It may be my age, but those moments when a piece of music really hits me in the solar plexus seem to get rarer and rarer. But during my recent extended travels in India I was metaphorically punched time and time again when listening to ECM's Codona recordings on headphones. Recent posts have touched on the potential of virtual concert halls and the fact that no one mixes for speakers these days , and the Manfred Eicher produced Codona sessions from between 1978 and 1982 really demonstrate the impact of the up close and personal sound of headphones . The line up for Codona was African-American trumpeter Don Cherry, Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, and Colin Walcott on sitar, tabla, hammered dulcimer, sanza, timpani, and voice. The band took its name from a circus trapeze act of the early 20th century called the Flying Codonas , and the three albums packaged by ECM for CD as The Codona Trilogy capture the peerless musicians-beyond-frontiers performing their creative hig
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While it is not a Cathedral proper, this evening the Library of Congress is acting the role of a center of civilization by hosting a chamber choral ensemble -- San Francisco-based Chanticleer -- in an all American choral program by living composers -- the East Coast premiere of Ezequiel Viñao's The Wanderer, a setting of an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, and works by Paul Schoenfeld, Carlos Sánchez Gutiérrez, Arthur Jarvinen, and Steven Stucky.
Here is an insightful review by Richard Scheinin of the San Jose Mercury of the program (or a similar one) performed at Mission Santa Clara, in Northern California, last month.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/columnists/15610504.htm