Deep Focus

The moment you invoke the name of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, the widow of John Coltrane, you open a door into other ways of understanding.  She was part of her husband's last working band, but after his death, and for the next 40 years, her music became suffused with her spiritual practice and mystical experiences.  Her conviction was so thorough that some listeners found it alienating, bu...

The moment you invoke the name of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, the widow of John Coltrane, you open a door into other ways of understanding.  She was part of her husband's last working band, but after his death, and for the next 40 years, her music became suffused with her spiritual practice and mystical experiences.  Her conviction was so thorough that some listeners found it alienating, bu...

When they go deep, we go deeper.     We have been thinking about Miles Davis in anticipation of his centennial (May 26).  How about we explore a dark corner of his vast touring history, his so-called "Lost Quintet"?  We have so many questions about it, but who to ask?  How about the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject?     On this week's Deep Focus, host Mitch Goldman welcomes musician...

When they go deep, we go deeper.     We have been thinking about Miles Davis in anticipation of his centennial (May 26).  How about we explore a dark corner of his vast touring history, his so-called "Lost Quintet"?  We have so many questions about it, but who to ask?  How about the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject?     On this week's Deep Focus, host Mitch Goldman welcomes musician...

When they go deep, we go deeper.     We have been thinking about Miles Davis in anticipation of his centennial (May 26).  How about we explore a dark corner of his vast touring history, his so-called "Lost Quintet"?  We have so many questions about it, but who to ask?  How about the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject?     On this week's Deep Focus, host Mitch Goldman welcomes musician...

Fela Kuti has been the subject of at least half a dozen documentaries, a Broadway play, a shelf of books, and at least one richly lauded podcast series.  It's hard to imagine a time when Fela would have been considered an obscure musician from a largely unknown continent.  But that was very much the case in the seventies when bassist Melvin Gibbs heard his music blasting out of a record store on N...

Fela Kuti has been the subject of at least half a dozen documentaries, a Broadway play, a shelf of books, and at least one richly lauded podcast series.  It's hard to imagine a time when Fela would have been considered an obscure musician from a largely unknown continent.  But that was very much the case in the seventies when bassist Melvin Gibbs heard his music blasting out of a record store on N...

Fela Kuti has been the subject of at least half a dozen documentaries, a Broadway play, a shelf of books, and at least one richly lauded podcast series.  It's hard to imagine a time when Fela would have been considered an obscure musician from a largely unknown continent.  But that was very much the case in the seventies when bassist Melvin Gibbs heard his music blasting out of a record store on N...

Throw away the map.  Now, how are you going to find your way to your destination?  You will probably find many more answers than you may have thought you'd find when you were looking at that folded-up piece of paper.     The band Old and New Dreams didn't have to follow chord changes, disregarded time signatures, but their music was full of story-songs, each with a beginning, a middle, and an end....

Throw away the map.  Now, how are you going to find your way to your destination?  You will probably find many more answers than you may have thought you'd find when you were looking at that folded-up piece of paper.     The band Old and New Dreams didn't have to follow chord changes, disregarded time signatures, but their music was full of story-songs, each with a beginning, a middle, and an end....

Throw away the map.  Now, how are you going to find your way to your destination?  You will probably find many more answers than you may have thought you'd find when you were looking at that folded-up piece of paper.     The band Old and New Dreams didn't have to follow chord changes, disregarded time signatures, but their music was full of story-songs, each with a beginning, a middle, and an end....

This episode of Deep Focus has been decades in the making.  Deep Focus host Mitch Goldman started DJing Monday nights at WKCR in 1985.  At that time, he alternated Mondays with fellow WKCR programmer Ethan Singer.  Mitch and Ethan soon discovered that they both loved a lot of the same music and both loved the live music experience.  They merged forces and started producing a show with live session...

This episode of Deep Focus has been decades in the making.  Deep Focus host Mitch Goldman started DJing Monday nights at WKCR in 1985.  At that time, he alternated Mondays with fellow WKCR programmer Ethan Singer.  Mitch and Ethan soon discovered that they both loved a lot of the same music and both loved the live music experience.  They merged forces and started producing a show with live session...

