February 19, 2024

A solid show for Family Day 2024. Old stuff, new stuff, and a number of large ensemble performances. The top track, IMHO, was "Kind folk", written by Kenny Wheeler and performed by Kenny Wheeler, Lee Konitz, Dave Holland, and Bill Frisell, from the 1997 ECM album Angel song. I played a version of this song by Craig Brenan and Florian Ross a few weeks back and thought I would contrast that with the original (I think this is the first recording of "Kind folk"). I've played this before on BTT a couple of times but it's so good, it deserves another airing. Here's the link to the full show: shorturl.at/kpqDP

Breaking The Tethers for February comes to an end next week, Monday, February 26. Join me for this last show of the month that day from 10 to 11 am MT at cjsw.com or 90.9 FM.

Looking at the two weeks after that, I'll be away for the Monday, March 4 program. Steve Russell will be guest-hosting in my place. After that, on Monday, March 11, I'll be interviewing Canadian musician Will Regnier, who has a new album out, Traces.

Thanks.

Andrew

February 15, 2024 - Alternative To What?

As happens a few times a year, I was blessed with the chance this week to guest-host the long-running CJSW program Alternative To What? The regular host, Kerry Clarke, was unable to host this week so she very kindly deputized me in her stead. Many thanks to Kerry!

Music-wise, when I host ATW, I tend to go a little crazy. Sometimes I go a lot crazy. Maybe I did that this week. There certainly was a GREAT DEAL of variation, starting with the Fat Elvis Zeppelin reggae of Dread Zeppelin to the weirdo keyboard glitches of Xenopraxis. In-between, among other things, we had Revolution 9 gone chipmunk, lots of vibes, a few avant jazz tracks, a 38 second song by Yes, Nigerian rock, and much more. Feed it all to your brain here.

Thanks.

Andrew

February 12, 2024

As with last week’s BTT episode, most of the tunes here are newly-released or re-released, with a couple of older selections added for good measure. What was my favourite song from the tracks today? Probably the first one played, “Chin miau” by Yusef Lateef from his influential 1961 album, Eastern sounds (this was the reissue). Fun song of the day: “Coop’s condiments” by Jennifer Wharton’s Bonegasm, which is a song (with vocals) about the condiments in a restaurant (seriously). It’s all here.

The penultimate episode of Breaking The Tethers this month is next week, February 19 is the day. 10 to 11 am MT is the time. CJSW 90.9 FM or cjsw.com is the station.

Thanks

Andrew

February 5, 2024

A lot of new jazz came into the station in the week or two preceding this edition of Breaking The Tethers. Accordingly, I featured a lot of this stuff in the show; all of this was good. I also put in a couple of older tunes, “I’ve been to many places” by Matthew Shipp, one of my faves, and “Sciatica” by the Kyle Brenders Quintet, an interesting track from an album that I had largely forgot about; I’m glad I played it. You can listen to the show here. 

Thanks.

Andrew

July 24, 2023

Nine is the number when it comes to Breaking The Tethers. Unless I play a bunch of short tunes and I don’t play anything very long, I end up featuring nine songs on the show. This is what happened this week (and on many other weeks). A few tracks to point out from this week’s nine:

“Trip merchant” by Larry Young. Organ jazz starting to head outside, just before Young became Khalid of Space.

“Fell to earth” by Soft Machine. This might be the best cut from this long-running group’s latest studio album, Other doors.

“Outeroids” by Alan Shorter. Free jazz from Wayne Shorter’s trumpet and flugelhorn playing brother.

You can listen to the nine at shorturl.at/atyF4

Thanks.

Andrew 

June 12, 2023

Lots of songs played this week, from many points on the musical map. I described this show on the CJSW page as “Groovy 70s jazz and strong and weirdness and more!” Sometimes my words don’t fit, sometimes they do and this is one of those situations. Listen to this program here. 

Thanks.

Andrew

June 5, 2023

Looking at the track list, quite simply, some great stuff was played this week. Let’s look at a few of these:

“As falls Wichita, so fall Wichita Falls” by Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays. The sprawling title track from a great album. Is it art-prog-jazz? Pick your words; it’s an amazing trip.

“Love song” by Tony Williams. Always a tremedously interesting drummer to listen to. This is from one of his two Blue Note albums before starting the early jazz-rock band Lifetime.

“Tree-fun-doe-la” by Joe Henderson. One of my fave sax players. Any Joe Henderson is good Joe Henderson. 

Go here to listen to this show.

Thanks.

Andrew

May 29, 2023

Like the previous week’s program, this was a fine show. Simply, I really liked the tunes. There was more Soft Machine (I actually try to not play the same artist two weeks in a row but what the heck), an awesome Ahmad Jamal performance (partly on the electric piano, a somewhat rare thing), and some Marvin Gaye funkiness (“Right on!”). Dig it all at tinyurl.com/5c82tuhp. 

Thanks.

Andrew

May 22, 2023

Ooh, looking at the tracklist, this was a good show. It starts off with some Soft Machine (always a good thing to do!), from the live set that came out last year, the Dutch Lesson (apparently, there’s another Soft Machine live recording coming out in 2024); there’s another of my faves, Lee Morgan; a solo bass tune from Ksawery Wojcinski (which is GREAT); and some Muffins, a more recent fave of mine, from the 13 CD (!) collection, Baker’s Dozen. It’s well worth listening to; go to rb.gy/8mwhwa

Thanks.

Andrew

May 15, 2023

As you know, I’m catching up on un-posted Breaking The Tethers shows from 2023. For most of these programs, I’ve got a fair memory of what I played that day, beyond just what’s on the track list. With this show, though, I can’t really remember much about it; sorry about that. I do know what the Brad Mehldau and Bruce Cockburn songs sound like, generally speaking 😁. You can hear this edition of BTT here.

Thanks.

Andrew