March:April Newslett

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Ae n-t Te r Rt a i An m Ie nNt

WELCOME TO THE A-TRAIN NEWSLETTER! The A-Train newsletter is back in a new bimonthly format. With it comes several new releases, positive reviews and Top News

exciting live performances. Enjoy! •Sam Markus opens for Spring is upon us! As we shed our raincoats and winter jackets Cat Power at the Wiltern Theater, Los Angeles, Ca and check to see if we still fit in the shorts from last year, trading in the fog for flip-flops and dark clouds for double scoop cones, we are •Bloodkin performance at SXSW is noted on R.E.M.’s reminded of what a sunny day can do to the soul. web site With warm breezes comes that feeling of nostalgia for soundtracks of the new season, rolling down your windows and •Madeline Plays 2 showcases at SXSW and letting the neighborhood take a load-off to the tunes of your gets featured in Vioila! personal jukebox. To freshen up that collection, A-Train is very •New releases from happy to announce its new releases along with amazing Tuxedomoon and Radhika announcements of awards, show stoppers and tour dates. With a Miller

lineup this hot you can be sure to toss the earmuffs and mittens till •Tour dates from Chris next year! Standring, Peter White, Rick Braun, and Richard Elliot - The A-Train Staff

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NEWS & REVIEWS

All Together Now… "Totemic Flute Chants" made its Spearman, including the Double Trio with debut on the Billboard New Age Album Spearman and Ochs. Discerning editors and producers at chart last week, appearing at #23. Sales Up From Under, recorded on a Putumayo Records have included tracks increased an amazing 560% the week after European tour in 2004, is Core's (Ochs, from Crammed Disc’s Taraf de Haidouks and Kocani Orkestar Brass Band in their the awards and are holding steady this Amendola, and Robinson) second release, week while the record maintains its following The Neon Truth (Black Saint, ‘Gypsy Caravan’ collection. Another appearance on the chart at #25. 2002) and a fifth in the Out Trios Series, Eastern compilation, ‘Gypsy Groove’, released by Atavistic. The basic thrust features Balkan club legend Shantel, whose http://www.silverwave.com behind the unit, according to Ochs, is as a hit tracks and video from his latest album, vehicle for exploring the vocal tradition in ‘Disko Partizani’, have been sweeping Europe like wildfire! World Music Chris Standring ‘Love & African-American, Eastern European and Asian cultures, vis-à-vis the “cry” atop the Network has also just released ‘Think Paragraphs’ drum choir. The title track employs a Global: Native America’ containing Joanne Co-Author of the number one hit heavy, dual backbeat as Ochs digs in, Shenandoah from Silverwave Records, single ‘Better Times” from Rick Braun and along with R. Carlos Nakai, Radmilla panning his tenor voice in gutbucket honks Richard Elliott’s latest album, ‘R&R’, and pulpit-shaking shouts. Rarely does a Cody, Johnny Mike, Robert Tree Cody and which has stayed on the charts for 11 pair of drummers occupying a tight many more artists from Canyon records straight weeks, is simultaneously releasing rhythmic space behave so complementarily, http://www.crammed.be his newest album, ‘Love and Paragraphs’ in but Amendola and Robinson stir one http://www.silverwave.com both digital and physical formats on April another’s pots with rounded sashays and www.store.canyonrecords.com 22nd. His hit single, the title track from devilish accents. Ochs enters in a brief and the album, has reached number 10 in his 7 spare dialogue on sopranino with week stretch on the Radio and Records Robinson, exploring delicate patterns of Johnny Whitehorse Wins Smooth Jazz Chart, and has garnered tongue-speech before returning to raspy Grammy Award and Makes significant radio play. Watch the video for exhortation. Billboard Charts! the ‘Love and Paragraphs’ single on you But as much fire and brimstone might tube by clicking here: Silver Wave Records is pleased and come from the blues tradition, Sax & excited to announce that "Totemic Flute http://www.youtube.com Drumming Core isn’t all yawp. “Dragon Chants" by Johnny Whitehorse (aka Robert http://www.chrisstandring.com Fly” is a dusky, pastoral piece, its lilting and Mirabal) is the winner of the 2008 wispy subtones intermingling with distant Grammy Award for Best Native American Artist Feature: Larry Ochs tub patterns. The clicks and pinched phrases of the higher horn are in full view Music Album. Johnny Whitehorse is the “Up From Under” mystical character created by Robert on “X-10,” well-matched by percussive Known mostly for his work in the Mirabal to showcase his ethereal seesaws. The glossolalia Ochs employs on ROVA Saxophone Quartet, tenor and conceptual Native flute music. Totemic tenor become delicate minutiae of cadence sopranino saxophonist Larry Ochs Flute Chants features Native American and tone in between salvos of hot infinity. assembled Sax & Drumming Core in 2000, flute, keyboards, tribal drums and an array Up From Under presents a nuanced set of partnering his reeds with the drums of of world music instruments. This improvisations from the vocal-drum Scott Amendola and Donald Robinson, enchanting music interprets the spirit of tradition, a refining of the art which is as two other members of the Bay Area animals that have the power to guide us in much forward glance as homage. –Clifford improvising community. Amendola has our daily lives. Mirabal and co-producer Allen, All About Jazz recently upped his profile in Nels Cline’s Larry Mitchell were honored with the unit, while Robinson was a longtime http://freejazz.com prestigious award on Sunday, February 10 collaborator with saxophonist Glenn in Los Angeles.

