Douglas Detrick's AnyWhen Ensemble - Bright and Rushing World
I have long intend­ed to write more here about spe­cif­ic jazz record­ings that include bas­soon. I have many favorites span­ning basi­cal­ly the whole his­to­ry of jazz, which I’ll get to even­tu­al­ly. But I’ve decid­ed to start with a recent album from a band that’s new to me. Last month I received a copy of The Bright and Rush­ing World by Dou­glas Detrick’s Any­When Ensem­ble (thanks, Dad!). This, the group’s third album, was record­ed in 2012 and released in March of this year. I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the disc on and off over the past few weeks, and I quite enjoy it. […]
The cover of Ralph's Secret Weapon by Steven Kellogg, featuring a small young boy playing bassoon with a large green sea dragon behind him with its mouth open
As I dig out from the end-of-the-semes­ter crunch, I see that I have start­ed quite a few blog posts in the last cou­ple of months with­out fin­ish­ing any of them. So while I get my act back togeth­er, here’s a repost from a pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion of my site: I don’t nor­mal­ly read chil­dren’s books, but Ralph’s Secret Weapon mer­it­ed an excep­tion. The book’s main char­ac­ter is unique (as far as I can tell) amongst char­ac­ters in chil­dren’s books: Ralph plays the bassoon. I don’t recall exact­ly how I became aware of the exis­tence of this book. I think that it may […]
A cou­ple of days ago, I received Nad­i­na Mack­ie Jack­son’s new CD, Twen­ty Four Solos by Jean-Daniel Braun in the mail. I had been eager­ly await­ing the disc since its release at the end of Octo­ber. Of course I want­ed to hear Nad­i­na’s record­ing (which is won­der­ful!), but my enthu­si­asm was also part­ly self­ish; I wrote the album’s lin­er notes. This came about a bit by chance. Nad­i­na put out a call on Face­book for help with lin­er notes, and I hap­pened to see and respond to it in pret­ty short order. So thanks to her for giv­ing me my first […]