From David Lewis’ review of the Mode set in the All Music Guide:

“Many of the performances are downright amazing, for example Aki Takahashi’s mind-bending performance of the Sequenza IV for piano and Kelland Thomas’ smoky, soulful reading of Sequenza IXb for alto saxophone, just to mention a couple.”

Read the complete review here.

I did an interesting gig yesterday: I played at Harrah’s Ak-Chin Casino resort (near Casa Grande, AZ) backing up The Dixie Cups.

What? You’ve never heard of the Dixie Cups? I hadn’t either. But if you live in the Western Hemisphere (or have seen Steve Martin’s “Father of the Bride”), there is a 99.9% chance that you have heard their biggest hit: “We’re going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married…” Yep, “Chapel of Love” was theirs, written by Phil Spector, recorded in 1964. Another factoid that I didn’t know until yesterday was that they wrote and recorded the song “Iko Iko”, which I first heard on the soundtrack of that 80’s film classic Rainman. That song has been covered by - well, everyone, even Cyndi Lauper! But they did it first.

The Dixie Cups are from New Orleans, and they did some of the classic N.O. tunes, including “Bourbon St. Parade”, “When The Saints”,”New Orleans Ladies”, and others. But there were some sad reminders of what Katrina did last summer: The bass player and musical director recounted that his house was in 10 feet of water for three weeks, and he lost all of his musical equipment and instruments. Also, some of their original charts and classic arrangements were lost in the disaster. At one point in the rehearsal, one of the Cups turned around and sang the missing horn line, and I had to pick it up and play it from memory. Music students, keep paying attention in ear training! It will come in handy.

Ann Midgette wrote about the release of the Mode collection of Berio’s Sequenzas, along with the recent Naxos set, in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times.

It felt like Christmas today - I walked into the office and received a package from Mode Records containing my copies of The Complete Sequenzas, Alternate Sequenzas, and Solo Works by Luciano Berio. I recorded Sequenza IXb for Alto Saxophone back in 1997, so this project has been a long time coming. I am so excited to finally hold the finished product in my hands, especially since so much time had elapsed that I had all but given up on it. The packaging is wonderful, with a nice 104-page booklet with good notes by Sabine Feisst. It really is a slick 4-CD package - I love it! Brian Brandt made the interesting decision to preface each Sequenza performance with the verse written for the work by the poet Edoardo Sanguineti, a longtime collaborator of Berio’s. This is a nice touch, since Berio suggested that each verse could be spoken by the performer prior to performing the work live.

I was privileged to travel to Milan as a graduate student in order to work with Mr. Berio on the Sequenza IXb, which resulted in my recording for Mode. Playing for Berio was one of the most memorable experiences of my life, and I was amazed at how well he could recall the tiniest details of the piece (which he had written 27 years earlier) without referring to the score. For a composer of such reputation, he was very kind and genial, and it was an unforgettable afternoon.

Icing on the cake - I went to put the music into iTunes, and I was the first to submit the set to the CDDB database! Geeky, I know, but I find that fun.

One of the great composers of the twentieth century passed away yesterday.