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NEW RELEASES

Tuxedomoon - Vapor Trails computer programming. Knowing, witty, and politically astute global This new studio album continues a grooves for the chin-strokers as well as the hip-shakers. period of renewed artistic activity by the legendary cult band Tuxedomoon. “Throughout the CD, infections rhythms, carnival-style brass and Ever-present on Europe’s bubbling syncopated melodies conspire to get you dancing, or at least avant-garde scene, ‘Vapour Trails’ smiling. If you’re into world dance music or Brazilian electronica, was composed while being recorded DJ Dolores’ 1 Real should be right up your alley.” – Synthopia in a series of sessions between the Acropolis and the pilgrim road to the Eleusian fields in Athens. It finds the Think Of One - Camping members in top form, exploiting their mature vision and instrumental Shaabi skills to the full. They load their eclectic pallet with a wide and There's few bands anywhere quite surprising variety of styles and influences, and sing in the languages of like Antwerp's Think Of One. the many places they have lived or visited, not only in English, but in Throughout their career, they have Greek, Spanish, and languages of their own devising. The album's collaborated with artists as diverse as eight selections almost seem to be internally melting, everything from Afro-Brazilian percussionists and cool jazz brass to distant strings to bubbling rhythm boxes resulting in Inuit throat singers, but it’s to their the near equivalent of chiaroscuro, light and dark and more blended most frequent recording destination of into something new and distinct. Morocco that the troupe return for Kamping Shaabi, their eighth album. Named after a traditional form of Berber music and featuring a “The Avant-garde band still has a slightly wacky. striped-socks stellar cast of North African performers, the record blends different way about them, and they revel in their songs’ details…” - sounds and genres at a bewildering pace. Consistently inventive and REMIX – feb 2008 surprising, Kamping Shaabi retains certain elements, notably the “…art-school electro-pop and chilly chamber music flavored with vintage keyboards and Balkan-style brass section, which remain tart horns, brittle drum-machine beats… it falls apart quite present throughout, underpinning the experimentation going on all nicely”. – SPIN around. Sung in a dizzying mixture of Flemish, French, Arabic and “Tuxedomoon = Kings of making crazy-sounding pop music.” – English, the band's lyrics also intrigue, ranging from the seriously to Virginian Pilot the whimsical and absurd, and a catchy melody is never far away. You’d be well advised to stop what you’re doing and enjoy the party DJ Dolores - 1 Real should Think Of One's festival on wheels ever pull up in your town. One of the strangest records of the year so far, but also one of the best. How many Brazilian producers reference Marx, Engels, Sartre and Lou Reed in their sleeve notes? On “Camping Shaabi is not only catchy and flowing, but dynamic— his third album, the multiple talents each song is a unique and colorful episode within the band's travel of DJ Dolores come to full bloom, through the genre of shaabi.” – Riffin.com using elements of popular music from his native Brazilian Northeast, blended with dancefloor-friendly electronics, horns, and rock & dub influences. He's created exhilarating songs which are contagiously joyful, yet based on the observation of a grim political and social subtext. Inspiration for 1 Real (real being the Brazilian currency) was found in the bootleg CDRs sold in the streets of his hometown, Recife, containing cheaply-produced songs currently favoured by the underprivileged classes. Building on these new popular hybrids, DJ Dolores gives them a series of musical twists, based on traditional rhythms, beefed up by electric guitars, drum machines and lof-fi

