Max Diez

On Monday, February 26th @ 2pm, David Harrington of Kronos Quartet, joins Velvet Einstein in the KALX studios to discuss 50 years of Kronos and share some of his favorite music.

Catch Baby Teeth’s recent conversation with singer-songwriter-guitarist, Clementine Creevy, of Cherry Glazerr on Wednesday, February 21st @ 8pm.  Listen in for a preview of what’s to come on February 29th when the band plays the August Hall in SF.

Creevy describes Cherry Glazerr’s ambitious new album, I Don’t Want You Anymore, as some of her most personal, raw music to date, a collection of songs that elaborate on this period of self-reckoning. It’s the first she’s produced since Cherry Glazerr’s garage rock debut, Haxel Princess, released nearly a decade ago when Creevy was a teenager.

Creevy sees I Don’t Want You Anymore as a “mature” album, moreso in reference to her personal growth than a reflection of the record, which in true Cherry Glazerr fashion is best described as Extremely Fun.

To make it, Creevy linked up with producer Yves Rothman, who’s best known for his work with Yves Tumor. “I knew I had to work with him,” she says. The collaboration began with a cover of Metallica’s “My Friend of Misery” and grew into this new record, which Creevy considers to be Cherry Glazerr, fully-actualized. “The songs on this one are songs I’ve dreamed of making.”

Tune in on Monday, February 19th @ 7pm, to hear Dokkaebi in conversation with Grammy-winning singer/songwriter, Corinne Bailey Rae.

On her latest album Black Rainbows, Corinne Bailey Rae trades in her subdued, heart-on-her-sleeve balladry for raucous, rebellious chanting as she tells the story of a savvy young woman who knows her way around the Big Apple.

Wide ranging in its themes, Black Rainbows’ subjects are drawn from encounters with objects in the Arts Bank, a curated collection of Black archives comprising books, sculpture, records, furniture and problematic objects from America’s past. From the rock hewn churches of Ethiopia to the journeys of Black Pioneers westward, from Miss New York Transit 1957 to how the sunset appears from Harriet Jacobs’ loophole.

Black Rainbows explores Black femininity, Spell Work, Inner Space/Outer Space, time collapse, ancestors and music as a vessel for transcendence.

“I knew when I walked through those doors that my life had changed forever,” says Bailey Rae. “Engaging with these archives and encountering Theaster Gates and his practice has changed how I think about myself as an artist and what the possibilities of my work can be. This music has come through seeing. Seeing has been like hearing, for me. While I was looking, songs/sounds appeared.”

Tune in on Monday, February 12th @ 7pm to hear Jack The Stripper’s recent interview with singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and founder, Sean Brennan, of the band London After Midnight.

London After Midnight (aka LAM) has retained and nurtured the political and socially aware element of the later punk scene that had virtually vanished from all music in the early 90s, and has become a passionate and socially outspoken dark rock-music project.

The band has a large worldwide following, with many rock, alternative, industrial, and gothic music fans. LAM shuns labels, however, saying that labels can limit an artist’s creative freedom and can also destructively divide audiences – some people can define themselves by the style of music they listen to and refuse to expand beyond that label, which can ultimately limit artists.

Brennan says “LAM is always evolving, trying something different and new, and I’m never content to be just another music project”. Often classified by the press as dark-wave, industrial, deathrock or gothic, LAM break all the “rules” of those scenes and create a unique and strong identity and sound, while rejecting any one label and embracing all music.

Brennan’s influences and musical passions are far ranging and varied. He takes pride in the fact that London After Midnight does not fit into any musical category but attracts fans across multiple genres. London After Midnight is simply London After Midnight, and that seems enough for LAM’s fans.

Join Velvet Einstein on Sunday, February 11th @ 12:30pm to hear his conversation with cellist, David Finckel, and pianist, Wu Han ahead of their performance later that same afternoon in Berkeley at Hertz Hall for Cal Performances.

Together, they will discuss the duo’s work as educators // champions of chamber music and how they have “rediscovered and reinvented” Beethoven’s cello sonatas.

Across decades and continents, the chamber music power couple of cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han has been plumbing the depths of Beethoven’s five spectacular cello sonatas, rediscovering and reinventing them through each probing and committed performance.

The works elevate musical interaction and communication to its highest level, and in some ways, the deeply collaborative repertoire mirrors the duo’s lives as dedicated artistic partners and co-artistic directors of Music@Menlo and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where vision, dedication, and creative chemistry have made them beloved by audiences on both coasts.

“Finckel and Han played with just the right combination of abandon and care, paying as much attention to the dramatic pauses as to the tumultuous cascades and swirling arpeggios” (San Francisco Classical Voice).