Soundcheck

The London band Public Service Broadcasting makes music out of history: the space race, the UK mining industry, and now, the final flight of Amelia Earhart, have all been turned into albums. Public Service Broadcasting plays live. Then, hear Em Spel, the folk-rock singer from Chicago, also known as Emma Hospelhorn, a classical flutist who is a member of Chicago’s experimental chamber music collect...

The Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela first made a name for themselves busking in Dublin, Ireland, even though they spoke no English at the time. With roots in flamenco, classical, and thrash metal, they perform technical feats of wonder in both originals and incredible covers. The 2019 album, Mettavolution contains driving numbers, some incredibly fleet-fingered virtuosity, and a mind-alterin...

Baltimore-based Dan Deacon has been a mad scientist of electronic music since releasing his debut album Spiderman Of The Rings in 2007.  He built a reputation for wild, dance-oriented live shows, but Dan is also classically trained and in recent years has been doing a lot of film music, along with scoring music for dance. His latest album is the score for a National Geographic documentary called T...

Sometimes music takes us back or far into the future. Other times, time and travel are at the very core of the music we listen to. On this edition of Soundcheck, the (mostly) Havana-based band Orquesta Akokán takes us on a musical time travel through the classic Cuban dance sounds of the mid-20th century, live from our studio. After a substantial dose of mambo, cha-cha-chá, rumba, salsa, and more,...

Dominican-Italian singer-songwriter YEИDRY has been around for over a decade, and in the span of her rich music career that’s lived many lives, she compiled highly personal songs, some of which would eventually end up on her debut album coming out this Fall. She called it “Como Agua”, which translates to “Like Water”, aptly summarizing not only YEИDRY’s way of making music, but also her way of lif...

Grammy-nominated jazz and R&B ensemble, Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science, are back with their sophomore album, Trip the Night Fantastic,  after a seven-year-long break. In line with their debut record, Waiting Game,  the group has a new batch of songs dealing with a wide range of social justice issues, voiced in melodies and spoken words. “Once you open your eyes to any social issue, so many...

Welcome to the WASABI edition of Soundcheck! No, not the spicy green paste that comes with your sushi order. We’re talking about the collaborative project formed by the London-born indie rock band Art Brut and their New York counterpart, We Are Scientists , known as We Are Scientists Art Brut International . Though they released a collaborative record in 2019, each band visited our studios at sepa...

Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer Yasser Tejada & the group Palotré combine African-rooted Dominican traditional folk styles and fuse them with R&B, church gospel, funk, jazz, and rock into a celebration of Afro-Dominican culture. On this edition of Soundcheck from 2019, they play some songs from their record,  Kijombo , in-studio.  Watch the video of the session here .    Hosted by Simplecast...

The late South African pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim (aka "Dollar Brand") had a notable career, helped early on by Duke Ellington, and  acknowledged later by Nelson Mandela, who called Ibrahim “our Mozart.” In 2019, Abdullah Ibrahim became a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, and he released an album titled The Balance, ( which was his 70th or 71st LP, and that's not including hi...

On this episode of Soundcheck, a great band bids farewell after a monumental career that lasted more than a quarter of a century. American avant-garde group The Bad Plus spent long years fusing instrumental jazz with rock music, with each member playing their seemingly traditional instruments to their fullest extent in unexpected ways. They perform some tunes from their final record, “Complex Emot...

After almost a decade-long wait, the Grammy-nominated alt-country artist Tift Merritt returns with her new record Sugar,  in which she sings, “I didn’t really want to be here tonight / I don’t need you looking at me / I don’t like the light bright.” Is a romantic love story the inspiration behind these words? Or is it the music industry itself, which is, as Merritt puts it, the ultimate “bad boyfr...

Chamber pop duo Gracie and Rachel, formed by keyboardist Gracie Coates and violinist Rachel Ruggles, spent many years playing music together, living together, and even growing up together during their high school years. But when time came to work on their new album, they couldn’t write in the same room. Instead, they each turned their attention inward, reflecting on their emotions separately. The...

Latin music culture has produced countless artists who amplify decades of traditions and stories through their unique point of view. Two of those artists are Julieta Venegas and Marilina Bertoldi, who have both earned numerous Latin Grammy nominations in recent years. Singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas, who collaborated with superstar Bad Bunny on “Lo Siento BB:/,” is a multi-instrumentalist whose...