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NEW RELEASES

Bossacucanova - Revisited with a healthy dose of experimental electronica and whacky bossa Classics beats and you're half way there. It's an album you will keep coming back to, time and again. There is so much here to keep anybody with a Straight from Ipanema, Rio de passion for that funky bossa groove eternally satisfied. Lilian's voice is Janeiro, comes an updated album of a revelation and the musical backdrops are continually exploring a smooth soulful themes recorded by myriad of sonic avenues. This band doesn't always go for the easy new and classic Bossa Nova stars. option and Outro Lado is all the better for it. …….Herald the flagship The songs were reconstructed by of the New Brazilian wave. -Phil Meadley, Wax (UK) three young Carioca DJ/Producers (Marcelo Da Lua, Alexandre Moreira and Marcio Menescal, son of original Bossa Nova master Roberto Menescal), who have absorbed all Radhika Miller - Collected the new sounds coming from the Northern Hemisphere (many of Works which are heavily influenced by Brazilian grooves), yet manage to Radhika Miller was born and raised keep their sound close to the essence of their Bossa roots. in San Francisco, the fifth of nine BossaCucaNova features classics artists from the original Bossa children. At age six, Radhika started invasion of the early 60's (Carlos Lyra, Wanda Sâ, Os Cariocas, her own piano lessons. By nine she Clàudia Telles, Silvio César and Roberto Menescal), as well as had discovered the works of younger singers Astrid and Cris Delano. At last, the first true Bossa Stravinsky and Bartok, whose modern remix project actually produced in Brazil! tones spoke to her in a language that sparked an early interest in composing. Her love of choral music led to Suba - Sao Paulo Confessions singing with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus where she met Always smooth and never bitter, Sao Louis Magor, the renowned conductor. Under his mentorship, she Paulo Confessions makes fusion look found an artistic model of pure tone that she emulates today in her easy, bringing together the sweet, flute playing. detached voice of Cibelle and a A desire to link the human voice with an instrument and to unite number of talented contributing imagination with the sounds and beauty of nature, has led her into the musicians. Orchestrated by Suba, one realm of what she calls "the singing flute", which combines her love of of Brasil’s leading producers, the nature and choral music with an emotional rendition of music rather album evokes a range of moods to than mere technical virtuosity. Hard pressed to find flute music describe the "humid, foggy and manic megalopolis" that is Sao Paulo, (outside of Bach) that spoke to her heart's calling, Ms. Miller began to Brazil. Tracks slide easily from percussive, rhythmic dance and transcribe soprano parts from sacred music scores, spirituals and looped jazz to dark, techno-laced beat-and-sample vehicles. Jazz choral works for her own performance on flute with harp, piano and becomes electronic, or perhaps electronic becomes jazz - and what's cello accompaniment and to create her own uplifting compositions. the difference, anyway? This remarkable, beautiful fusion of music Her twelve titles include her newly released Dancing Light, her that seeks the fresh exhalations of morning illustrates Suba's deft best selling Sunlit Reverie (over 150,000 sold), the holiday classic combination of bossa-flavored jazz, mellow electronica and nubian Blossoms in the Snow, the deeply relaxing Heaven, Gems of Grace, vocalists that transcends the classification "world music". – Pitchfork Arabesque, Here and Faraway, Origins, The Lark's Bride, Within the Magazine Wind, Lotus Love Call with soulful interpretations of music from the Renaissance through impressionism, including spirituals and folk songs as well as many of her own compositions and improvisations Zuco 103 - Outro Lado performed with incredibly talented players (David Darling, Edgar Zuco 103 are a three piece collective Meyer, Mike Marshall, Michelle Sell, John Stewart, Peter Rowan, comprised of Brazilian songstress Allaudin Mathieu, Louis Magor, Shira Kammen and Tony D'Anna). Lilian Vieira, Amsterdam drummer Radhika's other musical achievements include a Parent's Choice Stefan Kruger and German Best Children's Album award for Laughing Waters, her collection of keyboardist Stefan Schmid. Together tongue twisters, stories, sing-a-longs and dance tunes with blue grass they have recorded one of the most greats Edgar Meyer, Jerry Douglas, Mike Marshall, Peter Rowan and innovative albums you're likely to actor Fred Curchack. Radhika's music is also part of the best selling find this side of 2001. Think Brazilian compilation album Celtic Twilight on the Hearts of Space label.

