I cannot resist leaking parts from sounds too good to hide before publication and tweak your antennae. One musician-enigma is Oskar … Continue reading
Author: arbiterrecords
Adventures in Cosmic Locomotion
Recent running throughout Europe in situ and sitting pretty at a safe distance across the ocean brings up recent encounters. … Continue reading
A Playlist of Origins
Sitting in a hot Adriatic Italian town with roosters and hunting dogs making their presence known out the window, a … Continue reading
Consciousness of streams: stirrings of an Ethnographer
One inadvertently eavesdrops on conversations, eyes discarded leaflets, witnesses unexpected scenes. A pile-up of transitory collisions somehow etch themselves to … Continue reading
pre-war Geisha Blues
One day at Beate Gordon’s home in New York, she noticed a series of recordings on her shelf while we … Continue reading
Tao sighting in Texas
Blind WIllie Johnson, born in Texas: only one photo survives. Johnson asks us “What is the soul of a man?“* … Continue reading
On the Path of Death and Renewal
Everything eventually crosses your path. Last week two momentous events took place, restoring a raw nature of change and transformation … Continue reading
Let the Blues shake that thing!
Such a strikingly autochthonous and mysterious American Art music, allegedly risen up from unknown and lost origins, abounding in myths spouted … Continue reading
Bach leads to Marchal
One day in 1997, I found a Bach recording by organist André Marchal (1894-1980). Earlier French organists, such as Louis … Continue reading
Reactions to the Record III
Stanford University’s music department became an oasis in academia when it hosted a third symposium on historic recordings (April 12-14, 2012), covering … Continue reading