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Prisma
I waited a few days to listen to Camila Meza’s PRISMA, the release of which she celebrated last week at the Kitano. The recording is more than representative of her great talent, exceeding my expectations, which were high to begin with. She has transported the ethereal vibe of her earlier work, which always seemed to…
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Por el agua de Granada
Before time overcomes the memory, I should say something about the presentation last Thursday by Lara Bello and Erik Kurimski of their new CD of folk songs collected by the Spanish poet García Lorca. What I knew going in was that Bello is the ideal interpreter of the material. I have heard her before in…
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Ana Moura
The title of Ana Moura’s new collection is DESFADO, and I take that to mean, without knowing Portuguese, that it is fado, but not, or fado but at an angle, askew; or perhaps it means to be taken by fado, touched by it as by madness, kidnapped by its pirate lilt and stirred by its…
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Iris Dement
I have changed since last I heard Iris Dement live, sometime in the late ‘90s soon after the release of what, until now, was her last album of original songs. She was for me in that decade the premier artist of that conglomeration of bluegrass, gospel, country, acoustic protest, blues, and anthemic individualism that we…
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Tangolandó
We all know, or think we know, what tango is, and TANGOLANDÓ, just out as a digital release, has some of the best tango singing by one of the best New York based Argentinian artists, Sofía Tosello. Fewer of us know what landó is: it is a driving Afro-Peruvian rhythm that is instantly recognizable once…
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Lara Bello
The Spanish singer Lara Bello is one of the more inventive artists I have encountered in New York. Her album Niña Pez was an amalgam of jazz, singer-songwriter folk, flamenco, alternative rock and Middle Eastern vocals. In the title figure she created a sort of alter ego for her own persona. Bello is a storyteller,…
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Tangolandó
I spent Thursday night at Terraza 7 Train Café, where, as this vertiginous view suggests, Tangolandó sent me reeling. It was not just the boldness of the sound, which backs tango, sung in its own time by Sofía Tosello, with the Afro-Peruvian rhythm known as landó, arranged by the guitarist and impresario of the project…
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Irène Jacob
The double life of Irène Jacob. Her performances in the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski are indelible in the modern cinema, and her grace and intelligence have persisted in the work – all too little of it – that I have been able to see since. I have known her only as an actress, so I…