The Whole Music Experience

Jazz Virginie Teychené Bright and Sweet Jazz Village Jazz and women musicians launched 2013 and already two weeks into the New Year, and I’ve featured several women jazz musicians.   French jazz chanteuse Virginie Teychené arrived in my life like a sweet fragrance.   The name of her latest album, Bright and Sweet tells just as much about the vocalist’s character as it does the sweet, sad, and rousing repertoire she performs.   It has taken me longer to review this recording since I wanted to learn more about Teychené and also the collection of songs chosen for this project. A self-taught vocalist, Teychené impresses me with her vocal style range and her natural instincts as she makes her way around songs by Peggy Lee, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Abbey Lincoln, Billie Holiday, Michel Legrand/Jacques Demy, and other jazz greats from both sides of the Atlantic.   The French vocalist shapes the songs and makes them her own leading listene...

Jazz/Big Band Asuka Kakitani Jazz Orchestra Bloom Nineteen-Eight Records My first musical glimpse of Japanese orchestra leader/big band composer Asuka Kakitani’s Bloom showed promise.   I admire a woman with musical ambition who leads men with horns through complex musical architecture.   However, I have had to listen to the recording in segments since I’ve not been able to sit through its entirety in one sitting.   The problem for me is not the soft wall of horns which includes a dozen or so flugelhorns, trombones, trumpet and saxophones and woodwinds thrown into the mix, but the bop saxophone solos that often ride over slightly dissonant passages, such as one-third of the way through Dragonfly’s Glasses or on the titular track.   However, I enjoy the mercurial opening of that song.   And the horn solo in Dance One with the orchestra playing lightly in the background sounds marvelous. However, Islands in the Stream , peppered by tr...

The Practice The Art of Choosing Background Sounds & Vibrations I had several conversations with an owner of a natural grocery store and the problems he ran into with choices of background music for the store.   Customers have complained about different types of music.   And from his assessment, the store owner came up with a list of types of music that annoy the customers--not something to take lightly in this competitive economy.   Latin music disturbed customers, and ditto for Southeast Asian music (no ragas please), high-pitched anything, guitars or trumpets received complaints, and the usual nostalgic rock/pop that plays in stores bothers me.   Who wants to listen to lyrical stories while shopping for groceries or trying to hold a conversation with someone they encounter while shopping?  I joined a new and fascinating LinkedIn Group on Music and Emotion around the same time I had the conversations with the grocery store owner.   An...