Pianist George Winston Dies at 73

Pianist George Winston has died at 73.

His family said Winston’s June 4 death came “quietly and painlessly … while asleep” after a “10-year battle” with various cancers.

“Throughout his cancer treatments, George continued to write and record new music, and he stayed true to his greatest passion: performing for live audiences while raising funds for Feeding America to help fight the national hunger crisis along with donating proceeds from each of his concerts to local food banks,” Winston’s family said.

Winston’s holiday concerts were a musical tradition, one that included stops in Minnesota nearly every year since 1981.

“Each December, George arrived … and allowed us all to slow down from the busiest season of the year to enjoy stillness, reflection and peace,” the Minnesota Orchestra said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with his family and the loved ones he leaves behind.”

Winston’s career spanned more than 50 years and 16 solo-piano albums. His most famous, Autumn and December, arrived in the early 1980s and were followed by tributes to Vince Guaraldi, the Doors and other artists.

His latest release, an EP titled Solo Piano Pieces for Spring, came out in February.

“May the great pianist George Winston rest in peace and love,” Todd Rundgren’s Spirit of Harmony Foundation said.

6/7/23

Virtual Party for Dylan’s 80th Planned

- “May Your Song Always be Sung” will raise money for the Human Needs Food Pantry of Montclair, N.J.

Bob Dylan turns 80 May 24 and the Outpost in the Burbs is throwing a virtual party and fundraiser.

Richard Thompson will be there.

Nils Lofgren, too.

Also, Willie Nile, Bettye LaVette, Robyn Hitchcock, Amy Helm, Bill Frisell, Emma Swift and others.

You’re also invited to “May Your Song Always be Sung,” where participating artists will perform Dylan compositions and raise funds for the Human Needs Food Pantry of Montclair, N.J. It airs at 8 p.m. Eastern, May 20 on the Outpost in the Burbs’ Facebook and YouTube pages with limited-time, on-demand streaming to follow.

Viewers can also support the performers - including Willie Nile, Low Cut Connie, Pete and Maura Kennedy, Jeffrey Gaines, Richard Barone, Lucy Kaplansky, James Maddock, Zara Phillips, Mary Lee Kortes and Dan Wilson - on their respective websites.

5/3/21

Rewind: Vince Guaraldi - Peanuts Portraits: The Classic Character Themes (2010)

Everyone wants to have a song written for them.* The Peanuts characters got them.

In 2010, Fantasy/Concord Records compiled some of those numbers to create Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts Portraits: The Classic Character Themes. The magic of the album is that although the songs are associated with animation and holidays, the music - jazz for kids for cartoons for adults - stands on its own 365 days a year and doesn’t need its titular characters to do so.

Portraits is bookended with the best-known song of them all - “Linus and Lucy” - one by Guaraldi, the other by George Winston, who also performs “Masked Marvel.”

In between are lesser-known, but no-less-beguiling aural sketches including the previously unreleased “Blue Charlie Brown,” “Joe Cool,” outfitted with whistles, and “Little Birdie,” the only non-instrumental among the 11 tracks.

Little birdie, why do you fly upside-down?/it’s amazing at the way you get around, it goes.

Besides Woodstock, “Peppermint Patty,” “Schroeder” and “Frieda (With the Naturally Curly Hair)” are among the Peanuts with their own personal soundtracks. Some are trio recordings; others feature electric piano, woodwinds and other sonic accoutrements. All thrive as they jump out of the television screen and in to the stereo.

Grade card: Vince Guaraldi - Peanuts Portraits: The Classic Character Themes - B+

* Unless Taylor Swift is doing the writing.

11/24/21

Ailing Shawn Colvin Drops out of Alabama Festival

Shawn Colvin dropped out of her May 18 appearance at Alabama’s Opelika Songwriters festival citing an unspecified illness.

