Anthony da Costa at the Postcrypt Folk Festival

For the second year in a row, Columbia University's Postcrypt Coffeehouse wrapped up its season with an outdoor folk festival this past Sunday. (Back in the day -- before my time -- the Postcrypt was affiliated with a Columbia event known as the Furnald Folk Festival. I'm not sure if the current Postcrypt festival organizers are aware that they are following in this tradition.)

Allan, Alison and I arrived for the final two sets of the festival -- and my friend Julia joined us, too. I'd like to say that we were paying close attention to Chuck E. Costa's set, but we simply weren't. We were sitting in the shade, a little ways back from the stage, and enjoying the folk festival atmosphere.

When Anthony da Costa took the stage, however, we moved in for a better view and a better listen.

Anthony opened with Dan Bern's terrific song "Jerusalem" with its stabbing opening and closing stanza:

When I tell you that I love you,
Don't test my love,
Accept my love.
Don't test my love
'Cause maybe I don't love you all that much.

Then he went into his own "Devil's Won Again" and "Okemah Sunrise" before offering up a new love song with the repeated lyric 'I'll be your river valley / If you'll be my mountain range.' "Upstate Living" followed next, much to Allan's delight.

Collaborator Abbie Gardner joined him for a cover song and then "Note" from their Bad Nights/Better Days disc.

Then Anthony played a song about turning 16 that he hopes to get into the soundtrack for the television show My Super Sweet 16. At the time, we were convinced that we would be singing the chorus for a few days. At the moment, I'm afraid I don't remember it.

As an unusual closer -- the Postcrypt staff were folding up tables around the plaza -- Emilyn Brodsky joined Anthony on stage for a duet version of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel."

In C

If you haven't heard, they played Terry Riley's In C, the breakthrough work of minimalism, at Carnegie Hall last Friday night.

Justin Davidson in New York Magazine anticipating the event:

A piano tolls high C’s for an uninterrupted hour, while underneath a varied ensemble interweaves pattern with burbling pattern. The music evokes no journey, produces no tension, excites no expectations, requires no relief. To sit up seems aesthetically incorrect.

...

David Harrington, a founding violinist of the Kronos Quartet, has assembled a large and disparate ensemble of musicians from several generations, united in reverence for this work. “All egos will be checked at the front door, and we’ll just start experimenting,” Harrington says. Expect a disciplined be-in.

And then Steve Smith's New York Times' review after it happened:

Emphasizing a communitarian spirit, the Kronos Quartet violinist David Harrington gathered 70 diverse performers, including the composers Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov, jazz improvisers, rock musicians, two vocal groups, a recorder quartet, a koto trio and players of invented implements.

...

Some listeners rocked in place. Others sprawled in their seats, adrift; one hammered the pulse into his palm with a rolled-up program. At the end, after 98 minutes of muddy thunder and hypnotic bliss, Mr. Riley and his ad hoc community received a tumultuous ovation.

My Last Moonshine Show - May 17th

As we announced today on WKCR, May 17th will be my last day as host of The Moonshine Show, the program that I've been hosting since June 1998 (with breaks in the summer of 2001, the summer of 2005 and January-March 2007). I'll be hosting next Sunday's show with Logan Ledger, and then Logan will host on May 10th (while I'm traveling), and then I'll be doing the show solo on May 17th. Jeff Kandel will be hosting this summer, and Logan will take over the show for the foreseeable future in the fall. I hope that you all can tune in.

Playlist: The Moonshine Show - 26 April 2009

We had a great show today to go along with the great warm weather, playing a whole bunch of bluegrass favorites and playing many of them off of those heavy long-playing records -- the most LPs that we've played on the Moonshine Show in quite some time!

