Album Review: Bill Callahan and Bonnie “Prince” Billy- Blind Date Party

Freak-folk landed between opera and trap-latino in the personalized annual “top genres” notification Spotify sent me four weeks ago.  I certainly listened to gobs of Richard Wagner and Bad Bunny, but I don’t recall spending much time singing along with folk outsiders like Bill Callahan and Bonnie “Prince” Billy during the first 11 months of 2021.  

Things have changed.  Released December 10, Blind Date Party, a 90-minute compilation of covers overseen by the two Bills, is in heavy rotation at There Stands the Glass headquarters.  Abetted by an impressive slate of like-minded peers, the freak-folk luminaries reinterpret compositions by artists ranging from Billie Eilish (a loopy dressing-down of “Wish You Were Gay”) to Jerry Jeff Walker (an elegiac version of “I Love You”).

I miss my father, but I’m relieved he’s not around to hear the hilarious desecration of “O.D.’d in Denver,” one of his favorite Bocephus bangers. Alastair Roberts’ contributions make an interpretation of Dave Rich’s gospel song "I've Made Up My Mind" my favorite track. The bots at Spotify got it right after all.

We’ve Wandered Many a Weary Foot

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Even though this site has evolved into a personal music diary in recent years, I’m pleased people continue to monitor my musings.  Thanks for reading.  An audit of recent activity follows.

New episodes of the In My Headache podcast continue to appear intermittently.  My collaborator Aaron Rhodes and I discuss Tyler, The Creator, Willie Nelson and Harry Nilsson in the latest installment.

My friends at 90.9 The Bridge recently gave me a forum to share highlights from my many year-end music lists.  The episode should show up here soon.

There Stands the Glass may be an automonous endeavor but my Kansas City jazz blog Plastic Sax is a public service.  The journeyman guitarist Rod Fleeman is The Plastic Sax Person of the Year.

I participated in the The 2021 Jazz Critics Poll. The complete tally and my ballot are here. The sheer volume of titles- 510 of the approximately 6,000 jazz albums released this year received votes- is staggering.

Concert Review: Anthony Roth Constanzo at the Folly Theater

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Anthony Roth Costanzo censured himself at the Folly Theater on Saturday, December 18, after explaining that he and pianist Bryan Wagorn “met when we were nobodies.”  After surveying the largely empty house, the countertenor exclaimed “we’re still nobodies!”

In truth, Constanzo is one of the world’s biggest opera stars.  His celebrated turn in the title role of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten is among his prominent achievements.  Yet he attracted what appeared to be less than 300 people in his Kansas City debut.  

I took advantage of Midwestern indifference by purchasing a discounted front row seat to the concert on Cyber Monday.  Positioned just 20 feet from the unamplified countertenor, I considered reaching for the earplugs I always carry with me.  

The diminutive Costanzo applied startling heft to his piercing instrument.  He and Wagorn repeatedly paused during a gorgeous reading of a Hector Berlioz song cycle to permit echoes of Costanzo’s powerful voice in the piano’s soundboard to reverberate.

A revealing interpretation of George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” allowed me to hear the standard in an entirely new way.  A pair of compositions he recently commissioned in his position as the current Artist-In-Residence of The New York Philharmonic were no less engaging.

Costanzo admitted his feelings are hurt when he’s asked if he’d prefer to have a “real voice.”  He demonstrated his facility with voices of all types during a fascinating master class at Grant Recital Hall the next day.   Even in the unglamorous setting, Costanzo shone like a certifiable celebrity.

The Top Fifty Performances of 2021

Original image of J.D. Allen, Eric Revis and Nasheet Waits at the Blue Room by There Stands the Glass.

The pandemic nixed my annual resolution to attend 365 gigs per year. I began making up for lost time after receiving my second vaccination shot on April 27. I’m extremely pleased to have once again caught up with road warriors like Pat Metheny and Richard Thompson and to have finally made it to shows by notable artists including Marc Anthony and Renée Fleming. Aside from a delusional period of post-vaccination euphoria in May and June, I wore a mask throughout every performance.

1. J.D. Allen, Eric Revis and Nasheet Waits- Blue Room

My review.

2. Mary Lattimore- Lied Center

My review.

3. Pat Metheny- Orchestra Hall (Detroit)

My review.

4. Anthony Roth Constanzo- Folly Theater

My review.

5. St. Vincent- Grinder’s KC

My review.

6. Erykah Badu- Midland theater

My review.

7. Irreversible Entanglements- Stephens Lake Park Amphitheatre (Columbia, Missouri)

My review.

