Steven Bernstein’s MTO and Catherine Russell convert Allen Toussaint’s R&B classic “Yes We Can” into a joyful, New Orleans jazz funeral parade.

While the energy of prior MTO records might be dialed back a bit, Steven Bernstein’s ‘Tinctures In Times’ is every bit as adventurous and emotionally weighty as before.

As a collection of children’s songs for grown-ups, ‘Business Is Bad’ would be terribly silly if it wasn’t so damned inconspicuously clever. Thankfully, it *is* clever, and marks the return of Karen Mantler after nearly a decade and a half off without skipping a beat.

For non-musicians, the creative process can be something of a mystery. The composer has all of that training about melody, harmony, scales, time signatures, and chord progressions — and out of that the musical ideas are born…somehow. The truth is that while the process can indeed be opaque (sometimes evenRead More