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Soundcheck

WNYC, New York Public Radio, brings you Soundcheck, the arts and culture program hosted by John Schaefer, who engages guests and listeners in lively, inquisitive conversations with established and rising figures in New York City"s creative arts scene. Guests come from all disciplines, including pop, indie rock, jazz, urban, world and classical music, technology, cultural affairs, TV and film. Recent episodes have included features on Michael Jackson,Crosby Stills & Nash, the Assad Brothers, Rackett,

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All Episodes

36:01

Best of Soundcheck 2024, Part 2

Soundcheck ·

2024/12/30

Hear favorite live performances from the WNYC studios this year including Georgia singer, musician, and record label founder Lizz Wright; the soulful mambo of Cuban big band Orquesta Akokán; and the roots music for everyone performer - American singer-songwriter Fantastic Negrito. Also, Brooklyn-based Zelenaya with their Eastern European folk songs set to heavy metal; and the multi-reed instrumentalist Shabaka (Hutchings), with his trio of harp and percussion, and his arsenal of wood flutes. Best

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41:15

Best of Soundcheck 2024, Part 1

Soundcheck ·

2024/12/26

Hear favorite live performances from the WNYC studios this year including Mexico City-based cellist, producer, and singer Mabe Fratti; Norwegian punk cabaret sextet Kaizers Orchestra; and an intimate piano and a microphone version of the title track, "Lemons, Limes, and Orchids", from the latest record of the same name by Joan As Police Woman. Plus, Sinkane, aka Ahmed Gallab, the bandleader and songwriter who weaves the sounds of Afrobeat, disco, funk, and soul into his music for community and for

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35:42

Matt Wilson's Christmas Tree-O, In-Studio

Soundcheck ·

2024/12/23

New York-based drummer and educator Matt Wilson has performed with and/or played on many recordings by other musicians - Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Charlie Haden, Lee Konitz, among others - and leads ensembles of his own, but at this time of year, the thing he might be best known for is his Christmas Tree-O. And yes, he went there – putting a pun right in the band’s name. The trio, featuring multi-reed player Jeff Lederer and bassist Paul Sikivie, takes holiday tunes as a whimsical jumping off point

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33:12

An Original Score From yMusic, In-Studio

Soundcheck ·

2024/12/19

The band yMusic formed as a contemporary classical chamber music ensemble, but you’re more likely to have heard them playing with people like Paul Simon, Bruce Hornsby, Emily King, and John Legend. They’re also the sextet of choice for classical composers like Caroline Shaw and Missy Mazzoli. For 16 years they’ve been gleefully obscuring the line between classical and popular music, and their latest collaboration with choreographer Kyle Abraham, the new multimedia piece called “Dear Lord Make Me

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45:16

Musician, Artist, and Activist Samora Pinderhughes On...

Soundcheck ·

2024/12/16

Samora Pinderhughes is a singer, composer, filmmaker, and producer who has worked regularly with the rapper Common and scored several award-winning documentaries. His own works includes The Healing Project, a 10-year exploration of the prison system and the racism and violence that feeds it, which led to his official solo debut album Grief in 2022; and a new record, 8 years in the making, about love, grief, depression and forgiveness, called Venus Smiles Not In The House Of Tears. Pinderhughes was

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29:30

Nour Harkati Blends the Traditional and Modern in His...

Soundcheck ·

2024/12/12

Nour Harkati is a Tunisian musician and songwriter, now based here in New York City. His new album, Moulena, has just come out and it represents Harkati’s musical journey from North Africa to the US, featuring rhythms and instruments from traditional North African music blended with elements of Western pop and rock. The ancient Guembri used in trance music, combines with the gritty and modern sounds of guitar, electronics and drums, as Harkati and his band play in-studio. Set list: 1. Rahmen 2. Sidi

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32:17

Pom Pom Squad Blazes With Punk Attitude and...

Soundcheck ·

2024/12/05

Pom Pom Squad is the band led by singer and guitarist Mia Berrin; their debut album, Death of a Cheerleader, offered a gimlet-eyed, often ironic view of pop culture through a queer lens. Now Pom Pom Squad has released its sophomore LP called Mirror Starts Moving Without Me, full of punk attitude and blazing guitars, but also moments of intense vulnerability and reflection. The band plays in-studio. Set list: 1. Downhill 2. Messages 3. Everybody's Moving On

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26:24

Songwriter Laura Marling Muses on the Mystical,...

Soundcheck ·

2024/12/02

Grammy and Mercury Nominated and Brit award-winning songwriter Laura Marling has mapped out new musical territories, including chamber pop and electronics. Her latest record, Patterns in Repeat was written following the birth of her daughter in 2023 and contains lovely songs crafted with propulsive riffs in motion, augmented by string arrangements. The album itself is an intimate affair, recorded at home, often with Marling’s daughter in the room, and the songs look at how generations interact with

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36:33

Rodney Crowell Makes It Personal

Soundcheck ·

2024/11/28

Mulitple Grammy winning singer, songwriter and producer Rodney Crowell was one of the founders of the style that’s come to be known as alternative country. His career has been marked by notable collaborations, like the one with Emmylou Harris that brought Rodney to our ground floor performance venue The Green Space back in 2013. Now Rodney is back, with a new album called Close Ties, and it features collaborators like Sheryl Crow, and Rosanne Cash and John Paul White. The new album draws on folk,

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36:39

The Timeless Original West Georgia Blues of...

Soundcheck ·

2024/11/25

Jontavious Willis is a blues singer and guitarist from west Georgia, hence the title of his recent album, West Georgia Blues. He’s not even 30, but Willis has an old soul – he loves the blues musicians from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and when he writes his own songs they come from deep roots -and might easily be mistaken for music that could be nearly a century old. He has a soul singer’s croon, and an effortless sense of swing to his guitar playing; oh – and the wicked tunings and his slide playing

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37:10

Dorado Schmitt and Sons Bring the Hot Club Jazz...

