Portland, Oregon-based Pink Martini whisks listeners away on globetrotting musical journeys, singing in Armenian, Portuguese, Arabic, French & Xhosa, among many other languages - and that's just their latest record, Je Dis Oui!. Their founder, pianist Thomas Lauderdale, recently described the group this way: "If the United Nations had a house band in 1962, we aspire to be that band." The 'little orchestra'- some 12-members strong, takes over our studio. 

Soundcheck

Pink Martini's Exotic Musical Journey Continues (Archives)

The wonderfully twisted, self-possessed, wry, leather jacket-armored dark humored queen of the downtown night, Shilpa Ray, survived working the door at the Lower East Side / New York City bar Pianos. And she’s turned that harsh reality into an album of cutting commentary. On the 2017 record Door Girl, Shilpa Ray plays with throwback “girl group” sounds – except she’s got backing guy vocals and crisp production. Her songs are full of acerbic observations on desperate people, some quite personal - "Manhattanoid Creepazoids," "Revelations of a Stamp Monkey," and "Rockaway Blues"; the portraits are far from pretty, and definitely no longer glittering, with a blaze-of-lights-at-closing-time-feel delivered in her singular brassy croon and growl. Shilpa Ray joins us, (sans harmonium), in the studio to play some of these songs. (Archives, 2017.) 

Shilpa Ray Hand-Stamped The Nightlife And She's Stronger For It (Archives)

The musician, songwriter, and producer, Cate Le Bon, offers new music from her latest album, Pompeii, composed in the “uninterrupted vacuum,” of the current times –global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas. Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) on hazy, opulent, and sometimes sonically minimal songs, which are of the moment, playful, satirical, and surreal. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, when Cate Le Bon plays these new songs. - Caryn Havlik Set list: "Moderation", "French Boys", "Pompeii" Watch "Moderation":  Watch "French Boys": Watch "Pompeii":  This session was recorded in The Greene Space. Many thanks to their crew, and our Senior Concert Engineer, Ed Haber.

Unhinged and Opulent Pop Music by Cate Le Bon

FPA, aka Frances Priya Anczarski, the Minnesotan songwriter, producer, artist, and daydreamer, works with a slow and romantic beauty in her music. She loves the ellipsis of possibility, and on her 2021 release, Princess Wiko, fuses bedroom pop, folk traditions, spoken word, hip hop, and chamber orchestration (aided by producer/musician Andrew Broder, a mainstay of the 37d03d collective) for a melancholic, medieval-era princess on a journey of love and self-discovery. FPA performs a few of these songs remotely. - Caryn Havlik Set list: "Princess Wiko," "The Loved One" Watch "Princess Wiko": Watch "The Loved One": 

FPA's Chamber-Electronic Story of Princess Wiko

Shamir is a musician, songwriter, producer, painter, chef, actor, and filmmaker, and on his new album, Heterosexuality, uses the sounds of rock, R&B, and industrial synth - all within a pop framework - to challenge perceptions about gender and to explore his own queer identity. As he croons on his song “Cisgender” that “I don’t want to be a girl / I don’t want to be a man / I’m just existing on this god forsaken land /And you can take it or leave it / Or you can just stay back”, he reaches heights with his self-trained voice that one would expect of Swedish pop star Robyn. “Having multiple skills and talents in a world of side hustles and late stage capitalism,” Shamir has released a book of mixed media – essays about paintings he has made, But I’m a Painter (from his statement published on Pitchfork), also runs his own record label, and pursues gluten-free cooking. For this remote session, (recorded while on tour), Shamir performs intimate, stripped-down versions of his intense but catchy music in a live trio setting. - Caryn Havlik Watch "Nuclear": 

Shamir's Latest Indie Pop Skews Industrial Synth

Folk collective Spell Songs was born as a musical companion to the two books of meditations on nature by writer Robert MacFarlane and artist and naturalist Jackie Morris. The recordings are tender naturalist-chamber-folk spell-poems of wildness, beauty, loss, and hope, inspired by the creatures, art and language in The Lost Words and The Lost Spells books. Each spell is a summoning of sorts, conjuring an animal, bird, tree or flower - from Barn Owl to Red Fox, Oak to Bramble, Jay to Jackdaw - with which we share our lives and landscapes. The musicians wrote together on their “open plan” of musical ideas for Spell Songs II: Let The Light In, combining their guitar, harp, cello, keyboard, woodwind, kora, percussion and vocal harmonies. Spoken voice, whispers, accents, dialects, native languages, birdsong, the bark of foxes, the soft sound of a moth’s wing, the sound of a children’s climate strike; all increase the intimacy and power of the musical world conjured by Spell Songs II. Spell Songs performs excerpts from the new album; and Scottish singer Julie Fowlis and Senegalese-born kora virtuoso Seckou Keita chat about the project from London. - Caryn Havlik Set list: "Heron," "Daisy," "Thrift" Watch "Heron":  Watch "Daisy": Watch "Thrift": "Oak": "Bramble":

Spell Songs Works Magic to Reconnect To and Re-Wild Nature

British singer, producer, and composer Anna Meredith is a musical chameleon, fusing contemporary chamber with electronics and dance music on her record, Varmints. Actually, classical, rock, electronica, and minimalism are all part of Anna Meredith’s sonic palette, and in addition to a stint as composer in residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, she is also a singer/songwriter who leads her own unusually constructed band - wielding keys, laptop, bells, & clarinet alongside a band of musicians playing tuba, cello, drums and guitar. This creative and unusual band plays in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)  