Multi-instrumentalist Zoh Amba is widely known in the avant-garde jazz world for their remarkable talent as a saxophonist. Having cemented their reputation as a natural improviser, they now turn their attention to seemingly new territory that is really a homecoming: gritty, Appalachian folk-rock music. In their debut singer-songwriter record, titled Eyes Full, Zoh Amba studies the culture of their...

Helado Tropical ("tropical ice cream") is a collaboration between Helado Negro, the experimental pop project of Ecuadorian-American singer/songwriter Roberto Carlos Lange, and Reyna Tropical, which is the work of the Mexican-American musician Fabi Reyna (also of the cumbia band Savila). Created out of openness and spontaneity, and nearly “telepathic communication” in the studio. there is a tendern...

New York’s history as a city of immigrants has had a huge impact on music. Six-time Grammy-winning pianist Arturo O’Farrill follows in the footsteps of his father, Chico O’Farrill, a pioneer of the Afro-Cuban jazz that developed in NY in the 1940s. Now, Arturo O’Farrill often collaborates with his own sons, trumpeter Adam O’Farrill and drummer Zack O’Farrill, in both Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and...

Jazz-funk brass band EMEFE didn’t plan on getting back together after their indefinite hiatus in 2016. Everyone involved with the project at the time, including founding member and drummer Miles Francis, went on to pursue other musical endeavors, until one of their 2015 album tracks, titled “Sun Spat,” began to gain some traction online years later. “We never heard from anybody from Spotify or any...

The Tunisian-born, American-based singer and activist Emel Mathlouthi, who records simply as Emel, became famous when her song "Kelmti Horra" became the anthem of the Arab Spring uprising some fifteen years ago. Since coming to the States, Emel has released a series of albums united by the themes of freedom, struggle, and community. Sonically, though, her songs have varied from dark electronica to...

What makes certain musical moments memorable? In the case of the Canadian indie rock band The New Pornographers , it’s a quarter of a century filled with inventive arrangements, power pop melodies, and striking lyrics that feel both abstract and relatable. And in the case of Portuguese fado singer Carminho , it’s a single, show-stopping moment in the film “Poor Things,” where all the action stops...

Folktronica songwriter Ásgeir didn’t plan on becoming a singer. When he was younger, all he wanted to do was to make music with his garage band. He only found himself singing in front of a microphone because “somebody had to do it.”  As he grew into his musical identity, Ásgeir immersed himself in the music of his vocal heroes, including Jeff Buckley, Jónsi of Sigur Rós, and Justin Vernon of Bon I...

Saxophonist Isaiah Collier spent most of his lifetime playing his instrument religiously. He looked up to his idol John Coltrane so much that he performed several tribute concerts in his name. But the young jazz composer is ready to take on new creative challenges with his upcoming EP, JOY. What kind of new challenges? Well, he showed up at our studio without his saxophone, for one.  On this episo...

Music can be a serious business. But no one says, “I work music.” You play music. In this episode, discover two very different musical acts who understand the significance of having a playful streak. First, we welcome three best friends who formed the indie rock band Horsegirl when they were still in high school in Chicago; they play a couple of songs from their sophomore album, “Phonetics On and...

What happens when an electric guitar is used to interpret music from cultures that completely ignore the Western tonal system? Guitarist Marisa Anderson dove into the depths of late filmmaker Harry Smith’s record collection to find out. While Smith himself once did similar research to compile his influential Anthology of American Folk Music,  Anderson was more interested in compositions and improv...

Photo of Lara Downes by Ebru Yildiz Pianist Lara Downes has spent the last couple of years traveling the country and collecting not only music, but also stories, for a pair of projects that celebrate America at 250. One is her multimedia piece called The Declaration Project, and the other is an album of music that spans at least 250 years of American history called Hold These Truths, which amplifi...

The New Orleans band Tank and the Bangas have been public radio favorites since they won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2017. Since then, they’ve built their considerable reputation on their high octane, dance-ready blend of R&B, hip hop, spoken word and pop. The Grammy-winning band has some new songs to play for us from their latest album, The Last Balloon. After that, we welcome Rodney Crowell into...