8. Marc Anthony- T-Mobile Arena

My review.

9. Bird Fleming and Bill Summers’ “Voyage of the Drum”- Dunbar Park

My review.

10. Rod Fleeman Trio- Green Lady Lounge (multiple shows)

Fleeman is Plastic Sax's 2021 Person of the Year.

11. José James at Old Church Concert Hall (Portland)

My review.

12. Oleta Adams with Isaac Cates & Ordained- Old Mission United Methodist Church

My review.

13. Te Deum- St. Mary's Episcopal Church

14. Asleep at the Wheel- Muriel Kauffman Theatre

My review.

15. Eddie Moore, Ryan J. Lee and Zach Morrow- Charlotte Street Foundation

My review.

16. The Kansas City Symphony’s Mobile Music Box- The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City

My review.

17. Thollem McDonas- 9th and State

My review.

18. UMKC Opera’s George Frideric Handel’s “Acis and Galatea”- White Recital Hall

My review.

19. Johnny Rawls- Gladstone Summertime Bluesfest

My review.

20. Jeff Kaiser, Kevin Cheli and Seth Davis- Charlotte Street Foundation

My review.

21. Mike Dillon and Nikki Glaspie- 1900 Building

My review.

22. Brentano Quartet- Lincoln Recital Hall (Portland)

My review.

23. Flooding- 7th Heaven

My review.

24. En Vogue- Hy-Vee Arena

My review.

25. Mary Gauthier- Knuckleheads

26. Joshua Bell and Alessio Bax- Helzberg Hall

My review.

27. Pistol Pete- recordBar

28. Second Nature Ensemble- Westport Coffee House

My review.

29. Dare- 7th Heaven

My Instagram clip.

30. The Kansas City Symphony’s “Coming to America”- Helzberg Hall

31. Renée Fleming- Helzberg Hall

32. Kyle Hutchins, Aaron Osborne, Seth Davis and Evan Verploegh- Charlotte Street Foundation

My review.

33. Guitar Elation- Green Lady Lounge (several shows)

34. Kansas Virtuosi- Yardley Hall

My review.

35. UMKC Conservatory’s “Jazz at the Playhouse”- University Playhouse

My Instagram clip.

36. Granger Smith- KC Live

37. Sentenced 2 Die- 7th Heaven

My Instagram clip.

38. Jackie Myers, Matt Hopper and Ben Tervort- Market at Meadowbrook

39. Summerfest Chamber Music Festival- Atonement Lutheran Church

My review.

40. Trinity Jazz Ensemble- Rolling Hills Presbyterian Church

My review.

41. Mike Stover- Campground

42. Richard Thompson- Folly Theater

My review.

43. Ben Tervort Quartet- Westport Coffeehouse

My Instagram clip.

44. Roman Alexander- KC Live

My review.

45. Béla Fleck- Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (Portland)

My review.

46. The Kansas City Chorale- Rolling Hills Presbyterian Church

47. Kian Byrne- Second Presbyterian Church

48. Everyday Strangers- Gem Theater

My instagram clip.

49. Lyric Opera of Kansas City- Meadowbrook Park

50. Paris Williams- Lemonade Park

There Stands the Glass also ranked the The Top 50 Songs of 2021 and The Top 50 Albums of 2021. Pat Metheny is this site’s Artist of the Year. Rod Fleeman is Plastic Sax’s Person of the Year. A list of There Stands the Glass’ top performances of 2020 is here.

Pat Metheny: There Stands the Glass’ Artist of the Year

I ranked Pat Metheny’s albums as one of my final pre-vaccination pandemic projects ten months ago.  Time-consuming and intensely rewarding, the process enhanced my appreciation of the iconic musician’s career and has informed everything I’ve listened to since.

Metheny added two albums to his voluminous discography in 2021.  The vital live recording Side-Eye NYC (V1.IV) documents a collaboration with the young innovator James Francies.  The elegant Road to the Sun dovetails with my burgeoning interest in classical music.  

I’d never given the crowd-pleasing guitarist John Pizzarelli much consideration. A quarantine-inspired solo guitar set of Metheny covers released in April changed my opinion.  The insightful Better Days Ahead is among the year’s most pleasant surprises.

Viewers of the new Listening to Kenny G documentary were reminded of Metheny’s disarming candor.  In a 2021 interview with In Kansas City magazine, he acknowledged an unpalatable truth about the limited scope of Kansas City’s jazz audience.

