John Shand Posts

October 26, 2017 / Album Reviews - Archive

RECLAMATION (Tzadik) 9/10 Neuroscientific research reveals that our music listening is most intense during the silences. Such information has not diverted Burning Ghosts from their primary mission to fill the known world with sound. The San Francisco band’s second album sees them move to John Zorn’s prestigious Tzadic label where…

October 22, 2017 / Concert Reviews - Archive

Foundry 616, October 4 9/10 Improvisation is always a dialogue, even when only one person is playing. The musician is in dialogue with the instrument, the composed material (if it exists), the room’s acoustics and the audience. If, as here, the instrument is a piano, further dialogue exists between left…

October 21, 2017 / Concert Reviews - Archive

Enmore Theatre, October 3 8/10 Buskers who migrate to the world stage tend retain the flair, immediacy and audience rapport that once arrested pedestrians. Old Crow Medicine Show hit the stage as a marching band singing Bob Dylan’s Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35, and it was so rambunctious…