“Regrettably, Shawn has come down ill and is unable to sing this weekend in Opelika,” said a statement on Colvin’s social media pages that said her spring touring partner, KT Tunstall, will still perform alongside “many more amazing artists.

“Shawn is home resting and we hope to see everyone at our tour dates this summer.”

Colvin is off the road until July 9, when she is scheduled to open for Lyle Lovett at Red Rocks.

5/17/24

“Becoming Led Zeppelin” to Hit Theaters

- No release date yet for film Jimmy Page calls “amazing”

The long-gestating film “Becoming Led Zeppelin” is inching closer to movie houses as Sony Pictures Classics obtained the rights to the Bernard MacMahon-directed film.

Rolling Stone magazine and other outlets reported the news.

There is no release date but Sony promises “a grand theatrical experience.”

An in-progress version premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. The forthcoming documentary has been upgraded with a new sonic mix; previously unseen material from the archives of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones; archival interviews with John Bonham; and performance footage dating to 1969.

“When I saw the early cut of the film .. it was amazing,” Page said of the Venice premiere. “The energy of the story and the power of the music is phenomenal.”

5/15/24

Yes, Former King Crimson Drummer Bill Bruford’s Genesis was 75 Years Ago

At 75, drummer Bill Bruford is already 15 years into retirement.

While musicians of Bruford’s caliber don’t tend to walk away voluntarily at the tender age of 60, Bruford is the exception. And with his resume, who could blame him?

Besides, he had good reason, as he told the Financial Times in 2022.

“You have to move so fast,” he said. “Suddenly there’s hip-hop. How did that get there and how can I contribute to it? How can the Billness get into this? Eventually, around the age of 60, I couldn’t hear in my ears any more how I could contribute.”

Born May 17, 1949, Bruford co-founded Yes in 1969, beginning the first of two stints with the group, plus membership in a spinoff. He left in 1972 to join King Crimson, beginning the first of three tenures with Robert Fripp’s musical troupe, in addition to work with a couple of Crimson side ProjeKcts.

In between all this, Bruford played in Roy Harper’s band and toured with Genesis while also forming groups of his own including Bruford, U.K. and Earthworks. Long considered one of the late-20th-century’s premier sticksmen, Bruford is a member of both the Modern Drummer and Rock and Roll halls of fame, the latter for his work with Yes.

5/17/24

Quarter Notes: Blurbs & Briefs from Sound Bites

- In this edition: “Austin City Limits;” KT Tunstall; Willie Nelson; & the TICKET Act

A BEACON FOR “ACL”’S TONY LICKONA: “Austin City Limits” executive producer Terry Lickona is the winner of PBS’ 2024 Beacon award.

“Terry is a legend,” PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement. “He has grown ‘Austin City Limits’ from a small regional showcase into the longest-running music series in television history.”

A NOVELLA FOR KT TUNSTALL: KT Tunstall is the recipient of the 58th Novella Award for Outstanding Song Collection, the Ivors Academy announced. Tunstall will receive the honor at a May 23 ceremony.

COOKING WITH WILLIE AND WEED: Willie and Annie Nelson will release a new cookbook, “Willie and Annie Nelson’s Cannabis Cookbook: Mouthwatering Recipes and the High-Flying Stories Behind Them,” on Nov. 12.

TICKET ACT PASSES THE HOUSE: The House of Representatives this week passed the Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing Act, NBC News reports. If passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden, the law would, among other things, require sellers to list full prices, including fees, up front.

5/17/24

Inaugural Darkstarathon is Long, But Not Particularly Strange or Trippy

Phil Lesh’s long-promised, inaugural “Darkstarathon” is long at 42 minutes, but not particularly strange or trippy.

It also does not resemble what Lesh described in November 2023 as a “‘Dark Star’ that pauses but never ends.”

As with his first “Terrapin Clubhouse Session,” the former Grateful Dead bassist was joined by guitarists Grahame Lesh and Daniel Donato; drummer John Molo; singer Nicki Bluhm and pianist Holly Bowling - the star instrumentalist in the bunch.