Asked why he hasn’t performed in Kansas City in nine years, the Lee’s Summit native said “Kansas City’s a really great sports town… the kind of, let’s say, intense listening that is found all over Europe, New York, LA, those kinds of places, for this kind of music has always been elusive for Kansas City musicians.”

The challenge is documented in Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s new book Beneath Missouri Skies. The illuminating account of Metheny’s teen years maintains that the current scarcity of support for jazz in the Kansas City area also bedeviled musicians in the 1960s and 1970s.

That’s why I timed a trip to Detroit to catch a date on Metheny’s tour with Francies and drummer Joe Dyson.  There may not be 1,000 people in Kansas City willing to pay $50 to hear Metheny, but I purchased a $75 ticket to join 1,500 appreciative fans at a concert hall on Woodward Avenue.

A rare combination of critical acclaim and commercial success makes Metheny a jazz unicorn.  And his particularly auspicious 2021 makes him There Stands the Glass’ Person of the Year.  Bad Bunny was the recipient of this site’s 2020 Person of the Year designation.

Album Review: Virgil Thomson- Complete Chamber Works

I vowed to become fully conversant in the life and work of Virgil Thomson after attending an ambitious concert dedicated to the Kansas City native at Helzberg Hall in 2011.  There just hasn’t been enough time.  There’s never enough time.  I read only 50 pages of Music Chronicles 1940-1954 when I borrowed the 1,177 page collection of Thomson’s music criticism from a library earlier this year.  Monadnock Music’s Complete Chamber Works, a 160-minute set billed as “the first recording of the complete chamber works by Pulitzer Prize winner Virgil Thomson on one album,” was released on December 3.  The inclusion of three “world premiere recordings” is also notable.  My woefully untrained ears hear Complete Chamber Works as a mixed bag.  Relatively conventional works including String Quartet No. 1 don’t move me.  Yet the release is sprinkled with ingratiatingly peculiar pieces such as “A Portrait of Georges Hugnet” that sound as if they could have been composed yesterday.  Further investigation would undoubtedly provide commensurate rewards.  Based on my pitiful track record, it’s unlikely to happen.

Concert Review: Mary Lattimore at the Lied Center

Original image of Walt McClements and Mary Lattimore by There Stands the Glass.

LAAND, the organization responsible for Mary Lattimore’s concert at the Lied Center in Lawrence on Saturday, December 12, got it wrong when it promoted the event as “a blissed out evening.”  Lattimore wields a harp, but her instrumental music has little to do with insipid New Age contrivances.  The sonic landscapes she created for an audience of about 125 conveyed an imperiled sense of beauty, like laments for a utopia destined to succumb to hostile combatants.

Walt McClements joined her on a couple selections.  The accordionist’s earlier solo outing sometimes sounded like an inebriated priest riffing on Johann Sebastian Bach on his church’s dusty pipe organ.  The rewarding showcase of innovative ambient music began with a pleasing set by Jackson Graham.  The vibraphonist resembled an anxious millennial version of Gary Burton.

Lattimore explained one composition was inspired by her concern that an astronaut’s extended space voyage would inevitably be followed by a comparatively tedious earth-bound existence.  I felt a similar form of melancholy as I left the stellar exhibition of (un)easy listening.  Spending two ethereally edgy hours with the music of Lattimore, McClements and Graham may make other sounds seem mundane.

Original image of Jackson Graham by There Stands the Glass.

Concert Review: Béla Fleck at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I’d almost forgotten about hippies.  Béla Fleck’s concert at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland on Tuesday, December 9, reacquainted me with the subculture.  The show was the first hippie-dominated event I’ve attended in at least 20 months.  

A funny smell permeated the air, many members of the audience of about 2,000 looked as if they were models at a sustainable clothing fashion show and yes, uninhibited noodle dancers frolicked in the balcony.

The stage production was almost nonexistent.  Far more significantly, the low volume was wholly inadequate for the cavernous room.  The speakers broadcasting the performance in the men’s room were louder than the sound field in the balcony.

The acoustic newgrass played by Fleck, guitarist Bryan Sutton, mandolinist Sam Bush, fiddler Stuart Duncan, dobroist Jerry Douglas and bassist Edgar Meyer was difficult to hear.  The maddening disappointment at the pricey concert was enough to transform peace-loving hippies into brick-hurling punks.

A Tough Pill to Swallow: The Top 50 Songs of 2021

Screenshot of Injury Reserve’s “Knees” video by There Stands the Glass.

