When he was 13, back in 1969, Jerry Douglas met his hero, Josh Graves, then the most acclaimed player of the Dobro resonator guitar in bluegrass music. Douglas, who now wears that mantle, himself, not just in bluegrass, but across all idioms, was at a summer camp, and Graves who…
Category: Features
It all happened in a flash. In 1964, aged 14, Emilio Castillo took up the tenor saxophone. Just four years later, when San Francisco was better known for turning hippy hair into flower-arrangements, he formed Tower of Power, the band that has remained a benchmark for super-funky soul for 51…
The great cellist Yo-Yo Ma has called Sandeep Das “a creator myths”, referring to the profundity of his tabla playing within Indian classical, orchestral and cross-cultural music (including with Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble). But he could also have been talking about Das’s capacity for dire-looking predicaments to become happy endings. When…