Soundcheck ·

2024/11/18

In the 1930s the style known as "jazz manouche" took over France and soon spread around the world, led by musicians like the legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt and the violinist Stephane Grappelli. That hot swinging style, a combination of American jazz elements and more traditional Romani music, has endured for almost a century. Over the past four decades that has been in part because of Dorado Schmitt, the French musician who plays both the violin and the guitar. In what is now a family affair,

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36:47

Low Cut Connie Cheekily Serves Up Gritty RockenRoll,...

Soundcheck ·

2024/11/11

Philadelphia-based garage band Low Cut Connie is led by pianist, and songwriter Adam Weiner, who has been sexing up piano-based party rockenroll for quite some time. Along the way, critics anointed them with either or both the words “scuzz(ball)” and “sleaze”, later amplified by a Nashville local paper, who called them “Sultans of Sleaze” in a cover story. Their latest full-length, Art Dealers, celebrates hard at the intersection of sleazy and soulful, and “is all kink and no shame,” says Weiner in

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32:35

Danielia Cotton Brings a Little Bit of Country, and a...

Soundcheck ·

2024/11/07

Danielia Cotton is a singer, guitarist, cancer survivor and marathon runner. The sounds of classic country and soul are at the heart of Cotton’s music, although her last couple of releases have seen her incorporating everything from indie rock to blues to rap as well. Her latest EP is Charley’s Pride: A Tribute to Black Country Music, and it brings Danielia Cotton and her band to play new songs in-studio. Set list: 1. Good Day 2. Bring Out The Country in Me 3. Follow Me

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36:59

Nick Lowe's 'Second Act' As a Tender...

Soundcheck ·

2024/11/04

English singer, songwriter, and producer Nick Lowe came out of the so-called pub rock scene in the UK in the 70s, and made his mark as a producer (Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, The Pretenders, The Damned), had a "short-lived career as a pop star, and a lengthy term as a musicians’ musician", (Bandcamp.) But in his current ‘second act’ as a silver-haired, tender-hearted but sharp-tongued singer-songwriter, he’s released a new set of songs full of more "cool tunes" and rockabilly-inspired guitar

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36:29

Hermanos Gutiérrez: Two Guitars Are Enough, Live,...

Soundcheck ·

2024/10/24

Hermanos Gutierrez is a band formed of the brothers Alejandro and Estevan Gutiérrez, based in Switzerland, who make instrumental music that looks to mid-century Mexican popular song, draws on the sounds of 60s surf guitar and the nocturnal landscapes of ambient music. Their 2022 album, El Bueno Y El Malo (The Good & The Bad) was definitely a nod to the Ennio Morricone soundtracks for those old spaghetti westerns, like The Good The Bad & The Ugly . Their 2024 release Sonido Cósmico looks

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34:30

Loup Barrow's Otherworldly Music For Cristal Baschet,...

Soundcheck ·

2024/10/21

The Cristal Baschet is a very unique, rare, and delicate otherworldly-sounding glass organ comprised of 56 chromatically-tuned glass rods . Only a handful of musicians on this planet play the instrument professionally; one of them is Loup Barrow, a French musician and composer. Barrow has been a committed instrumentalist since first taking violin lessons at age 5; he’s also focused on drums, Moroccan percussion, steel pan, and the glass harp. He features the Cristal Baschet, with piano and

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40:45

Scottish Composer Erland Cooper's Naturally-Aged...

Soundcheck ·

2024/10/17

Scottish composer Erland Cooper writes ambient classical works that celebrate nature and create a strong sense of place. These days there are lots of musicians doing that sort of thing, but Cooper has gone all-in. His piece Carve The Runes and Be Content With Silence was composed and recorded in 2021, and then the only copy of the master tape was buried in the Scottish soil, to be recomposed, Cooper says, by the earth itself. There followed a kind of treasure hunt with Cooper leaving clues every

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36:06

Playful Trio Heavy MakeUp Makes Up Songs, In-Studio

Soundcheck ·

2024/10/14

The trio Heavy MakeUp uses voice, synths, drum machines, and brass to improvise songs on the spot. Together, the band is singer and songwriter Edie Brickell and brass & electronic musicians CJ Camerieri and Trever Hagen, who have created music as side-people, songwriters, and producers. They bring all of those skills to bear and play, creating songs as a collective, somehow "beautifully constructing metaphorical stories with concrete sections", in the moment, (Camerieri, in a Relix interview)

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33:51

Kaizers Orchestra's Unholy Punk Cabaret, Straight...

Soundcheck ·

2024/10/10

The Norwegian sextet Kaizers Orchestra combines rock, opera, Balkan music, and a kind of punk cabaret with character studies and heavy drinking to great effect. Many of their albums, and videos, are chapters in a Faust-like story, and though they sing in their local western dialect of Norwegian, somehow the sense of an unsettling narrative comes through. In 2013, they played at the Met Museum in what was billed as their first – and last- American performance. But this theatrical, indefinable band,

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41:42

My Brightest Diamond Fights For A Better Future In Song

Soundcheck ·

2024/10/07

My Brightest Diamond is the project led by singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and composer Shara Nova (formerly Worden), who has continued to weave her own way through pop, experimental and classical worlds. Her latest, Fight The Real Terror, strips things down to just Shara and her guitar, and is full of the raw emotion that erupted from her upon learning about Sinéad O'Connor's passing in 2023. Shara Nova plays some of these new My Brightest Diamond songs, in-studio, and wields an autoharp

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310 results

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