Artist: Joanna MacGregor
Album: Moondog - Sidewalk Dances
Genre: Modern Creative
Label: Sound Circus
Released: 2006
Quality: FLAC (tracks)
Tracklist:
- Single Foot 2:25
- Bumbo 3:56
- Sextet 2:20
- Dog Trot 4:08
- All Is Loneliness 1:24
- Voices Of Spring 2:53
- Rabbit Hop 2:56
- Invocation 5:27
- Reedroy 1:46
- Double Bass Duo 2:38
- Good For Goodie [Symphonique No.6] 2:34
- Bird's Lament 3:53
- Theme And Variations 3:30
- Heath On The Heather 4:08
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- Personnel:
- Bass – Neville Malcolm
- Conductor, Piano, Harpsichord – Joanna MacGregor
- Drums, Percussion – Seb Rochford
- Harpsichord – Joanna MacGregor
- Indian Flute – Shri Sriram
- Orchestra – Britten Sinfonia
- Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone – Andy Sheppard
- Tabla, Percussion, Vocals – Kuljit Bhamra
Even by the norms of a tradition largely defined by its great individualists, Louis Thomas Hardin (1916-99), who called himself Moondog, was a singular figure in American music. Blind from the age of 16, Moondog spent most of his adult life living rough and performing on the streets of New York, and using what little money he earned to have his scores copied and to make recordings. He knew the leading jazz musicians of the 1950s such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and he has been hailed as one of the precursors of minimalism, but in many ways his music, with its obsessive use of canon, belongs to a very different iconoclastic tradition, one closer to composers such as Carl Ruggles and Harry Partch.
Over the past few years, Joanna MacGregor has become a champion of Moondog's works, and her arrangements of his pieces for the Britten Sinfonia, with saxophonist Andy Sheppard and tabla-player Kuljit Bhamra, are an honest attempt to make the music available to a wider audience. But something has been lost in the process: MacGregor has removed the raw edge from Moondog's music, and some of the tautness, too; it all sounds rather comfortable, as if she's trying a bit too hard to please everyone.