The News Review:
- The Queen of all media
- Dylan sideman Denny Freeman is worth the whole ticket
- Frankie Valli – Four Seasons – Music – New York Times
- Classical Music – Religious Composers – New York Times
The Queen of all media
Republican – MassLive.com – The Republican – MassLive.com – Sep 23, 2007
It’s just that nowshe’s singing distinctive interpretations of songsfirst popularized by the likes of Etta James Sarah VaughanRoberta Flack Phoebe Snow and others. She recently spoke about her career specifically the newdisc but also her upcoming tour her work in film herthoughts on society’s view of “acceptable”body types and much much more. Q: This is your second collection of jazz souland blues music. What inspired you to go into thisdirection? A: I think the fact that I just love thismusic. I grew up listening to a lot of different music and alot of jazz in my household. Y’know I sang before Ibecame a rapper. Even when I did begin to rap I alwaysincorporated singing into it because I just love melody.
Dylan sideman Denny Freeman is worth the whole ticket
Providence Journal – Sep 23, 2007
Freeman is a charter member of the Austin blues scene. The Vaughan brothers have known him as a friend a bandmate a roommate and mentor. Freeman lived a blues life for a long time playing music at night doing construction work during the day. When he first got to Austin in 1970 Freeman and his blues buddies from Dallas — Jimmie Vaughan Doyle Bramhall Paul Ray — played in a dive for a payday of beans and chicken wings. He has been playing with the Dylan band since March 2005. Freeman is all over Dylan’s latest record Modern Times which definitely tips its hat to the blues of Muddy Waters and Memphis Minnie on several cuts. He’s never overbearing though… ”Dylan’s live sets are very polished and professional you know but there’s a lot of room in them for Freeman to shine. Fans old and new are going to enjoy “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” often played as an encore on which Freeman and fellow guitarist Stu Kimball let loose on a wild slidy blues ride. Bitten by the music Freeman caught the blues at age 12 around the birth of rock ’n’ roll while living in East Dallas. It started innocently enough: He’d go to parties play spin the bottle with friends listen to 45s on the record player. lder kids began to expose him to do wop the Clovers the Drifters. “And at about that time Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Fats Domino started coming on the radio” Freeman said to me years ago. “I thought to myself ‘Wow.
Frankie Valli – Four Seasons – Music – New York Times
New York Times – Sep 23, 2007
While the 13 songs Mr. Valli chose to interpret from Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” to Ben E. King’s “Spanish Harlem” span the entire decade the album is really a tribute to the smartly produced soulful pop that defined the ’60s before psychedelia blues-rock and protest music began to dominate. The album’s models are recent collections by the likes of Barry Manilow and Rod Stewart which recast songs familiar to older listeners and were rewarded with healthy sales. Valli’s first album of new material in 15 years lends it a sense of occasion.
Classical Music – Religious Composers – New York Times
New York Times – Sep 23, 2007
Patrick’s Cathedral on Sept. 11 offered some patriotic music and a few dabs of the classics but everything else made me wonder whether I should be listening as a critic or as a Christian. A lot of liturgical music these days asks you to choose between the two. With its hand-clapping inspirational just-folks character how different this music is from a tradition that ran from plainchant through Josquin and Palestrina to… Musical audiences dwindle and age; church attendance in Europe has dropped precipitously; and evangelical and fundamentalist movements in once solidly Catholic Latin America are growing exponentially. Without the divide between audience member (parishioner) and artist (clergy) rock ‘n’ roll rhythm and blues and like species so involve listeners that the audience becomes an added instrument singing along or shouting approval. Religion in country churches is not about intransitive shows of respect but about energy bouncing back and forth. In a television interview not long ago the novelist Margaret Atwood gave as good a reason as any that a recognizably human touchable God so engages spiritual seekers. People are lonely she said. When they look out at the universe they don’t want to see rocks and gases; they want someone to talk to.