulle and Christophe Malherbe on stage in Lunel - Photo by Reidar Falch
"I like distortion. Sometimes I go YEAH!," He shouts into the microphone and laughs with his eyes twinkling, "It's accidents. Sometimes it's awful, sometimes it's great. We never can reproduce the same sound as we hear on old cajun music. The accordion had to be amplified to be heard in the ballroom. It was bad amplifiers. The sound is totally distorted, and it's beautiful. Today, nobody can reproduce this sound, it's impossible."
"When you use a great microphone it doesn't work. In a digital table, you can with a plug in, emulate something. It's so hard to find the sound. I like accidents. The goal is to find that accident. Sometimes it's dangerous. Then I've fucked up all the take. I played great, but everything is fucked up. It doesn't matter," he gesticulates with both hands and laughs.
He kept all demo things on the record, "Everything is a demo, I think. I've done everything in my room. I did everything with the mistakes."
"My producer is a great guy. He is Philippe Cohen Solal (Gotan Project, Moonshine Sessions). He wanted me to keep the mistakes. I thought, with a label, I would go to a great studio with arm chairs. But he said no, finish your album in your room. It's the sound they wanted," he says.
Feloche was alone making the decisions, "It took a long time. Is the voice to loud? Is the mandolin to far out? Fuck. It's hard, you know, when you record your own things, it's never finished. The producer helped me to finish, he needed it for the mix downs. Thanks to him."
He is surprised that his music could be played on important radios in France, "It's totally not formatted. It's a nice surprise."
"The tour is nice. We play in great festivals in France and Germany. The album is about to be released in Canada. The best things can happen. I'm very happy with that. I just want time to record a second album. I got ideas, but do not have the time. I could need a rest in my house," Feloche says.
Feloche with his band, Léa Bulle and Christophe Malherbe on stage in Lunel - Photo by Reidar Falch
Feloche could not believe that there is a festival like this in Lunel, "I thought I was the only one with a mandolin. I was happy to find other crazy guys like me. Everyone has a different vision of this. That's what I like with the mandolin. Sometimes it's classical. Sometimes it's real bluegrass. Sometimes it's Arabic."
Feloche leaves for soundcheck. He and the band delivers a show that the spectators will remember for a long time.
The last set is a killing act. They do a blues jam and it develops into a new song with the words pescaluna, Lunel and mandolin. He is king of the stage.
David Kikoski, Léa Bulle, Josh Pinkham, Féloche, Jarrod Walker, Olivier Roman Garcia and Christophe Malherbe on stage in Lunel - Photo by Reidar Falch
Radim Zenkl, the Czech-born, California-based magician of the mandolin has been on the road and onstage since he arrived in the USA more than twenty years ago. He recently swung through my hometown of Portland, Oregon and performed his eclectic solo show to a packed house of enthusiastic fans.
Rio Con Brio started out to make one CD. As they recorded tracks, they realized they had two albums on their hands. One is their third choro album, the other is the debut of fado singer Alexandra Coutinho.
If you were there, you’ll agree that the Baltimore host team put on an excellent convention for our quarter-century landmark. With so many people attending, the energy level was high. If you weren’t there, you want to know what you missed. Here are some highlights.
James "Yank" Rachell was the primary exponent of blues mandolin, although he also played guitar, violin, harp and sang expertly well.
To create a violin with the same characteristics as the 1704 instrument known as "Betts," Dr. Sirr worked with professional violin makers John Waddle and Steve Rossow of St. Paul, Minn. They used a CT scanner and a CNC router. Here are a few photos.
Recently, Cheryl Watson released a CD called Watertown. She unplugged her Fender Tele and turned to acoustic guitars. She traded a guitar for her first mandolin. Chloe, her cat, listen with the eyes closed when Cheryl plays the mandolin.
International mandolin super-group revives the name and repertoire of a 1930's Polish Jewish mandolin orchestra. And this September, they took the music back to its source. Full story and notes from the tour by one of the Ger mandolinists.
Alon Sariel is young, gifted and busy. He is one of those remarkable guys from the Beer Sheva Mandolin Orchestra in Israel. This Friday he appears in Cambridge, UK, to teach in the Cambridge Performance Masterclasses.
Conference. College. Genre bazaar. Horizon expander. Mandolinirvana. Musical family reunion. An ear-stretching, soul-filling, life-altering immersion experience. Surely, we must be talking about the Mandolin Symposium.
Nigel Forster is a luthier. He has a lot of thoughts about his trade. One book is not enough space for his thoughts. He willingly shares more thoughts.
Jim Richter is inviting all to his 1st annual Jim Richter rock-n-blues mandolin camp. He hopes it'll approach mandolin instruction from a perspective more immediately beneficial and useful than some workshops. He also has top ten advices for beginners.
"Enjoy." This quiet word, unheard by the expectant audience behind him, flew straight from the conductor's lips to the hearts of 35 mandolin, mandola, and mandocello players. Instantly, the chemistry in a Chelsea rehearsal room in the middle of New York City was altered - a subtle change, but the perfect one.
Raffaele Calace released his mandolin method in 1910. Mike Marshall and Caterina Lichtenberg have reissued his work in English, 100 years later.
He found way to combine Finnish traditional music and Brasilian choro. An unique flavour of choro was born.
Los Hermanos Cubero, The Cubero Brothers, live in Lliçà d'Amunt, a small town near Barcelona in Catalunya, Spain. Combining their folk music with bluegrass is a natural consequence of their influences.
French rock star Feloche has created his own cajun universe. It's rooted in his Urban Bajou.
"Oi, Druzil here," he presents himself, "The Dread Pirate Druzil is the resident mandolin, banjo, and tin whistle player in the world travelling band of raving drunken lunatics and purveyors of fine clusterfolk known as the Dreadnoughts."
Tim O'Brien is a traveller. He wants to get off the road and write and produce more.
Mandolin Cafe was launched November 18, 1995. The number one mandolin site is celebrating 15 years.
The education of the fashionable girl is not complete nowadays until she has secured a certain degree of proficiency in playing upon one or more of the popular string instruments.