Electronic Pop & Chamber Music By Anna Meredith (Archives)

The British singer/songwriter Laura Marling returns with a refined sixth record Semper Femina, whose Latin title implies a more gender-specific note. The album is a gripping collection of poetic takes on womanhood- complete with seductive and ravishing arrangements. Unexpected deployments of strings – all kinds - and electronics create graceful swooping textures to augment her poised and polished songs. Laura Marling and her band play some of these intimate literary musings in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)  

British Songwriter, Laura Marling, As Ever, Herself (Archives)

The London-based Vermont-born singer/fiddler/banjoist/guitarist and scion of a family of shape-note singers, Sam Amidon, has a reputation for having collected, re-imagined, and performed American traditional tunes or other folk music, in addition to collaborations with Kronos Quartet and composer Nico Muhly. In spring of 2017, Amidon released his first album of original music, which is an experiment in trying out the Appalachian music he loves, as well as "improvisation, beats, Don Cherry, Vermont, London." Sam Amidon joins us live to play songs from that record, The Following Mountain. (From the Archives, 2017.)  

Sam Amidon Experiments with Folk Music (Archives)

Songwriter Aimee Mann left her successful major label band Til Tuesday back in the early 1990's and never looked back. Her stunning recording resume includes classic songs from "Magnolia," include the Oscar-nominated "Save Me", as well as numerous records, released on her own label. Many of her slow, bruising, crafty, and catchy songs may shine with sadness on the outside, but as ever, they bristle with smart observations and intriguing perspectives. Aimee Mann and her trio play songs from her 2017 record, Mental Illness, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

Aimee Mann's Catchy, Dark, Smart & Thoughtful Songwriting (Archives)

Beirut-based indie-rock band Mashrou’ Leila tackles taboo topics - political corruption, same-sex love, religion (inter-religious marriage), and Middle Eastern feminism. Their catchy and danceable Arabic pop songs are full of guitars, drum machines, samples, violin and frontman Hamed Sinno’s sensual voice. In the years since they first formed in 2008, they’ve become both enormously popular and enormously controversial, even banned in some countries. Mashrou’ Leila’s 2015 record, Ibn el Leil - means ‘son of the night.’ They play music from it live in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.) 

Beirut-based Band Mashrou' Leila Courts Controversy (Archives)

The Mexican singer-songwriter and arranger Silvana Estrada offers poeticism and a fresh take on traditional folk music resulting in a deeply heartfelt and lyrical sound which may tug at the heartstrings. A multi-instrumentalist raised in a musical home in the mountain town of Veracruz, she plays the Venezuelan cuatro (a four-stringed guitar) in many of her songs. The tangled roots of her musical influences mix the folk stylings of son jarocho (from the Gulf Coast of Mexico), Portuguese fado, jazz torch songstresses, and the classical influence (she performed baroque choir music in her youth.) Silvana Estrada plays haunting songs of love and loss on the cuatro, as a preview of her new album, Marchita ("withered"), onstage at The Greene Space. - Caryn Havlik Set list: "Tristeza," "Marchita," "Te Guardo" Watch "Marchita": Watch "Tristeza": Watch "Te Guardo": 

Silvana Estrada Explores Love and Loss

Guitarist and singer Margaret Glaspy released her album Emotions and Math in 2016, and promptly found herself on a whole bunch of year-end lists of the best albums of the year, including those of the New York Times and NPR. It’s not hard to hear why – at times Glaspy snarls her way through love’s trials and travails, while her guitar snarls and thunders right along with her. At others, she offers something a little more subdued, even melancholy. Glaspy and her trio join us to play songs from Emotions and Math, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)  

Guitarist Margaret Glaspy Delivers Crunch & Thunder (Archives)

John Doe is a musician, actor, and author, and one of the founding fathers of the L.A. punk scene with his band X, which continues to this day. He has co-authored and collected first-hand accounts of L.A. punk experiences in the book, Under the Big Black Sun. John Doe has also done country and folk music with his other band The Knitters, and released ten solo albums. The last is called The Westerner, which came out in 2016, and John Doe returned to play some of his solo songs in-studio in 2017. (Archives.)

John Doe (Frontman of X): An L.A. Punk Plays Tough Folk (Archives)

The west coast-based sound-maker and experimenter Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith weaves melodic patterns and pulses, using various analogue synthesizers – like the rare EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer, a vintage Buchla modular synthesizer, earning her a fun title as a composer and producer – “synthesist.”  On Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's 2017 album, The Kid, she crafts a playfully strange expression of human awareness via these synthesized sound designs that falls neither in the pop world nor the avant/classical one. Synthesist, producer and composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith joins us in the studio to perform some of her recent creations. RIYL: the films of Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli, Suzanne Ciani, Joshua Light Show, Euclidean geometry, Anna Meredith, and s t a r g a z e.    

The Captivating Analog Synth Artistry of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (Archives)

Live performances and conversations in which artists talk about their work, their process, and themselves. Genre-blind but open-eared. Hosted by John Schaefer.

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