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The Moonshine Show - 89.9 WKCR-FM, NYC
Sunday 26 April 2009 - 10 a.m. to Noon
Hosts: Matt Winters and Logan Ledger

Mike Auldridge; "Train 45 1/2"; _Takoma Eclectic Sampler_ (Takoma)

The Seldom Scene; "City of New Orleans"; _Live at the Cellar Door_ (Rebel LP)

Reno & Smiley; "I'm Using My Bible for a Roadmap"; _20 Bluegrass Originals_ (Gusto LP)

The Nashville Superpickers with Mike "Chickenhawk" Toppins; "Get Back"; _Fire on the Banjo_ (CMH)

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The Osborne Brothers; "Georgia Mules and Country Boys"; _The World's Greatest Bluegrass Bands_ (CMH LP)

The Osborne Brothers; "Ruby, Are You Mad?"; _The Osborne Brothers_ (LP)

Kristin Scott Benson; "No Steering, No Brakes"; _Second Season_ (Pinecastle)

Jimmy Martin; "Run, Pete, Run"; _20 Bluegrass Originals_ (Gusto LP)

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Jimmy Martin; "Hit Parade of Love," "Mary Ann"; _Bean Blossom_ (MCA LP)

Junior Daugherty with the Dry Branch Fire Squad; "Sally Goodin"; _Winterhawk Scholarship Album_ (LP)

Tony Trischka and Skyline; "Where You Hang Your Heart"; _The 2nd Winterhawk Scholarship Album_ (LP)

Peter Rowan; "Free Mexican Airforce"; _The Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass Festival_ (LP)

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Spectrum; "I Will Survive"
Blaine Sprouse; "Jerusalem Ridge"
Jonathan Edwards and the Seldom Scene; "Wait a Minute"
Three from _The Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass Festival_

The Boys from Indiana; "Auctioneer"; _Wind-Gap Bluegrass_ (Mountain Laurel LP)

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Country Gentlemen; "Matterhorn"; _Can't You Hear Me Callin': Early Classics, 1963-1969_ (Rebel)

Charlie Waller and the Country Gentlemen; "Amelia Earhart"; _45 Years of Memories_ (Pinecastle)

Doc Watson, Norman Blake and Dan Crary; "Black Mountain Rag"; _Tellulive: 1979 Telluride Bluegrass and Country Music Festival_ (Flying Fish LP)

Doc & Merle Watson; "Alabama Bound"; _Ballads from Deep Gap_ (Vanguard LP)

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Dry Branch Fire Squad; "The Old Time Way"; _Fertile Ground_ (Rounder LP)

Hot Rize; "High on a Mountain"; _Tellulive_

Fiddle Fever; "Ashoken Farewell"; _Come to the Mountain: Old Time Music for Modern Times_ (Rounder)

Blue Harvest; "Miss Molly"; _Just Around the Bend_ (self-released)

The Cox Family; "Standing by the Bedside of a Neighbor"; _The Angels are Singing: A Women's Bluegrass Gospel Collection_ (Rounder)

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Silk City; "Marche Funebre d'une Marionette," "Think It Over One Time"; _Silk City_ (Sliced Bread)

Tony Trischka with Skyline; "Brady's Leap"; _Ticket Back_ (Flying Fish)

Tony Trischka with Tom Adams; "Fox on the Run"; _Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular_ (Rounder)

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James King; "Thirty Years of Farming"; _Thirty Years of Farming_ (Rounder)

Blue Highway; "V-Bottom Boat"; _Through the Window of a Train_ (Rounder)

New Banjo Movie

Throw Down Your Heart is the name of a new documentary following Bela Fleck across Africa, as he brings his banjo playing back to the instruments' native land. It opens today at the IFC Film Center in New York (and elsewhere, presumably).

Stephen Holden has a review in today's New York Times:

At every stop on a journey that takes him from Uganda to Tanzania to Gambia and finally to Mali, Mr. Fleck plays and records with gifted local musicians.

...

