Rock



David Bowie, Storytellers on VH-1 (EMI disc plus DVD). There have been more than 60 episodes of “Storytellers” on VH-1 thus far, few better remembered, no doubt, than David Bowie’s in 1999. He charms you to pieces right from the very opening, where he tells you about Barbra Streisand “in one of her lost periods” with her “then husband and hairdresser” tackling Bowie’s “Life on Mars” (which he wrote “in retaliation” for losing a French original to Paul Anka’s “My Way” he says), and proceeding to “produce, arrange and probably blow dry it.” What a casual and irresistible kind of self-portraiture these shows turned out to be and how perfectly suited for it was Bowie. Four bonus performances not originally aired are included on the video. ??? (Jeff Simon)



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Sly and the Family Stone, The Woodstock Experience (Legacy, two discs); Santana, The Woodstock Experience (Legacy, two discs); Jefferson Airplane, The Woodstock Experience (Legacy, two discs); Janis Joplin, The Woodstock Experience (Legacy, two discs), Johnny Winter, The Woodstock Experience (Legacy, two discs). With the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival bearing down on us in a month, the amount of commemorative earthly goods related to the event has increased a hundredfold. Some of the cleverest thus far in the entire marketing wave are these five two-disc sets, which include the performers’ complete performances at the festival and contemporaneous albums that were coming out. In other words, “Volunteers” at approximately the same time as Jefferson Airplane played Woodstock, Janis Joplin’s “I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama” to go along with her set, Sly and the Family Stone’s “Stand” with theirs, etc. So exalted and history-changing was the event itself that often lost in the shuffle is the large amount of mediocre performing that was done there. The treasures in this outlay, by far, are the Sly and the Family Stone and Santana discs. In the former, you’ll hear how original that sublime brass riff on “Higher” was at Woodstock; it had absolutely nothing to do with the way the tune was originally recorded. The percussion rave-up by Santana blew many minds. You’ll find, on the Johnny Winter and Joplin discs, that, as sweeping as the live performances are, the Woodstock sets aren’t entirely on the same level as the records they were making at the time. On The Jefferson Airplane set, you may hear, four decades later, a band whose greatness has almost entirely been lost in time. Ratings:???? for Sly and Santana;??? for Joplin, ??? for Winter and llq for Jefferson Airplane. (J. S.)



Classical



Edward Joseph Collins, Music of Edward Joseph Collins, Volume VIII (Albany Records). Perhaps because recordings are so relatively inexpensive to make, and there are so many active musicians, performers are beginning to seek out music off the beaten path. Thanks to this trend, it’s fascinating to see the return of composers whose names might otherwise be completely forgotten. Collins (1886-1951) studied in Chicago with Rudolf Ganz, the pianist to whom Ravel dedicated “Scarbo”—and conducted Wagner at Bayreuth, a career move cut short by World War I. He fought in the war and later —this is the best—married Frieda Mayer, the daughter of Oscar Meyer, the German-American sausage mogul. Collins’ music, while influenced heavily by German romanticism, has a frequent American feel. He had a passion for history, and this collection includes an aria from an opera he wrote about a Civil War romance, as well as the “Geronimo” Piano Trio which, despite its nickname, reminds me of Brahms and Dvorak. The vocal works are on the predictable side, but mostly this is quality piano and chamber music, lovingly performed by a rotating team of five young performers include the gracefully low-key pianist Anna Polonsky, who has made several appearances in Buffalo, including two with the Philharmonic. ??? (Mary Kunz Goldman)



Crossover



Conspirare, A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert (Harmonia Mundi USA). Conspirare, a Grammy-nominated group from Texas, has created quite a guilty pleasure: a disk of New Age music, rock songs (Carly Simon’s “Let The River Run”), folk songs, and mad medleys. One medley, “Collage,” combines “Wayfarin’ Stranger,” “You’re No Good,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “See My Eyes” and ancient Gregorian chant. Another track mixes Rumi and Wordsworth. Alternating “When I Fall in Love” with lines from “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” doesn’t quite work, and “What a Wonderful World” with a chorus of “I love you, I love you, I love you,” is over the edge. But it’s creative, virtuosic fun. Director and arranger Craig Hella Johnson augments the choir with the perfect movie-music piano. Highlights include Sydney Carter’s “The First of My Lovers” and an arrangement of the oboe solo from “Enchanted April.”??? (M. K. G.)



