January 28th, 2016 The other day, while listening to KCRW’s weekday program, Morning Becomes Eclectic, I was listening to a new Coldplay song called “Major Minus”, a big and absorbing musical tapestry that you can get lost in. I also thought about the film premiere of the Electric Daisy Carnival on Hollywood Boulevard the other night, […]
music
Six Great Music Educators
November 12th, 2015 A good music teacher can infuse inspiration and instill a lifelong love of music. I couldn’t relate at all to my super straight, rigid piano teacher when I was seven or eight, plus there was simply no great music to be had in the Schnabel household, save for the 45 rpm 7″ […]
What I Learned From Oliver Sacks (1933–2015)
September 3rd, 2015 Author and neurologist, Oliver Sacks. (Photo by Adam Scourfield/ABC News) I was deeply saddened to learn that Oliver Sacks (b. 1933–2015) had succumbed to the cancer that he announced this past February. He was 82-years young. The sheer number of obituaries penned over the past few days remembering this gifted author and […]
The Otherworldly Voice of Soeur Marie Keyrouz
July 09, 2015 Soeur Marie Keyrouz You may remember Nuns Who Rock. I featured the big 1963 hit “Dominique,” sung by Soeur Sourire or ‘The Singing Nun,’ and then the Sicilian nun-rocker, Sister Cristina Scuccia. Now I’d like to spotlight a nun of another order: Soeur (or Sister) Marie Keyrouz, who has recorded numerous albums […]
Steve Jobs’ Hi-Fi System
April 9th, 2015 Young Steve Jobs at his Woodside, California, home, 1982. I’ve written about the late Apple founder Steve Jobs opting to listen to vinyl over mp3s and CDs at home, even after inventing devices like the iPhone and iPod, which have revolutionized the way the people now consume their music. I just started […]
Time Traveling with Music
February 26th, 2015 In just the past couple of weeks, here at ACEI, we have been suddenly blessed by a flow of credentials from individuals with degrees in music. Holders of these degrees are from all corners of the world and studied at conservatories and universities from Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Italy, South Korea, to Canada. […]
Rubén Blades’ “El Padre Antonio y Su Monaguillo Andrés”
February 12th, 2015 Grammy Award-winning Rubén Blades is a wonderfully gifted Panamanian poet and songwriter whose works often take on a political tinge. Raised in a progressive family, his grand-uncle was a revolutionary during the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. His mother was an actress, his father a musician, and the girls in his […]
Tinariwen, The Harpoonist and the Axe Murderer
November 13th, 2014 Tinariwen’s Emmaar (2014) Tinariwen, The Harpoonist and the Axe Murderer sounds like a gruesome scene from the Kel Tamashek uprising of 1963 in northern Mali that saw the death of messianic Tinarwen frontman Ibrahim Ag Alhabib’s parents when he was a small boy. But in fact, it’s actually the group’s playbill for […]
RIP: Maya Angelou
June 26th, 2014 Last month we lost the great Maya Angelou. Our guest blogger, Tom Schnabel, had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Angelou in 1995 when he hosted the radio show Cafe LA at KCRW, the public station housed at Santa Monica College. We’d like to share Tom’s recent blog about having Dr. Angelou as […]
Russian Rock: Then and Now
May 23rd, 2014 I was Music Director of KCRW and host of Morning Becomes Eclectic during the 1980s and we did regular programs featuring the latest in Soviet-era Russian pop and rock music. Back then, the Cold War was alive and well, with Reagan and Brezhnev regularly rattling their swords. Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny once […]