Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases

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Folk

Joan Baez, “How Sweet the Sound” (Razor & Tie). A companion to the PBS documentary of the same name, “How Sweet the Sound” tells Joan Baez’s story in song, and ably demonstrates the singer’s legacy. She predated Dylan, then dated him, all the while laying down the blueprint for the linking of folk music and social activism, one that would influence everyone from the Beatles to Jackson Browne to John Mellencamp to Steve Earle. Speaking of Earle, Baez covers his scorching “Jerusalem” here, and both interprets Dylan (“With God on Our Side”) and duets with him (“I Pity the Poor Immigrant”). Baez’s version of “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” (familiar to Grateful Dead fans, of course— not to mention Harry Belafonte fans) is marked by the blend of aching soprano singing and clear-eyed individualism that has marked her 50 years of recordings. Inspiring stuff, still. ★★★ 1/2 ( Jeff Miers)

Jazz

Billie Holiday, “The Complete Commodore & Decca Masters” (Verve, three discs). What happened on April 20, 1939, was, arguably, one of the handful of greatest things that ever happened in an American recording studio. After repeatedly and successfully singing the song “Strange Fruit” at Barney Josefson’s Cafe Society in Greenwich Village’s Sheridan Square (America’s first integrated nightclub), Billie Holiday was turned down by her own record company, Columbia, when she wanted to record it. She had gotten the song from a Bronx schoolteacher. Not even the fabled producer John Hammond would touch it. So she asked Milt Gabler—proprietor of the Commodore Record Shop (and Billy Crystal’s uncle) —what to do. The story is that she sang it for him a capella. He heard it with tears. What resulted on that fateful April day, after Columbia gave its permission, was Gabler getting Holiday and a roomful of great jazz musicians to record one of the most powerful songs ever put on record. What you have here on these three discs from 1939-1950 is all the exceptional music sung by Billie Holiday for Milt Gabler. Gabler had an unfortunate weakness for trying to make her a pop singer in material even she couldn’t redeem, but this is still some of her greatest music from her greatest period. Her voice is usually an acquired taste, but once you get past its thin, nasal, hawklike sharpness, you understand that what she did with it remains sublime and singular in American musical history. ★★★★( Jeff Simon)

Pop

Devendra Banhart, “What Will We Be” (Warner Bros.). Texan by way of Venezuela, and now, appropriately ensconced in the part of California that gave us so much of the singer-songwriter fare of the late ’60s and early ’70s, Devendra Banhart is his own generation’s Donovan. That’s no slight. At 28, Banhart already seems to know exactly who he is, musically speaking. Like the Scottish troubadour who has so clearly been an influence on him, the scraggly, Jesus-bearded Banhart uses folk music as a prism through which to view the eclectic, the slippery and the surreal. “What Will We Be” is easily his finest (and most experimental) effort to date, and the fact that it is Banhart’s first album to be released on a major label speaks well of the man’s artistic fortitude. (As in, this is certainly no sell-out, nor is it a capitulation to commercial concerns.) “What Will We Be” is a gauzy, dreamy trip of a record, floating freely between breezy Tropicalia, untethered, free-form folk, and a languid psychedelia that is ultimately pleasing, even if it doesn’t seem to be trying too hard to please you. Not exactly a single number here that screams “hit single,” though; Banhart is clearly an artist who views the full-length album as his canvas. So light the lava lamp, dude, and pull up a pillow. ★★★ 1/2 ( J. M.)

Classical

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, “Ring Christmas Bells” (Mormon Tabernacle Choir). I love early Christmas CDs and this is a dandy, a glitter-fest in the great Firestone tradition. The star atop the tree is Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “The Friendly Beasts” and doing all the animals’ voices—low ruminant tones for the cow, a startling bray for the donkey, etc., while the choir croons reverently. “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” has cool vocal effects. “Go Tell It On the Mountain” gets a rocking go-round on the organ, brief but overblown. And, of course, you’ve got the “Hallelujah Chorus,” which, if the Mormon Tabernacle Choir did not sing that, we would riot. The disc ends with Mitchell, this time in operatic mode, leading “Angels From the Realms of Glory” that goes through a variety of key changes before ending in total conflagration. Only a few unfamiliar duds mar this disk. But then, Santa rarely brings you everything you want. ★★★ (Mary Kunz Goldman)

•••

Ernest Bloch, Complete Works for Violin and Piano performed by violinist Laticia Honda-Rosenberg and pianist Avner Arad (Oehms, two discs). Obviously, Ernest Bloch’s “Schelemo” ensured that the composer would be forever remembered for composing one of the most powerful cello and orchestra masterworks of the 20th century—and, by extension, some of its greatest chamber works for cello. Discs, then, of Bloch’s complete music for cello and piano are not uncommon. Discs, though, of Bloch’s music for violin and orchestra are a bit less common, especially complete discs as splendid as this one. Honda-Rosenberg is a powerful violinist—not quite as sonorous as the ideal for his music but forthright and passionately expressive in it all, whether the violin/piano sonatas from the ’20s, the “Baal Shem—Three Pictures of Hassidic Life” (which dates from the period of “Schelemo”) and the neoclassic solo sonatas and “Suite Hebraique” from the ’50s. A composer enjoying an understandable second life in the 21st century. ★★★( J. S.)

Soundtrack

Michael Nyman, Soundtracks, “The Composer’s Cut” series: “The Piano,” “Nyman/ Greenway Revisited” and “The Libertine” (MN Records, three discs). If he had done nothing other than—as a superb music critic—invented the word “minimalism” to describe a certain sort of music, Michael Nyman’s reputation would have been assured. It turned out, though, that as a composer he was one of the greatest of the minimalist composers, especially in his film work for directors Peter Greenaway, Jane Campion and Lawrence Dunmore. One could argue that while some of Philip Glass’ best work was in his film scores (“The Hours,” “Koyanisqaatsi,” “Mishima”), Nyman’s film scores are even more successful on their own as music. This collects all of the greatest of them in a tremendous box set. ★★★★( J. S.)

Country/roots

Kris Kristofferson “Closer to the Bone” (New West). “Ain’t you getting better / Running out of time,” Kris Kristofferson observes on the title song of his new album, the “you” seemingly referring to himself. At 73, the craggy troubadour and sometime movie star may no longer scale the heights of his ground-breaking ’60s and ’70s work, but in recent years he has come as close as he ever has. The sense of mortality in “Closer to the Bone” appears to have sharpened Kristofferson’s muse. It gives him a renewed appreciation for life and love, one informed by a lifetime of sometimes hard-earned experience, to keep things from getting too sappy or sentimental. It all plays out in compositions with arrangements as spare as his lyrics, putting his ragged spoken-sung vocals—singing was never his strong suit—in their best light. And check out the hidden track, which Kristofferson claims is the first song he ever wrote. Pretty precocious stuff for an 11-year-old. ★★★ (Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer)

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