Word: tonal
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...singers worth investigating are Karen James and Jack Elliott. Karen James hails from Canada, and is recorded on Folkways. The title of the album is "Karen James" (oddly enough). Her voice has many of the piercing tonal qualities of Peggy Seeger and Jean Ritchie, and she sings some very fine versions of Old English (Child) ballads, together with some fair-to-middling satirical songs. Jack Elliott sings the songs of Woody Guthrie on a Prestige International release, of which the finest is "Pretty Boy Floyd." Unlike many singers of "songs of protest," Mr. Elliott can play the guitar...
...music called bop which arose in the mid-40's represented a radical enlargement of the tonal and rhythmic language of traditional jazz. Yet it became clear after a few years that bop had its own limitations, but it had developed certain specific conventions within which only the greatest improvisors could flourish. When these improvisors were not forthcoming, some, like Horace Silver, worked out partial solutions, but these were largely formal in nature...
...Davis performance, the voice does only half the job, and maybe less than that. His guitar becomes an animate creature, vital to the song. Unlike so many of the new style folk performers, Davis uses his guitar to provide more than a tonal background. Often the guitar will answer the voice or repeat the melody; sometimes Davis just starts singing a phrase and trails off, letting the guitar pick up the melody and finish it. This is done so skillfully (and perhaps in some cases unconsciously), that the listener hardly notices the change in instruments...
...Musica's augmented Motet Choir, a thirty-five member group including six countertenors and ten boy choristers from New York's Little Church Around the Corner. The instrumental section consisted of two sackbuts, a shawm and a cornetto. This ensemble produced a terribly impressive, almost ethereal range of tonal coloring that perfectly suited the spiritual splendor of the programme...
...like a tall tent will wave around us"). As might be expected of the two leading interpreters of French art songs, both readings are of first quality. Singher, at his peak, is marred only occasionally by an overexpressive wobble. Souzay's touch is lighter, his pace brisker, his tonal coloration less varied. But he somehow seems closer to the text's vernal moods...