R&B



Ginuwine “A Man’s Thoughts” (Asylum). On the day Michael Jackson died, Ginuwine— one of modern R&B’s silkiest crooners—appeared on Fox News and CNN to say farewell to the King of Pop and sing the praises of his influence. It seemed odd that this onetime Timbaland collaborator, so used to busily hyperactive beats and carnal rhapsodizing, would speak in Jackson’s gentle name. That is, until you listen to “A Man’s Thoughts.” Though there’s nothing in Gin’s sultry purr that is immediately reminiscent of Jackson’s tics or pitches, there is the tradition of elegant melody and lustrous harmony that MJ embodied from his earliest days at Motown to his last album. Ginuwine’s grown-’n’-sexy approach to music and lyrics now is about stewing and building slowly to climax on tracks such as the quietly storming “One Time for Love” and the epically simmering “Last Chance.” The confident sexuality is there, of course, but tempered by maturity. When he sings the crisply funky “Show Off,” Gin isn’t just looking to lust. He’s asking the ladies in the house to be proud of their bodies. And even when he haughtily reteams with Timbaland (and Missy Elliott) on the mesmerizing “Get Involved,” their provocative results are more nice than naughty. Michael would have been proud. ???(A. D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer)



Jazz



Edward Simon Trio with John Patitucci and Brian Blade, Poesia (CamJazz). Venezuelan pianist Simon is now 40. He says on this trio disc that as he matures, he is finding more poetry and more beauty in things “though sometimes I’m looking in the same old places.” When you hear the stunning beauty of the solo piano piece “My Love For You” that begins the disc (it ends with a reprise), you think you may have stumbled on an exalted artistic plateau for a pianist virtually unknown since Brad Mehldau. What follows in the trio selections— including a fanciful and decidedly odd fragmenting of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” that turns Coltrane’s original point upside down—is at times quite beautiful (“Roby,” the title tune) but not quite the exalted aesthetic trance you think it’s going to be. Still, this is a jazz pianist who is developing brilliantly and caught, on this disc, at a profoundly lyrical stage of development. ??? (J. S.)



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John Pondel, Self-titled (RGM). He’s a West Coast guitar player with a typical nonstar career, thus far—experience with some of the best known West Coast players from Art Pepper to the Candoli Brothers and Pete Christlieb, instruction from guitar lions (most notably Joe Pass), some acid jazz, fusion and teaching to pay the bills. And now here, he gets to fill an entire chamber jazz disc of his own with his own liquid sound in the company of bassist Scott Colley, reedman David Binney and drumer Marivaldo Dos Santos. It’s tempting to say that he’s a musician’s musician here rejoicing in the company of some other musicians’ musicians. Think Chico Hamilton ca. 1958. What it lacks in consequence, it more than makes up in art. ???(J. S.)



Pop



Maxwell, “BLACKsummers’night” (Columbia). You’d think feathery falsettoed soul man Maxwell, after waking up from an eight-year Rip Van Winkle absence, could reward his adoring fans’ patience with more than nine new songs, including one instrumental, the closing “Phoenix Rise.” That’ll be forgivable, though, if the newly Afro-less singer really does make good on his promise to follow up with two more albums in 2010 and 2011—allegedly to be titled “blackSUMMERS’night” and “blacksummers’NIGHT.” As for the Bsn at hand, it’s largely bedroom business as usual, and in Maxwell’s case that’s a good thing. As his delicate hit “Pretty Wings” demonstrates, he remains an Al Green-schooled boudoir singer par excellence, backed by a subtle and effective (and horn-fired) band skilled at reinforcing his pleas for forgiveness and suggestions that his paramour “prove it to me in the nude,” as he does at the start of “Bad Habits.” You might wish he’d quicken the pace every now and then, but at a time when hip-hop and R&B are ruled by robotic Auto-Tuned machismo, Maxwell’s deeply musical sensitivity is more than welcome back. ???(Dan De-Luca, Philadelphia Inquirer)