My ranking of the fifty new songs I loved most in 2021 bears little resemblance to There Stands the Glass’ Top Albums of 2021 list.  The disparity is intentional.  A forthcoming accounting of the 50 best live performances I caught in 2021 will contain further deviations.  Injury Reserve’s disquieting “Knees” meant the most to me in recent months.  The rest of the songs are sequenced by personal preference with a bit of flexibility for optimal playlist appeal.  Here’s the Spotify playlist.

1. Injury Reserve- "Knees"

2. Coi Leray- "No More Parties"

3. J Balvin and Skrillex- “"In Da Ghetto"

4. Tokischa and Rosalía- "Linda"

5. Priya Ragu- "Lockdown"

6. Little Simz- "Rollin' Stone"

7. Cake Pop, Pritty, Aaron Carter and Ravenna Golden- "Satin Bedsheets"

8. The Streets- "Who's Got the Bag"

9. Celeste- "Tonight Tonight"

10. Billie Eilish- "Lost Cause"

11. Badbadnotgood- "City of Mirrors"

12. Chlöe- "Have Mercy"

13. Sir the Baptist featuring Anthony Hamilton- "Jesus in the Ghetto"

14. Rod Wave- "Tombstone"

15. Remi Wolf- “Anthony Kiedis”

16. Blackstarkids- "Juno"

17. Shannon & The Clams- "Year of the Spider"

18. Olivia Rodrigo- "Brutal"

19. Amyl and the Sniffers- "Freaks to the Front"

20. Willow featuring Cherry Glazerr- “¡Breakout!”

21. Elle King and Miranda Lambert- “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)”

22. Roman Alexander featuring Ashley Cooke- "Between You & Me"

23. Tinashe- "Bouncin'"

24. Megan Thee Stallion- "Thot Sh*t"

25. IDK with Swae Lee and Rico Nasty- "Keto"

26. Jungle- "No Rules"

27. Jana Rush- "Disturbed"

28. Nightmares on Wax- "Miami 80"

29. Earl Sweatshirt- "2010"

30. Slowthai featuring James Blake and Mount Kimbie- "Feel Away"

31. Pooh Shiesty featuring Gucci Mane- "Ugly"

32. Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar- "Family Ties"

33. Saweetie featuring Doja Cat- "Best Friend"

34. City Girls- "Scared"

35. Kevin Gates- "Plug Daughter 2"

36. Maxo Kream- “Cripstian”

37. Tony Allen and Danny Brown- "Deer in Headlights"

38. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss- "High and Lonesome"

39. Samantha Fish featuring Tech N9ne- "Loud"

40. Rauw Alejandro and Anitta- “Brazilera”

41. Céu - “Chega Mais”

42. Adele- "All Night Parking"

43. Cécile McLorin Salvant - "Ghost Song"

44. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis- “Albuquerque”

45. Willie Nelson- "Too Sick to Pray"

46. Brittney Spencer- "Sober & Skinny"

47. Lauren Alaina- "It Was Me"

48. Moby, Mark Lanegan and Kris Kristofferson- "The Lonely Night"

49. Loretta Lynn- “I Don’t Feel at Home Anymore”

50. Sarah Brand- "Red Dress"

Links to 16 previous year-end There Stands the Glass surveys begin here.

Concert Review: Brentano Quartet at Lincoln Recital Hall

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Brentano Quartet wasn’t my first choice on Friday night in Portland on December 4.  I’d been looking forward to finally catching Thievery Corporation. My hopes were dashed when the band’s concert at Roseland Theater sold out.  I made new plans when I learned that the program for Brentano Quartet’s recital at Lincoln Hall would begin with "Quietly Flowing Along" from John Cage’s Quartet in Four Parts.  The weirder the better for me.

Sure enough, a distinguished matron near the front row seat I claimed amid an audience of about 125 responded in horror to an interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s discordant Concertino for String Quartet that followed the opening salvo of Cage.  I almost fell out of my chair laughing to Dmitri Shostakovich’s devious "Polka". And Barbara Sukowa’s recorded recitations of Amy Lowell’s Stravinsky-inspired poems were enlightening.

I felt as if a light had been turned on in an unevolved chamber of my brain.  Experiencing the cheeky noise being created just eight feet away seemed to transport me into the consciousnesses of the late composers.  Unfortunately, the Carlo Gesualdo and Ludwig van Beethoven pieces that followed an intermission extinguished my metaphysical reveries.  I started thinking about Thievery Corporation just five minutes into an uninspiring version of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16.

Original image by There Stands the Glass.