Coming Up on The New Edge
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by Ken Field / The New Edge
The New Edge features a cross-genre mix of creative instrumental music that does not always fit neatly into genre boxes.
For Show #905, airing on April 30th, 2024, we will hear work from the Jazz Defenders, a group led by UK pianist George Cooper. Their most recent release on the ITI Records label is “Memory in Motion”. We’ll listen to a great groove track called “Take a Minute” to kick off the show. From there, several pieces from the great woodwind player Shabaka Hutchings, here mostly on flute, but also on saxophone & clarinet. The release is “Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace”. The album features an amazing cast of musicians, including Jason Moran, Nasheet Waits, Brandee Younger, and harpist Charles Overton, who is based in the Boston area.
An early June release is scheduled for saxophonist Oded Tzur’s latest in ECM, “My Prophet”, with a great group of Nitai Hershkivits, Petros Klampanis, and Cyrano Almeida. We’ll listen to three tracks from this stunning album. And after that, another saxophonist, Nicole Glover, whose album on Savant Records is called “Nicole Glover Plays”. And indeed she does, with proficiency and passion. I’ve included a somewhat more sedate piece for this show: “The A-Side”.
We’ll move on from there to some exquisite work from pianist Noah Haidu in a trio setting with Buster WIlliams and Billy Hart. From the Sunnyside release “Standards II”, we’ll hear a beautiful interpretation of “Over the Rainbow”, followed by the lovely standard “Someone to Watch Over Me”. Canadian bassist Mike Downes closes this 3rd set of the program with two tracks from his self-released album “The Way In”.
Closing the program in our fourth set, we’ll hear from the Italian guitar/bass duo of Michele Fattori & Marcello Sebastiani, with the title track from their Edizioni Notami release “Gavagai”, followed by sound artist Kory Reeder piece “Duo” from his Full Spectrum album “If the Thought Evaportes. We’ll close with Chicago-based drummer Kabir Dalawari and his ensemble performing “Turbulence”, from “Last Call” on the Shifting Paradigm label. It’s my guess that this piece was very possibly inspired by a unnervingly bumpy flight!
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Categories: Featured Shows
Contemporary Korean art and fashion stand out in a new Museum of Fine Arts show
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by Bruce Sylvester / Troubadour
A few years ago in the wake of the Korean War, South Korea was known as a land of rubble and poverty. But not any more as it’s emerged as an epicenter of pop culture – music, dance, film, fashion. The Museum of Fine Arts is hosting Hallyu! The Korean Wave, whose 250 or so items show the nation’s move to flashy, fun modernity – often reflecting consumer culture’s globalization, but occasionally showing Korea’s forward-looking art incorporating elements of its cultural tradition, like an elaborate recently created suit of armor whose inspiration from bygone centuries may have been meant for show rather than function.
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is the first American stop for this show curated by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. We see photos, videos, fashion items, costumes, and even the recreation of a room in Oscar-winning Korean film Parasite, which, frankly, could have been set in this country just as well as in Korea. It’s a global world now, with K-pop music and dance cresting a wave of popularity. We see the pink suit jacket PSY wore in the video of his hit “Gangnam Style,” the first YouTube video ever to get a billion views.
For interactivity, we can learn K-pop dance steps.
Some of the photography deals with the Korean immigrant experience in America. Another shot features a huge array of pink consumer items. South Korea reportedly leads the world in cosmetics exports.
Maybe it’s realistic for one large exhibit to resemble a very high-end clothing store for well-heeled, adventuresome young people.
Sure, the show’s fun, and, in some ways, it’s social commentary. But mostly it’s fun. HALLYU! THE KOREAN WAVE is at the Museum of Fine Arts through July 28.
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Categories: review
Remembering Mateo Williams
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It is with a heavy heart we inform you that we lost a beloved member of the WMBR family. Mateo Williams passed away on June 19, 2021 due to complications from a rare form of throat cancer. He was 28 years old.
This week, WMBR DJ’s will be airing programs in memory of, and in tribute to Mateo. Please see our Special Events Calendar for the dates and times of these shows honoring Mateo.