This episode of Deep Focus has been decades in the making.  Deep Focus host Mitch Goldman started DJing Monday nights at WKCR in 1985.  At that time, he alternated Mondays with fellow WKCR programmer Ethan Singer.  Mitch and Ethan soon discovered that they both loved a lot of the same music and both loved the live music experience.  They merged forces and started producing a show with live session...

The music, the people playing it, and the audience are all in a state of total oneness.  It's a spontaneous improvisation as delicate as an eggshell.  You're almost afraid to breathe lest this moment dissolve, and we are all dropped back to the cold earth.  Then you open your eyes to see that the bassist is Charlie Haden, and you know that this moment will not end until its time has come, because...

The music, the people playing it, and the audience are all in a state of total oneness.  It's a spontaneous improvisation as delicate as an eggshell.  You're almost afraid to breathe lest this moment dissolve, and we are all dropped back to the cold earth.  Then you open your eyes to see that the bassist is Charlie Haden, and you know that this moment will not end until its time has come, because...

The music, the people playing it, and the audience are all in a state of total oneness.  It's a spontaneous improvisation as delicate as an eggshell.  You're almost afraid to breathe lest this moment dissolve, and we are all dropped back to the cold earth.  Then you open your eyes to see that the bassist is Charlie Haden, and you know that this moment will not end until its time has come, because...

Improvisation is considered a high art form for an instrumentalist, but what about for a composer?  Is it even possible to create a piece of music for an ensemble, and to hear it performed in real time?  How would you go about that? You would have to have an entire group imagining together.  Lawrence "Butch" Morris did it by creating a compositional language that allowed him to convey musical idea...

Improvisation is considered a high art form for an instrumentalist, but what about for a composer?  Is it even possible to create a piece of music for an ensemble, and to hear it performed in real time?  How would you go about that? You would have to have an entire group imagining together.  Lawrence "Butch" Morris did it by creating a compositional language that allowed him to convey musical idea...

Improvisation is considered a high art form for an instrumentalist, but what about for a composer?  Is it even possible to create a piece of music for an ensemble, and to hear it performed in real time?  How would you go about that? You would have to have an entire group imagining together.  Lawrence "Butch" Morris did it by creating a compositional language that allowed him to convey musical idea...

Improvisation is considered a high art form for an instrumentalist, but what about for a composer?  Is it even possible to create a piece of music for an ensemble, and to hear it performed in real time?  How would you go about that? You would have to have an entire group imagining together.  Lawrence "Butch" Morris did it by creating a compositional language that allowed him to convey musical idea...

Meet me at Edge City.  Isn't that place where worlds collide the only one where new ideas are ever generated?  Saxophonist Jim Pepper knew all about these cultural collisions. His band Free Spirits was arguably the first to combine rock and jazz elements, and his oft-covered song Witchitai-To is perhaps the only hit to feature an authentic Native American chant in the history of the Billboard pop...

Meet me at Edge City.  Isn't that place where worlds collide the only one where new ideas are ever generated?  Saxophonist Jim Pepper knew all about these cultural collisions. His band Free Spirits was arguably the first to combine rock and jazz elements, and his oft-covered song Witchitai-To is perhaps the only hit to feature an authentic Native American chant in the history of the Billboard pop...

Meet me at Edge City.  Isn't that place where worlds collide the only one where new ideas are ever generated?  Saxophonist Jim Pepper knew all about these cultural collisions. His band Free Spirits was arguably the first to combine rock and jazz elements, and his oft-covered song Witchitai-To is perhaps the only hit to feature an authentic Native American chant in the history of the Billboard pop...

Plate tectonics, this idea that the very surface of the earth is not an unyielding solid, but a set of independent segments in a constant state of flow, was not always accepted as truth.  It was only developed in 1967, but once geophysicists saw how accurately it described familiar phenomena, there was no going back.     At the exact same time, Jack DeJohnette was emerging as a new force on drums....