In this excerpt from the new episode of The Tonearm Podcast, trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas draws a direct line between Duke Ellington's sacred concerts and his own album 'Transcend', explaining why a record that feels like a summing up is also, for him, a departure. Check out the full…
Trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas discusses his album Transcend, the Jack Whitten retrospective that reshaped his thinking about raw material, and why Booker Little gave an entire generation of players permission to keep scrambling. ------------------ This week, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas. Douglas’s latest…
In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, Ora Cogan answers Lawrence Peryer's question about whether she ever imagined a life outside music — and while her answer is essentially no, she describes the kaleidoscopic work life that ran alongside it. Don't miss the full conversation on the latest episode of…
In this excerpt from The Tonearm Podcast, singer-songwriter Ora Cogan argues that protest should be understood not as individual heroism or "a badge of honor" but as collective responsibility: "It's about doing the dishes." Don't miss our latest episode: https://podcast.thetonearm.com/ora-cogan-hard-hearted-woman-is-how-you-survive/ #Shorts #OraCogan #ProtestSong #HardHeartedWoman #SacredBones #FolkMusic #IndieRock #TheTonearm #Podcast #ExperimentalMusic…
In this excerpt from the new episode of The Tonearm Podcast, singer-songwriter Ora Cogan describes how her plans for 'Hard Hearted Woman' collapsed the moment she started working and explains why she puts air quotes around the word "artist." Don't miss the full conversation: https://podcast.thetonearm.com/ora-cogan-hard-hearted-woman-is-how-you-survive/ #Shorts #OraCogan #ProtestSong #HardHeartedWoman #SacredBones…
Ora Cogan on the politics of 'Hard Hearted Woman,' the hollowing-out of folk tradition, and why her forties have been the best time of her life to be playing music. ------------------ Today, we’re putting The Tonearm’s needle on singer and songwriter Ora Cogan. Ora Cogan’s music pulls from folk, country,…
In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, Billy Polo describes the interpretive judgment calls that go into archival mastering — using the Dennis Brown unreleased sessions as an example of how you audition multiple versions to find which one best serves which format, always with the goal of recovering what…
In this excerpt from the new episode of The Tonearm Podcast, Billy Polo describes the moment he knew he was improving as an audio engineer — when Wharton Tiers stopped asking "why did you do that?" and started asking "how did it sound when you did that?" Listen to the…
In this excerpt from the new episode of The Tonearm Podcast, mastering and restoration engineer Billy Polo explains why reggae mixes built for sound systems often don't translate well to digital. Hear more of this fascinating conversation on The Tonearm Podcast: https://podcast.thetonearm.com/billy-polo-audio-engineer-as-archaeologist-vp-records-reggae/ #Shorts #BillyPolo #ReggaeHistory #VPRecords #TapeRestoration #MusicArchiving #DubMusic #AnalogRecording…
From the Black Ark tapes buried in Lee Perry's yard to unreleased Dennis Brown sessions, Billy Polo on the forensic pleasures and urgent stakes of reggae's analog archive. ------------------ Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Billy Polo, in-house audio and mastering engineer, at iconic Jamaican music label VP Records.…
In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, Stephen Emmer describes how Motörhead's crew plugged his keyboard into a full-blast speaker rig as a prank, triggering hearing damage that remained dormant for nearly two decades before surfacing as tinnitus and hearing loss. There's more on the latest episode of The Tonearm…
In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, Stephen Emmer explains how years in production music left him unable to compose without a brief, and how the decision to become "his own prompter" by improvising along to a cassette of Richard Burton reciting Yeats led to his foundational album 'Recitement'. Listen…
In this clip from the new episode of The Tonearm Podcast, Stephen Emmer explains how he ruled out a conventionally sentimental tribute to his late mother by rejecting what he calls "soppy sweet-tooth strings," channeling instead her genuine eclecticism as a ballet teacher who played Dave Brubeck and Jimi Hendrix…
The Dutch composer joins Lawrence Peryer to discuss 'Asymmetrical Dot,' the album shaped by his mother's death, a grandson's birth, and four decades of learning which clichés to reject. ------------------ Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Stephen Emmer, a Dutch composer and musician based in Amsterdam. Stephen came up…
In this excerpt from The Tonearm Podcast, author George Grella draws a distinction between 'minimalist music' and 'minimal music,' placing ambient music in the latter category as music that relies on sparse materials, and reserving the former for music that explicitly foregrounds its engagement with time. Hear more on the…
In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, author George Grella argues that doing something complex out of simple means is harder than doing something complicated, tracing the idea through the Schoenberg-Stravinsky split and forward to the work Glass and Reich were doing when they walked out of Juilliard. Hear more…
In this clip from the new episode of The Tonearm Podcast, author George Grella explains why the canonical grouping of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young under the same minimalist umbrella never sat right with him, and how the question led him toward a theory grounded…
George Grella joins the podcast to discuss his book 'Minimalist Music' and argue that the genre has nothing to do with sparse materials and everything to do with time. ------------------ Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on George Grella, one of the sharpest music critics working today. George is the…
In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, Meredith Bates traces her decision to call the album's pieces "Incantations" to a conviction that feminine intuition—the sense of cohesion, of the universe lining up—is a serious way of being in the world, one that improvised music, with its emphasis on deep listening,…
In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, violinist Meredith Bates connects 'the observer effect' to the experience of being a woman in society—the way quick judgment and labeling can alter a person's sense of self, just as the act of observation changes what is being observed in quantum mechanics. Don't…
In this excerpt from the new episode of The Tonearm Podcast, Meredith Bates describes her goal in the studio as shutting off what she calls her "thinky brain" and entering a flow state—not channeling music from another plane, she's careful to say, but following something that feels like it's coming…
On The Observer Effect, Canadian composer Meredith Bates builds long-form sound worlds from violin, electronics, and the sounds of the natural world — and finds that art, love, and politics are harder to separate than they appear. ------------------ Today we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Meredith Bates, a JUNO Award-winning…
In this excerpt from The Tonearm Podcast, Nick Fraser reflects on the relationship between his composed structures and the undetermined spaces within them, describing the moment a performance might "devolve" not as failure but as the dramatic engine of the music. Be sure not to miss the latest episode of…
In this clip from The Tonearm Podcast, Nick Fraser describes what makes saxophonist and composer Brodie West singular to him—not just as a close friend and inspiration, but as an artist whose music retains a folkloric, relational quality even when the rhythmic structures underneath it are genuinely complex. Listen in…