Mateo was a DJ on the Late Risers Club from 2012-2016 (and the Cosmic Hearse, the Rude Show, and Better Off Dead). Mateo graduated from MIT in 2015 and was presently completing his PhD at Columbia University, studying Chemical Engineering. Mateo was applying physics, electrochemistry, and materials science to research concerning renewable energy production, storage, and sustainable development. He leaves behind his mother Penelope and his brothers Lucas and Marcos.
Mateo’s unreal amounts of passion and energy ran through everything he touched. He was a scholar, a punk, a musician, an activist, a devoted friend, and loving family member. He excelled in everything he touched, yet would never say no to a good party or a chance to be up to no good. We will miss him greatly.
A Gofundme has been set up to help his family with funeral expenses.
Categories: DJ's
Some downtime anticipated as we move to a new antenna site
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At this time, the WMBR community should be aware of a project we have been undertaking for the past few years: the relocation of our FM broadcast antenna on MIT’s campus.
WMBR has been a part of MIT since its early days as WMIT, then WTBS: we have always broadcasted from a location on campus. For the past 50 years, that location has been the Eastgate graduate student residence, MIT Building E55. As one of the tallest buildings at MIT, E55 was the perfect home to our 60’ tower atop the elevator machine room on the roof. As we have updated our transmission equipment and increased our radiated power, E55 has continued to serve us well. And in March of last year, we outfitted our transmitter room there with the necessary devices to broadcast fully remotely, 24/7.
But in early 2016, MIT’s ambitious plans to rebuild its properties in Kendall Square were released for public approval, including the removal of E55 to make way for a lower-profile new building. Also in the plans was the construction of a new high-rise, Site 4, which would replace E55 as (among other things) housing for married graduate students. WMBR immediately engaged with MIT leadership to ensure this building would also be the new home for WMBR’s antenna. MIT agreed, as the move was fitting, and the new building would be even taller than E55, allowing us to maintain our antenna height and ability to cover the expansive territory around greater Boston that we do today.
In the fall of 2016, I joined with a team of advisors on the Technology Broadcasting Corporation to plan our path forward. We engaged FCC consulting engineers to scope the permitting required to move our antenna; we planned on major items such as the new antenna, tower, and transmitter; and we started talking to MIT about how we would best work together to incorporate our structure into the new building.
MIT generously agreed to cover all costs associated with moving our station, and with the support we’ve gotten from listeners like you in our annual fundraisers, we were able to plan for upgrades too, taking the opportunity to purchase new equipment that will last us for years to come. I worked with the MIT project team to plan our tower and equipment room facilities into the building, so that what we needed was built right in. And last fall, after completing a skyscraper in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the building opened for residents, and I began to build out our new transmitter and antenna setup with the (mostly remote) support of the WMBR tech team.
In June, E55 will start to be disassembled to make way for the new development in the next phase of the Kendall Square Initiative. We are wrapping up our installation in the new Site 4 building and will make a mad dash to take the last of our equipment out of E55 before the building is decommissioned. In the intervening weeks, testing of the new site will cause some disruption in our broadcast, which will affect our stream as well.
We are planning to cut over from the old site to the new site on Saturday, May 22. That date may shift depending on progress and availability, but when the cutover occurs, we’ll be off the air for some hours. We hope to be able to make any missed shows available on our archives. And prior to that date, we will be taking our old site off the air to test the new site. During those test times, you’ll hear a transition to static, then periods of silence as we test the new transmitter (which will be broadcasting 88.1 megahertz of silence!), then a return to the scheduled programming.
And, once we do cut over and are broadcasting from the new site, there may be unexpected downtime – because no project is 100% perfect the first time around, and we may need to fix a few things. Hopefully, this downtime will be much less than a day. It’s also worth mentioning that we designed our new antenna’s pattern to nearly match our existing one – so that if you can tune in to WMBR on FM today, you can probably hear us just as clear after we make the switch.
For a short period after we cut over – probably a couple weeks – we will have to reduce our transmitter power to 50% to comply with FCC regulations until our license is updated. If you are further from Kendall Square, you might not be able to tune in during that time. You can always listen to our stream, and please know that this condition is temporary.
We appreciate your patience as we undergo this transition. It is because of your support that we can thrive in our new home at MIT – and it’s because of the supportive WMBR community that we know independent, community-driven, FM radio is an essential part of Cambridge and greater Boston!
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Categories: Tech