v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Anyone Who Doubted, Rebirth of Slavery Next

Andrew Server at The Atlantic:

Since taking office, Trump has rescinded decades-old orders ensuring equal opportunity in government contracts and vowed to purge DEI from the federal government, intending to lay off any federal worker whose job they associate with DEI. Yesterday evening, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q Brown, and replaced him with a lower ranking white official, a retired three-star Air Force officer named Dan Caine. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had previously attacked Brown as an unqualified diversity hire based on the fact that he is Black. Trump’s Department of Justice has implied that it will prosecute or sue companies that engage in diversity outreach. Elon Musk’s DOGE is attempting to purge federal workers “that protect employees’ civil rights and others that investigate complaints of employment discrimination in the federal workplace,” the Washington Post reported. Colleges and universities are being threatened with defunding for any programming related to DEI, which the free-speech organization PEN America has noted could include “everything from a panel on the Civil Rights Movement to a Lunar New Year celebration.”

Trump has also signed executive orders that threaten government funding for scientific research on inequality or on health issues that disproportionately affect nonwhite ethnic groups, and has imposed censorious gag orders that could block discussion of race or sex discrimination in American classrooms. During her confirmation hearing, Trump’s education-secretary nominee, Linda McMahon, said she did not know if schools could lose funding for teaching Black-history classes under the order. The legality of the order over K–12 curricula is unclear, but the chilling effects are real nonetheless.

Under the Trump administration, schools within the Department of Defense system that serve military families—American service members are disproportionately Black and Hispanic—have torn down pictures of Black historical figures and removed books from their libraries on subjects such as race and gender. This record, within a school system entirely under the administration’s control, offers an alarming preview—one in which a historical figure like Harriet Tubman is no longer a welcome subject in educational settings because she was a Black woman.

Alexander Von Schlippenbach + Aki Takase @ Cafe OTO, July 2024

Here is a recent concert available on YouTube of these great pianists playing duo. Inspiring to see them go so inventive at this stage of their lives.

Aki Takase & Alexander von Schlippenbach Interview February 26, 2024

An interview with two great avant garde pianists. Will be sharing some Globe Unity Orchestra photos from 1983 with von Schlippenbach on this blog which I recently digitized.

Susan Alcorn is Gone

 

Just heard the sudden news of innovator Susan Alcorn passing away via IG. She was born the same year that I was: 1953. So it's another reminder of the passing of time and people.  It's a surprise because I had seen her last year and as usual her music was exploratory and visited many areas standard music doesn't dare. Here is an obituary in Stereogum:

Susan Alcorn, the pioneering pedal steel player who steered the instrument in experimental, improvisational directions, has died. The High Zero Foundation, an experimental music organization and festival producer in Alcorn’s home base of Baltimore, announced the news on X this morning, sparking a flurry of tributes from Alcorn’s disciples and fellow experimental music icons.

Alcorn was born in Cleveland in 1953. She started playing guitar at age 12 and began experimenting with slide guitar as a teen after randomly meeting Muddy Waters; by adulthood she had switched to the pedal steel. She got her start playing in country bands in Houston in the early ’70s and began experimenting with the instrument in the ’80s, running it through a synthesizer to mimic the sound of other instruments and arranging John Coltrane’s “Naima” for pedal steel.

“I was doing country gigs and listening to Albert Ayler and people at the gigs would tell me I sounded different for some reason,” Alcorn told NPR in a 2020 feature about the experimental pedal steel scene. “When I got into Ornette Coleman, most of the musicians I knew in Houston didn’t want to play with me anymore because it was like I was out-of-tune or something.”

In 1990, Alcorn attended the first Deep Listening retreat organized by Pauline Oliveros, the accordionist and electronic music pioneer, who also lived in Houston. She credited her friendship with Oliveros with further expanding her understanding of what the pedal steel could do. Gradually, Alcorn built up a reputation as a one-of-a-kind visionary, one whose 2006 composition “And I Await The Resurrection Of The Pedal Steel Guitar” helped spark a renaissance surrounding the instrument.

In that NPR feature, Chuck Johnson, one of the pedal steel players who was profoundly influenced by Alcorn, said, “I don’t think you can overstate the importance of the fact that, when you ask who’s pushing the instrument forward, the answer is there are these two women — Susan Alcorn and Heather Leigh. More than any other instrument I know, the culture around [pedal steel] is so male dominated.” Alcorn collaborated with a staggering number of noteworthy musicians, including Oliveros, Jandek, Mary Halvorson, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Josephine Foster, and many more.

Tributes are pouring in today from other experimental titans like David Grubbs, Drew Daniel, and Wendy Eisenberg. Below, check out some of Alcorn’s music and read some of those tributes.

 

 

Sessa's Music

A concert by an upcoming Brazilian musician that i recently became aware of.

From San Juan

We just got back from two weeks in Puerto Rico with family and some bday celebrations and Cami. Just started editing the massive amount of material so here is some of the first images from my Sony and LR.

Copyright-Vallejo Nocturno 2025

Best Music of 2024 - Moan & Still House Plants

 

A strange posting since I found myself posting all the way back in 2009 without noticing the change until it was too late. Any way here are two non-jazz or classical that are making listenable rock, pop art music that has life and spontaneity. Something I see so little of in today's rock/pop scene. Still House Plants and Moin are different in terms of surface sound but there is a solid novelty into their distinct approach to "song" surrounded by noise. Here are some examples:

 

And here is Still House Plants with their more deliberative vocals. Pure poetry.

 

Eva Swiderski Bringing it on

In passing I heard Eva this evening for the first time on a guitarist album. Pretty quickly I understood there was something special. And in this video you can see what it is. Hopefully this young talent can bring her performance to the US.

Best Music of 2024 - Eric Chenaux Trio

 

It's reassuring to see artists who previously one had listed as an outstanding talent in a previous year return with another set of inspiring music, unlike but similar to the charms of the past. Eric Chenaux Trio has done this again in 2024 with his positive "Delights of My World". Here is what Haley Scott said about this release in The Quietus earlier this year:

Joined by fellow Canadian musicians Philippe Melanson on electric percussion (Bernice, Joseph Shabson, U.S. Girls) and longtime collaborator Ryan Driver on Wurlitzer organ, the trio expands the palette of Chenaux’s oddly welcoming strangeness with loose, wandering experimentations and open-ended structures, holding time in newfound ways. Often bleary-eyed, slow and sleepy, Delights of My Life is the audio equivalent of hitting the snooze button on your phone’s alarm clock as you slip back into a dream state, drifting into a world beyond temporal constraints where that precious thing – time – is immaterial, giving yourself permission to just be.

Best Music of 2024 - Patricia Brennan and Alan Braufman

 

 

This Mexican percussionist/vibraphonist, Patricia Brennan,  who now resides in Brooklyn has been putting out adventurous new music with other like-souls in the past 5 years. In 2024 she issued one of the best recordings of any music: Breaking Stretch. And she was also part of an Alan Braufman ensemble that explored new music from a more classically avantgarde jazz perspective. These are both "must listens" to get an idea of the future to come!

 

Here is an informative review of Alan Braufman's album from a YouTube site (BellasarioSonic) that provides intelligent analysis of Braufman's new "Infinite Love" album which has Patricia Brennan as one of the accompanists-there are some lovely shades of Ornette in the tunes and improvisation. And Brennan's contributions sparkle.