Soundcheck

From the 2025 New York Guitar Festival, listen to a live set by the adventurous guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson along with drummer/composer Tomas Fujiwara, playing their original works. This show was recorded at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, as part of the New Sounds Live concert series, and was also a co-presentation of World Music Institute.  

Set list: 1. Fujiwara: June   2. Fujiwara: Nudgestorms   3. Halvorson: Folded Secret  4. Frisell: Untitled

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Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen and his trio, featuring new bassist Sigurd Hole and long-time collaborator, drummer Jarle Vespestad, combine together folk influences and church music for unhurried embraces of melody. Expressive and reflective, Gustavsen’s ‘Nordic blues’ slowly unfurls passages of delicate lyricism, with enough space for contemplation, and only the notes that are needed from all players in the trio.

On the 2018 release, The Other Side, the trio effortlessly injects old Norwegian lullabies and dance forms into original works, and develops haunting and riveting responses to both Scandinavian hymns and Bach Chorales. The Tord Gustavsen Trio joins us to play some of these compositions in-studio. (From the Archives, 2018) - Caryn Havlik

Set List: 1. The Tunnel 2. O Traurigkeit 3.Schlafes Bruder

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Adrian Quesada is probably best known as one of the two co-founders of the psychedelic soul band Black Pumas, but the guitarist and producer has also been part of Grupo Fantasma, Brownout and Ocote Soul Sounds.  Lately, he’s also been pursuing another musical project called  Boleros Psicodélicos, an homage to the phenomenon of balada music that blossomed throughout Latin America between the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Balada is “a refined collision of bossa nova smoothness, Beatlesque psychedelia and torrid boleropathos” which “used art-pop instrumentation (mostly strings and harpsichords)”, and “employed songs about heartbreak and longing as a means to transport the listener to an opulent, cinematic fantasy world”, (Bandcamp). Quesada has recently released the second volume of these modern takes on vintage Latin pop sounds, all featuring some of the leading voices in modern Latin alternative music. Quesada, his band, and guest artists -L.A. singer and producer Angélica Garcia, Grammy-winning Puerto Rican singer-songwriter iLe (Ileana Cabra), and violinist and vocalist Mireya Ramos (of the all-female Mariachi band Flor de Toloache) – all perform in-studio. 

Set list: 1. Tus Tormentas with Mireya Ramos 2. No Juego with Angelica Garcia 3. Mentiras con Cariño with iLe 

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The New York-based singer, songwriter, and producer Anand Wilder was a cofounder of the experimental indie band Yeasayer, and more recently has pursued a wide-ranging solo career.  His 2022 solo debut, I Don’t Know My Words, was a genuine solo project, with Anand playing everything himself. Now, though, Anand Wilder has a new record called Psychic Lessons, and it is very much a collaboration with two other musician/producers, Walter Fancourt and Jachary, both of whom join him to play new songs, in-studio. 

Set List: 1. Appointment in Samarra 2. Selkie Bride 3. Molly's Song 4. Bog People

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The singer Elisapie is an Inuk musician, filmmaker, advocate, and writer who has become a nationally-celebrated figure in Canada – her portrait appears on a postage stamp in that country’s Indigenous leaders series. Her latest album, Inuktitut, is notable for a couple of reasons: first, it’s sung in the language called Inuktitut, and second, it is an album of reworked songs by Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and more. Elisapie, in looking back to the songs of her youth, celebrates the resilience and joy of the Inuit people and the spirit of connection. She and her band play in-studio. 

Set list: 1. Uummati Attanarsimat (Heart of Glass) 2. Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven) 3. Arnaq

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Named after being mis-identified while returning a uHaul, the pop’n’roll band We Are Scientists has been making melancholic, nostalgic, and melodic songs, familiar and fun, for some 20 years. Since their debut album With Love And Squalor, they’ve wandered into the worlds of comedy and English soccer while continuing their own spin on indie rock with and without synths. Keith Murray and Chris Cain, on their latest, Qualifying Miles, return to a more direct, "band in a room" sound, reminiscent of the '90s guitar rock heroes of their youth with pedal boards aplenty and rock waltzes. We Are Scientists, with touring drummer, Keith Carne, plays in-studio. 

Set list: 1. Please Don't Say It 2. Dead Letters 3. What You Want Is Gone

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Eleanor Friedberger, best known as one half of the indie rock duo The Fiery Furnaces, has recently shifted her musical landscape, swapping out live instruments in favor of drum programming and synths for a sound that she can create mostly on her own. (Part of her desire to be more self-reliant, in the wake of the 2016 election.) On her 2018 record, Rebound, she channels the sound and energy of an experience at a very smoky 80’s goth disco in Athens where they do a “chicken dance.” Lyrical inspiration came to Friedberger from a biography about the poet Edna St Vincent Millay. Eleanor Friedberger brings these dark and smoky, yet groovy and poetic tunes to perform in-studio. (From the Archives)

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The duo of Rachael & Vilray turns the idea of "Everything old is new again" on its head – making new things that sound really old. Over the course of three albums they offer a contemporary take on tin pan alley, the great American songbook, and vintage small combo jazz.  The duo’s latest album is West of Broadway and it brings Rachael & Vilray back to our studio to play some of these new and knowing songs. 

Set list: 1. Forever Never Lasts 2. Is It Jim? 3. My Key to Gramercy Park

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New York based composer Cassie Wieland first unveiled her ambient songwriting project she calls Vines in 2023. Now she’s released a full LP under the name Vines – that record, called I’ll be here, is full of atmospheric, textural washes of sound and processed vocals that suggest a story rather than actually telling you one. The live version of Vines includes an unusually-constructed ensemble: Wieland on keyboards, synths, vocoder, and vocals, Adam Holmes on a Sensory Percussion Kit, and Adrianne Munden-Dixon on violin. Vines plays some of these inviting, cinematic song-scapes, in-studio.

Set list: 1. Evicted 2. Tired 3. I am my home

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Indianapolis-based group 81355 (pronounced ‘bless’) is a collaboration between the rapper/singers Oreo Jones and Sirius Blvck, and the lyricist/producer Sedcairn, and while they’re clearly rooted in hip hop, they’re not bound by it. On their impressive new album Bad Dogs, the band races through electropop, future soul, grunge, and avant-garde boom-bap, all the while designing a hazy and heavy Afrofuturist take on a live band augmented by electronics - supported by members of their "Naptown" underground music community. They play music from their latest, 'Bad Dogs', in-studio for the #SoundcheckPodcast.

Set list: 1. Heart of Stone 2. Guitar 3. Capstone

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