June 5, 2023

More catching up, cleaning up the messes I made in 2023. Looking at the June 5 show from that year, some great music was played. Among others, I point you to the epic "As falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Fall" by Metheny and Mays, "Love song" by the always fantastic Tony Williams, and "Three days til Sunday" by the Muffins, an increasingly fave band of mine.  Listen to it all here.

Thanks.

Andrew

January 29, 2023

This week's Breaking The Tethers was made up of some newly-released material, some older items (though nothing from the 20th century, all more recent than that), plenty of Canadian stuff, and a fair amount of piano. My top tracks were "Pointsplaneslines" by Quentin Tolmieri, "Beach and car" by Josh Zubot Strings, and "Kind folk" by Craig Brenan and Florian Ross (though I prefer the version on Kenny Wheeler's 1995 ECM album, Angel song; Wheeler wrote the song; I think I'll play this version sometime soon on BTT). All these and more are worth listening to; go to rb.gy/ogsqjl.

Next week's BTT will be on Monday, February 5 (yes, February already), from 10 to 11 am MT, at cjsw.com or 90.9 FM. Good music will be played. Please tune in.

Thanks.

Andrew

May 8, 2023

This was a mostly-Canadian edition of Breaking The Tethers, which is never a bad thing. My fave track from this show was the groovy “Singularity” by the Victoria BC group Astrocolor (the rest of the record, Moonlighting: astrojazz, vol. 1, is great too). Go here to listen to a podcast of this program.

Thanks.

Andrew

May 1, 2023

Kind of a mellow show but still an interesting one. Heck, any program with Pharaoh Sanders and the Muffins on it is an interesting show, and a good one! Feed this thing to your ears here.

Thanks.

Andrew

December 25, 2023

Here's the link to the Christmas Day 2023 edition of Breaking The Tethers: rb.gy/4e4zg5. This was a fun show and a different one. Over the years, I've rarely had to do a show on Christmas Day so I've kept the the "Christmas" BTT shows on other days pretty light on the holiday element; a few Xmas songs here, a few there, some funny stuff, some serious stuff. As BTT fell smack dap on Christmas this year, I figured I would go whole hog holiday. Everything was Christmas, all the tracks. There was still jazz (e.g. "We wish you a funky Christmas" by Adam Shulman) but most of the tracks came from other genres (rock, funk, folk, comedy, sound collage, and more) and were, basically, crazy. Give the podcast a listen and join in the nuttiness!

Thanks.

Andrew

January 22, 2024

I've said it before but it's worth repeating: Some shows just go well. The music flows and falls together nicely. My banter is good. There are few, if any, butterfingers moments or technical issues. This week's program was one of those Goldilocks editions. I had a good feeling at the end of it.

Musically, the episode was dominated by two long(ish) sets. One set was relatively straight-ahead and had a notable amount of piano. The other was more from the outer rim of jazz. In addition to these, there was a soul-jazz number ("The underdown groove" by Russ Spiegel) and a UK free jazz number ("Too suchmuchness" by Elton Dean et al). Please give it all a listen here. 

Breaking The Tethers will return on the last Monday of January 2024, the 29th (yeah, we're there already!!). Join me from 10 to 11 am MT that day, at cjsw.com or 90.9 FM.

Thanks.

Andrew

January 15, 2024

There were only four tracks played in this episode of Breaking The Tethers, which might be an all-time low. There's a good reason; two of the tracks took up over half of the program and the other two weren't short either. A few notes on three of the pieces:

"Actions for free jazz orchestra" by Krzysztof Penderecki .This is the companion piece to the Don Cherry composition, "Humus: the life exploring force" (which I accidentally called "Humus: the life affirming force" on air, sorry) which I played on the Nov. 27 BTT show. Both appear on a record released in 1971, Actions. Both are crazy, in good ways.

"Sri Rama Ohnedaruth" by Alice Coltrane. I'm getting on an Alice Coltrane kick, which is always a good thing. Fantastic strings on this song. Spiritual jazz before there was Spiritual Jazz.

"Una New York" by Luther Thomas Human Arts Ensemble. More free jazz meets hard funk. I played the other track from this re-release from 1973, "Funky donkey", on January 1.

This was a great show, I think. You should give it a listen.

You should also tune into the next Breaking The Tethers show, which will be on Monday, January 22, 10 to 11 am MT, at cjsw.com or 90.9 FM. See you then and there!

Thanks.

Andrew

January 1, 2024

For this, the inaugural Breaking The Tethers show of 2024, I decided to present an "all-new" program. That is, everything played was newly-released or newly-re-released. I hadn't done a show like this in a very long time (maybe since 2022?) so January 1 seemed liked an appropriate date to bring back this format (for just one episode, for the time being). Plenty of good music was featured; my favourite was the free jazz meets hard funk of "Funky donkey" by the Luther Thomas Human Arts Ensemble (a re-release from 1973; I'm planning to play another track from this record on the January 15 BTT program). Here's the show in full: rb.gy/azqr5n

Thanks.

Andrew

January 8, 2023

Unlike the January 1 program, this second show of 2024 was not an "all-new" edition of BTT. But it wasn't far off, with only a couple of tracks, from the New York Art Quartet and John & David Sneider, not officially falling into the "new release" category (and the Sneider song still came from 2023). Overall, not a bad way to take a further step into a new year. You can listen to the show here. 

Thanks.

Andrew