Steve Swallow and Christian Muthspiel Duet on “Simple Songs”
Top jazz bassist Steve Swallow and Austrian composer/trombonist and pianist Christian Muthspiel have teamed up for an album of duets.
While the pair have played together in the Christian Muthspiel 4, Simple Songs is their first as a duo. The pair eschew electronic effects on the record and let the songs develop in their own simple, yet refined way.
Muthispiel composed all but one of the tracks on the album, which is a cycle of duets. Swallow handles the low end throughout, while Muthspiel plays a variety of instruments, including trombone, piano, toy piano, e-piano and even recorder.
Simple Songs is available as an import CD.
Check out the track, “(F)all Blues” (this sample and others available via Christian Muthspiel’s website):
Simple Songs Track List:
- Pas de deux tranquille
- Monsieur Satie
- Viennese Marketplace
- Himmelblau
- Let My Children Waltz
- Lullaby for Moli
- (F)all Blues
- Mildred, Bim & Mohamed
- Mein! Yours?
- Is the Moon Still Blue?
- Hymn to Health
In 1996 Planet Hollywood decided Nashville, TN was a good place to open one of their behemoths. On the scene appeared such Hollywood investors as Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
One of the perks granted an investor in this sort of establishment is you get to play music in the place. So Bruce Willis got his band together and played a set of what the music writer for the local newspaper described as “some really bad, terrible, white-boy blues.”
That’s what comes to mind listening to this cut. Bad white-boy blues indeed.
Wayne R.