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NEW RELEASES

Madeline - Kissing and Dancing/The Dead Bird Splits Buried Treasure: Teenaged Athens native Madeline Nate Nelson – Knobs Have Turned, Adams needed little more than her pronounced, ringing vocals and Random Acts: primitively rhythmic acoustic guitar when she broke onto the local "There's a quiet aching and weary warble in the soul- underground scene as a solo tinged vocals of this 19-year-old Athens, Ga., indie-pop performer in 2000. She briefly folkie, who combines elements of Pete Yorn, Counting fronted a dance-pop band called The Sugar Shakers, and easily defied Crows and Tracy Chapman." -Courtney Devores, Char- the conventions of girl-with-acoustic-guitar stereotypes, burning CD- lotte Observer (Charlotte NC). Nate Nelson is one of the Rs of her direct and folk-leaning songs and self-releasing the album first of a new generation of young musicians hailing from ‘Kissing & Dancing’ in 2002, followed by a handful of shorter releases Athens, Georgia that are writing, recording, producing, including ‘The Dead Bird Splits,’ one portion of a split EP, also and performing on a national level. The release of “Knobs released by Plan-It-X in 2003. Fans of female singer/songwriters will Have Turned” was highly anticipated by fans and the be happy to hear Madeline's debut, ‘Kissing and Dancing’. Definitely a step away from the normal material released by Plan-It-X. The media and it has gained some very high praise; “Nate sixteen songs on here come off as a cross between the Softies, Kimya Nelson made a quick leap to greatness…Nelson's distinct Dawson, and the Carter Family. It's not surprising to learn that enough to make it worthwhile to dwell on human emo- Madeline's roots are in the South, and it definitely comes across on this tions” (J.R. Taylor, Black & White), “Nate Nelson has album. Many songs are just her and her guitar, but various percussion, grown up into a multi-musical mastermind” (Jennifer some backing vocals (which is where the Softies reference comes in to Jackson, Red and Black), “…Nelson's songs are filled with play, and the occasional full band fill out the tunes to not make them passion, yet tempered enough by his own humility to feel so lonely. There are some heartfelt, honest ideas on this album and keep the singer/songwriter grounded." -Josh Spilker, Per- the breadth of the songs range from slow and sad to upbeat and happy. former Magazine. Nelson is already a standout in a town With sixteen tracks pushing fifty minutes of music, there's definitely full of music legends, showing that he is the future of an overwhelming amount of positives here and a lot for Madeline to use to build upon… -Flagpole Southern art and the future is now.

Coming Soon

•Various Artists - Come To Me Great Mystery: Native •Hector Zazou - Strings Of Sand American Healing Songs •Jazz Rosco - Rosco's Place 2 •Larry Ochs - Mirror World (5/1 release) •Bebel Gilberto Tanto Tempo •Chris Standring - Love and Paragraphs •Phunk Junkeez - Sex, Drugs and Rap n' Roll (4/22 release) •Phunk Junkeez - Rock It Science •Samuel Markus - The Only Ones •Dave Samuels and Dave Freeman - Double Image •Brian Dunning's - Puck Fair •Kasai All Stars -Congotronics 3 Also New Titles By… •Alla - Es Tiempo Koçani Orkestar •Lonely Drifter Karen - Grass is Singing Mahala Raï Banda •Roger Smith - Sittin' In Wadada Leo Smith

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TOUR INFO

R&R Date Venue City

3/28/08 Benaroya Hall Seattle, WA

4/3/08 Sheraton Ballroom Wyomissing, PA

4/4/08 Scottish Rite Cathedral West Redding, PA

4/18/08 House of Blues Atlantic City, NJ

For full tour dates, visit 4/19/08 So. Conn State University New Haven, CT http://www.rickbraun.com/ 4/20/08 Gulf Place Auditorium Santa Rosa Beach, FL

Jackiem Joyner Date Venue City

4/6/08 TBA Valencia, CA

4/26/08 TBA Orlando, FL

5/15/08 TBA Washington, DC

5/16/08 - 5/17/08 TBA Boston, MA

For full tour dates, visit 5/18/08 TBA Austin, TX http://www.jackiemjoyner.com/ 6/21/08 Jazz Trax Jaxx Fest Big Bear, CA

Chris Standring Date Venue City

3/25/08 Cinnamon Club Manchester, UK

3/27/08 - 3/29/08 Pizza Express Soho, London, UK

3/30/08 Churchills Southend, UK

4/23/08 TBA Reno, NV

For full tour dates, visit 4/24/08 TBA Los Angeles, CA http://www.chrisstandring.com/ 7/24/08 Broadway Plaza Walnut Creek, CA

Peter White Date Venue City

4/4/08 Bergen Arts Center Englewood, NJ

4/5/08 Scottish Rite Cathedral West Redding, PA

4/18/08 Celebrity Theater Phoenix, AZ

4/19/08 Rancho Las Palmas Resort Rancho Mirage, CA

For full tour dates, visit 4/20/08 Thorton Winery Temecula, CA http://www.peterwhite.com/ 4/28/08 - 5/4/08 Pizza Express Soho, London, UK

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