Mr. Fleck, a gentle, curious man of few words and formidable talents, is a benign presence. In a Ugandan village his banjo accompanies several local musicians playing a 12-foot xylophone. In Tanzania he collaborates with Anania Ngoliga, a master of the African thumb piano, an instrument consisting of metal tines of varying length attached to a wooden board. It is in Gambia that Mr. Fleck encounters the akonting, a primitive three-string forerunner of the banjo whose preservation is the mission of a troupe known as the Jatta Family.

(HT: Tina Aridas.)

Judy Collins and Handgun Safety

I liked this story from Stephen Holden's review of Judy Collins' engagement at the Cafe Carlyle (although the ending obviously could have been far less humorous):

Her wildest tale described an adventure in Chicago on a winter night in which she caroused until 3 a.m. with two folk-singing colleagues, one of whom gave her a handgun for protection during the walk back to her hotel. Once safely in her room, she tried to remove the clip, and the gun went off.

More Fawning Over the Young Folksinging Set

Allan alerts us to the fact that the Bwog has alerted us all to the fact that Anthony Da Costa apparently will be a Columbia College student starting in the fall.

The entire Bwog post reads:

Spotted: Anthony Da Costa-–the most electrifying thing to happen to acoustic guitar since actual electric guitars-–at the Days on Campus activities fair, currently in Roone.

Says he's definitely headed to Columbia in the fall, and has his sights set on living in John Jay. (Ladies, take note.) Plus: he's walking around with his mom–be still our hearts!

Some of the comments so far read:

I don't get it... Does Jim Downie have a man crush on this dude or what's the deal? Bwog is crazy about this fella to a degree that's getting weird.

...

bwog you have a tendency to latch on to a particular freshman or 2 from each entering class and it makes a decent fraction of the rest of campus resent them (a la Stephan). Don't do it - it isn't fair to them, or us.

...

What about all those dreamy guys that already go here and build a race car from scratch every year? They may always have black fingernails, but they are dreamboats nonetheless.

Piece of advice to Anthony: if you want to follow in Matt Winters' footsteps, it all started in 1003 John Jay, baby.

Minimalism Remixed Again

Back on Live from Miller Theatre, we would sometimes use the Reich Remixed CD as a bed for our blabbering. It's a cool disc where a bunch of DJs take the basic ideas from Steve Reich's compositions and run wild with them.

Now the New Music Ensemble at Grand Valley State University is putting out a CD that includes a number of remix takes on Terry Riley's In C.

Among the remixers: DJ Spooky (who participated in the Reich project), Nico Muhly (perhaps the hottest young composer out there), Glenn Kotche (new music percussionist and Wilco drummer), Dennis Desantis (of Alarm Will Sound), David Lang (from Bang on a Can) and Todd Reynolds (from Ethel). What a great bunch of people! (Kotche and Reynolds both appeared on episodes of Live from Miller Theatre during my tenure.)

Alex Ross's blog pointed to this grooving -- and I mean that -- promo video:

Free Symphonic Downloads

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is making 10 symphonic recordings available for free download.

(HT: Alex Ross.)

Update: Man, does Mahler's first symphony crib some major Handel or what?

Remembering Citizen Kafka

Richard Shulberg -- aka Citizen Kafka -- passed away back on March 14th. We paid brief tribute to him on The Moonshine Show the following day, and Kenny Kosek and Tony Trischka shared some memories during the Tony Trishcka segment of the Country Festival.

Kenny, Ed Haber and John Goodman -- who with the Citizen had been the creative team behind the Citizen Kafka Radio Show -- paid lengthy tribute to the Citizen on WBAI, and I've been listening to that show, which is full of archival recordings, on Eli Smith's Down Home Radio Show web site. The show, which can be found here, is definitely worth checking out: all of the madcap antics for which these guys were and are known are on display -- if you like sarcastic, almost-overbearing, New York humor, these guys had it down.

On May 9th, there will be a Wretched Refuse tribute to the Citizen at Jalopy. They're doing two shows and requiring reservations.

Update: Someone with their Google Alerts turned on writes the following in the comments: "WFMU's 3-hour CK tribute is archived at: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/31088."