“It’s in everyone’s power to suggest a song, even if the song is not on the list,” the elder Lesh told his collaborators before they started off with a brief segment of the titular number.

“If we’re in a key and it gives you an idea for something … start playing.”

He’s taken at his word as someone later nudges the band toward “Here Comes Sunshine.” The musicians play a few bars before perhaps realizing they couldn’t pull off the vocals and moving on.

And to erase any doubt, the session ended with Grahame Lesh and Donato singing “When I Paint My Masterpiece” as a triple-time shuffle that worked neither musically nor vocally.

In between come versions of “Franklin’s Tower” (with Donato on vocals), the Dead’s 1970s arrangement of “Good Lovin’” (G. Lesh) and a Bluhm-sung “Morning Dew.”

5/17/24

Album Review: Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman with Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives - Sweetheart of the Rodeo 50th Anniversary - Live

Recruiting Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives to back them on their Sweetheart of the Rodeo 50th Anniversary tour wasn’t the only stroke of genius Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman had in 2019.

Once on stage, the former Byrds wisely bookended the 1969 LP - recorded with temporary Byrd Gram Parsons and widely considered to mark the birth of country-rock - with such songs as “My Back Pages,” “Wasn’t Born to Follow,” “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” and others and made no effort recreate the album. Instead, they played the songs as they would sound many decades down the pike and allowed Stuart & His Fab Supes to play like themselves.

As such, the band adds some extra country flavor to such songs as “Mr. Spaceman” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” while proving themselves proper psychedelic warriors on “Eight Miles High” and injecting a touch of rock ’n’ roll attitude to Sweetheart of the Rodeo tracks like “Nothing Was Delivered” and “You’re Still on My Mind.”

That’s not to say they bastardize the Sweetheart - because they don’t. But it is to say they present it in a purely in-the-moment fashion that’s captured beautifully on Sweetheart of the Rodeo 50th Anniversary - Live. As it goes, performing a landmark album such as Sweetheart when it’s a half-century in the rearview has no business working so well.

The audience goes fairly bonkers when the phantom album ends on “I am a Pilgrim” and their enthusiasm continues when the hybridized Super-Byrds launch brilliantly into “So You Want to be a Rock N Roll Star.”

McGuinn and Hillman emcee the show, telling short stories about the songs to present what McGuinn calls “the back pages” of Sweetheart, and allowing Stuart to take over the stage on “A Satisfied Mind.” The 25 songs fly by in 80 minutes providing a stupendous document to those who attended the tour and a robust you-screwed-up-buddy to those who did not.

Grade card: Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman with Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives - Sweetheart of the Rodeo 50th Anniversary - Live - A

5/16/24

EP Review: Ringo Starr - Crooked Boy

Linda Perry is the best thing to happen to Ringo Starr’s music in quite some time.

Perry wrote and produced the four songs that make up Starr’s Crooked Boy. And while it’s not big-“f” Fab, the EP represents Starr’s best studio collection of the 21st century.

I speak of love/I speak of peace/it’s what’s I believe and what I keep on fighting for … a sickly boy that found his own way, Starr, whose voice is displaying the creakiness and raspiness that comes with 83 years, sings on the biographical title track that closes the collection.

It opens with the first Starr song in ages that might be welcomed by a contemporary concert audience. “February Skies” is set to grinding guitars sounding from the 1990s as the weathered Starr evokes gritty optimism, singing:

Gonna stand up, rise above the rain/start a revolution in these dark days/find the missing pieces that are vacant to the eye/well, I’ve had enough of February skies

The midsection consists of the reggae-flecked “Adeline” and the 1980s-influenced “Gonna Need Someone.” These are Crooked Boy’s soft spots but would’ve been standout cuts on Starr’s recent releases.

Grade card: Ringo Starr - Crooked Boy - B-

5/15/24