Less and less….

As part of my current cultural agoraphobia I’ve noticed something: less TV (a total of 2 1/2 hours of broadcast and 4 hours of DVD watched in the past two weeks) leads to me listening to more music. Aside from the speaker problem I talkd about a while ago, I’m now finding that for the most part the music I own is too busy. The things I’ve found most thrilling recently have been classical chamber music, especially solo instrumentals. Of course this is one of the areas that my cd colection is weak in. So I’m soliciting suggestions: anyone have solo instrumental recordings that they love? I guess that jazz soloists would also be ok – but that’s stuff that I have a pretty good sense of.

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  1. Yo-Yo Ma – Bach Cello

    Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach: Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites has been popular for a long time. I haven’t listened in a while but I remember liking them.

    The best thing that I’ve heard lately is the kd lang 49th Parallel CD. It’s simply amazing. She’s made some sort of breakthrough in her voice where she’s got more than simply that Karen Carpenter lusciousness that drove Ingenue and got in the way in a lot of her other recordings.

  2. Yo-Yo Ma – Bach Cello

    Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach: Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites has been popular for a long time. I haven’t listened in a while but I remember liking them.

    The best thing that I’ve heard lately is the kd lang 49th Parallel CD. It’s simply amazing. She’s made some sort of breakthrough in her voice where she’s got more than simply that Karen Carpenter lusciousness that drove Ingenue and got in the way in a lot of her other recordings.

  3. I can mostly recommend jazz soloists; I think our tastes differ enough to avoid overlap, though:

    Evan Parker, Monoceros. Soprano saxophone; mostly circular breathing and overblowing(? I think that’s the term) and overtones. Transcendent.

    Joe Sachse, European House. Mostly non-distorted electric guitar; a few standards done in a non-standard fashion. I love his spastic flurries of notes that never get out of control.

    Sonny Sharrock, Guitar. Very distorted electric guitar. Sharrock once said that he played the guitar like a saxophone, and this is good evidence of that, as it’s crystalline singing and explosions.

  4. I can mostly recommend jazz soloists; I think our tastes differ enough to avoid overlap, though:

    Evan Parker, Monoceros. Soprano saxophone; mostly circular breathing and overblowing(? I think that’s the term) and overtones. Transcendent.

    Joe Sachse, European House. Mostly non-distorted electric guitar; a few standards done in a non-standard fashion. I love his spastic flurries of notes that never get out of control.

    Sonny Sharrock, Guitar. Very distorted electric guitar. Sharrock once said that he played the guitar like a saxophone, and this is good evidence of that, as it’s crystalline singing and explosions.

  5. Oh, and a non-jazz recommendation: Locust Music put out Wooden Guitar, a compilation of solo acoustic guitar pieces; a couple of them are available as MP3s here, at the bottom of the page. Starts in the Leo Kottke tradition and heads out into left field.

  6. Oh, and a non-jazz recommendation: Locust Music put out Wooden Guitar, a compilation of solo acoustic guitar pieces; a couple of them are available as MP3s here, at the bottom of the page. Starts in the Leo Kottke tradition and heads out into left field.

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