Music And Ideas

Can you imagine five of the most brilliant young musical minds sitting around the fireside, discussing how they could make a new Russian music? What form would it take? What instrumentation? What would the proper influences be? That's precisely what a group of five Russian composers did in the 19th century -- set out to reclaim Russian culture from Western European influence and in the process create a grand, majestic, and distinct...

In part two of their study of Bing Crosby, Scott, Karl, and Trent discuss Bing Crosby's enormous impact on Christmas music and culture since he first sang "White Christmas" in 1942's Holiday Inn. "White Christmas" proved to be a huge hit, hitting number one on three separate occasions, including 1954's classic film White Christmas (twelve years after its public debut). Although the film was not initially a box office success, the t...

Nowadays he's the American Father Christmas, the singer of nearly all the classic Christmas songs, but for several decades he was also the biggest pop star in the world. From his early days singing in The Rhythm Boys with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra (a major band in it's own right in the 1920's), to his breakout solo career in the 1930's, and well into the 1950's with classic movies such as White Christmas -- Bing Crosby is probabl...

Scott digs up an old treasure from his music vaults -- the gospel music of Florida which features an unusual instrument, the steel guitar. Played with a tonebar pressed over a horizontal neck with 6 or more strings, the steel guitar is usually found cooing and whining behind country western troubadours, but in sacred steel gospel, it's the primary instrument and often played as the sole accompaniment to the congregation's singing.

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Oscar Peterson at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival is a 1956 live album by Oscar Peterson, accompanied by Ray Brown and Herb Ellis. 

The Peterson trio is celebrated for their seemingly telepathic sense of interplay and its virtuosity. In listening to this album, Scott, Karl, and Trent discuss how certain kinds ...

The trio discusses The Planets, Op. 32, a seven-movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst, written between 1914 and 1917. 

When you first listen to this, you might just be recollecting it— The Planets comes with a long list of imitations churned out by film composers. Karl says, "It's the form of 20th-century film score." 

You'll immediately recognize Holst's ability to create tension with certain musical cues....

This week, the trio discusses an album on Trent's shortlist: Neko Case's album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

Released in 2006, it's a mix of folk, country, and early rock elements. Case classifies her style as “country-noir."

"She defies genres... she doesn't fit comfortably into any of those worlds," Trent says.  

Along with her booming voice, Neko Case is also known for her independent, non-traditional songwriting. This particu...

This week, Scott, Karl, and Trent discuss Joe Cocker's live album, Mad Dogs & Englishmen.

Released in 1970, the album was spontaneously formed on a few days' notice to meet Cocker's contractual obligations. 

These concert tapes ended up being just as much a showcase for Leon Russell, who helped organize and perform the tour, as it was for Joe Cocker. Accompanying the duo is a choir, a three-piece horn section, and several drummers.

Scott, Karl, and Trent discuss an album you may have heard of: The Dark Side of the Moon by English rock band Pink Floyd. 

As Scott points out, Pink Floyd is one of those bands that you either love or hate. Released in 1973, this particular album became one of the most critically acclaimed records in history, tallying 741 weeks on the US Billboard Charts.  

The trio agrees that unlike other chart toppers from the era, this album’s ...

Scott, Karl, and Trent discuss Depeche Mode's 1990 album Violator, a synth-pop smash.

Featuring nine tracks of synthesizer dominant grooves, this English electronic music band created what Trent calls "a perfect album." 

The trio discusses how this highly stylized exploration of the dark side of human emotion became a mainstream, chart-climbing album.  Scott says, "I think this shows a sinister, dark worldview and a yearning for so...

Buckle up! In this much-anticipated episode, Scott, Karl, and Trent discuss outlaw country music.

Starting as a movement about freedom, authenticity, and rebellion, outlaw country is all about breaking the rules.  

During the 1970s, Nashville's country music stars had to fight for creative control of their songs. When Willie Nelson bucked the Nashville sound and made the pilgrimage to Austin, Texas, a new era of country outlaw was ...

Da-Da-Da-DUM — hardly any succession of notes is as famous as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. 

This week, Scott, Karl, and Trent discuss the life and legacy of Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music. 

Trent says, "I hear him having all of the virtuosity and command of the musical vocabulary that Bach, Mozart, and Haydn have. But I think he is ultimately inspired by fits of passion— these...

In today's episode, Trent orients Scott and Karl to Indian classical music. 

To a novice listener, the complexity of Indian music might seem overwhelming, but knowing just a few basics can give you the tools to appreciate the melodic richness. Scott admits, "We have never done a show which we know so little about."

Indian classical music is very closely connected to nature, taking inspiration from the cycles of the natural world to...

Scott, Karl, and Trent introduce us to one of America's premier art forms— jazz. To better understand this music genre, the trio listens to the Clifford Brown and Max Roach album Study in Brown. 

Jazz is a language on its own: it's explorative, improvisational, and an aesthetic experience. "Brilliant, beautiful things can come out of the danger of the improvisational style," Karl says.  

Scott adds, "It's musical dialectic. When yo...

Scott, Karl, and Trent discuss the history, ritual, and tradition of chanting. 

Karl walks listeners through the musical structure and rules of different chanting traditions in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church.

Karl says, "For most people, chanting is an accompaniment for their yoga... it's something alien that we throw in to add a little spice. That's not what it is." Chanting is contemplative music that touches the ...