PopWars

And now for something completely different.

And now for something completely different.

We have one Béla Bartók LP, actually a double LP, a European import, that we bought at the downtown library for a song when they thinned their collection. Bartók (1881–1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, photographer and pioneering ethnomusicologist—a man of science. In 1904 he heard an 18-year-old woman singing songs from her Transylvanian village, and his life’s goal was established. Bartók traveled to remote villages across Eastern Europe with an Edison phonograph and wax cylinders to record over 13,000 regional folk melodies. The folk songs greatly influenced his own work.

Pianist Lucian Ban left Transylvania at 30. He and the violist Mat Maneri performed “Transylvanian Dance,” improvisations on the songs Bartók collected, at the Bop Shop on Wednesday night. We found the performance as emotional and deeply human as Bartók’s recordings. Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri have recorded a few versions of Retracing Bartók—Reimagining the Béla Bartók Field Recordings for ECM Records, and this was the last stop on their recent tour.

Margaret Explosion is excited to announce our tenth full-length release, “Tone Poems.” Fourteen songs, all performed and recorded at the Little Theatre Café in the last year or so. The album features special guests: Phil Marshall on two tracks, Bernie Heveron on the closing song and Bennie Johnson playing Brazilian percussion on “Wiggle.” The album was mastered by the great Arpad Sekeres.

Tone Poems is available to stream everywhere now. There are also videos for four of the songs on the Tone Poems release page. Hope you get a chance to check it out or come to the official CD launch on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, at Little Theatre Café.

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Kids are lucky today. They have so much music at their fingertips. The musical trajectory is no longer linear, and algorithms and playlists lead them down all sorts of twisted paths of discovery.

Lately I’ve been snatching up jazz 45s anywhere I see them, stuff I would have dismissed back in the day, Miles from the ’50s and ’60s, Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver, Ike Quebec, Bud Powell, Lee Morgan. I wish Blue Note would re-release all the 45s they put out over the years.

The first jazz album I had was Charlie Mingus’s Town Hall Concert, and that was 1969, after a whole lot of pop and rock ‘n’ roll. That left me wide open for all those seventies Miles albums. Then backward to Coltrane’s albums from the sixties. Then Weather Report, Ornette Coleman, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Archie Shepp albums in real time, as they were being released. And through it all, any Sun Ra album I saw.

I am traveling backward with “Come Sunday.” I first came across it and immediately fell in love with it on Eric Dolphy’s Iron Man album. Dolphy performs the solemn piece on bass clarinet in a duet with Richard Davis’s bowed bass. I later learned it was a Duke Ellington piece, part of his Black, Brown and Beige suite. It was first performed in 1943 at Carnegie Hall and recorded the following year on RCA.

A few years ago I found an absolutely beautiful version on 45 by Johnny Hodges, who used to play sax in Ellington’s band. And only very recently did I learn that the Duke wrote lyrics for the song and recorded an almost a cappella version with Mahalia Jackson in 1958.

I looked for a seven-inch version of this song and found seven of them with picture sleeves for sale on Discogs for only seven euros! But they are all from the Netherlands, where the song was released on Philips in 1958, there would be shipping and duty on top. Why was this masterpiece never released on a 45 in the US?

Jack, who plays bass clarinet and guitar with Margaret Explosion, is unavailable on Wednesday, so Bernie Heveron will be joining us. Bernie played bass with Personal Effects back in the early eighties. And he played bass with Colorblind James for a few years in the mid-eighties. Margaret Explosion’s bass player, Ken Frank, took Bernie’s spot in Colorblind. And we are all still friends. This will be a fun gig.

Trompe opened their night at the Bop Shop with a Don Cherry song, something to do with elephants. Their lineup, two cellos and a family of trumpets, felt good on the ears. Cornet player Taylor Ho Bynum also performs with Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Wadada Leo Smith and Mary Halvorson. The cellists when both bowing could sweep you away but each played pizzicato with precision as they sculpted their improvisations. I was amazed at how they stayed in complete control and pulled out of their compositions like masters.

Their second song, “Blues for Democracy,” written by the cello player, Je4 Song was a woozy, off-kilter, almost drunken stroll through city streets. At least that’s where I was going with it. It perfectly captured the wobbly state of our democracy today. This was a free show and one of the best we’ve seen.

A few nights later we were in Abilene to see Wren Cove. They sounded great once we moved in front of most of the crowd and slid into a spot along the wall next to Phil and Ry Marshall. Abilene’s days are numbered as Danny has decided to give it a rest. It’s so comfortable here we stayed for the second and then part of the third band on the bill. All of Rochester is going to miss this place.

The neighbors decided to close the pool this weekend. Peggi and I have been on duty the last two weeks, making sure the bottom was vacuumed and there were no leaves on the surface. We took a final swim while Peggi’s bread was in the oven and waited for the alarm to sound.

We had tickets for Alarm Will Sound at the Eastman at 8 pm. The group was started twenty-five years ago at the Eastman by some of the same music students who started Ossia, the New Music group I’ve written about over the years in these pages. The students started Ossia, not the school, in order to perform pieces they wanted to perform, adventurous music that doesn’t fit in the classical or jazz categories, pieces by Morton Feldman or Steve Reich or even their own compositions, in Kilbourn Hall.

I prefer the minimal side of New Music. With twenty-two members, Alarm Will Sound leans mostly in the other direction, although they performed one absolutely beautiful solo piano piece last night. They have a fascination with Aphex Twin, and the group performed two of his pieces last night, both from their new CD. Alarm Will Sound won a 2026 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance, and their Grammy was under glass in the lobby.

These guys have been around. Tenor sax player Ricky Ford played with Ellington’s band, Charles Mingus, Dannie Richmond, Mal Waldron and Abdullah Ibrahim. Drummer Thurman Barker grew up in Chicago in the 1950s and was a charter member of the AACM, Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He has played with the Art Ensemble’s Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, and Henry Threadgill. Bassist Jerome Harris worked as a sideman to Sonny Rollins, Bobby Previte, Don Byron and Bill Frisell. Pianist John Kordalewski has played with Chico Freeman, Charlie Rouse, Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake.

So the Ricky Ford Quartet was fully equipped to pay tribute to John Coltrane last night at the Bop Shop. Except for one small concern. A pad had come off one of the valves on Ricky’s tenor sax. He looked very worried before the show, and the piano player asked if there was someone in town who could work on his sax. Peggi recommended Carl from Shuffle Music. Every horn player in this town goes to Carl.

Peggi gave Carl a call and put Ricky on the phone. Ricky put some super glue on the pad and made an appointment to see Carl in the morning at ten o’clock. Carl works out of his home now, and Peggi said she could hear Carl’s wife in the background telling him they would not be home on Saturday morning.

The gig went off without a hitch. The band roared through seven Coltrane songs and then two Wayne Shorter tunes and a gorgeous version of the Ellington song “Passion Flower.” I have a 45 of the song by Johnny Hodges that I love. This was something else.