Concertzender Newsletter

Editorial

The Concertzender in December: musical beauty and solace for the last remnants of 2023

Winter is just around the corner and turbulent 2023 is nearing its end. We can imagine a year full of misery, violence, escalating conflicts, a fallen cabinet, all enhanced by a climate that breaks one record after another.

With all that negativity, you undoubtedly tuned into the Concertzender more often, looking for musical solace. The beauty and comfort that we try to offer you in all our surprising programmes can also be found in the last remnants of 2023; In this newsletter are a few examples…

We wish you a wonderful Christmas with lots of listening pleasure and we look forward to seeing you back healthy and well in 2024!

Before December 15

Competition

A double CD with chamber music by Rudolf Escher (1912-1980) will soon be released in the Dutch Composers series of the Etcetera Records label. All tracks were recorded during the last two Orlando Festivals (in 2021 and 2022) and almost all the recordings were made by Concertzender technicians.

We can give away three of these CDs to readers of this Newsletter. You can qualify for one of the double CDs by sending us an answer to the following question: Which musician can be heard in the most compositions on this double CD? Send your solution to prijsvraag@concertzender.nl before December 15.

Listening tip: The Chronicle of Dutch Music program of July 5th, 2022 was entirely devoted to Escher's music. His work can also be heard regularly at the Concertzender in the Concertzender Live programme.

Saturday December 23

Theme: Jazz

Oscar Smit and Co de Kloet dive into the old and the newest Christmas music

Smit aka DJ Oscar is a collector and connoisseur of Christmas music, especially vinyl releases. However new Christmas music is also published every year digitally via the web.

Every year, Smit selects exceptional variants to package in a Christmas show on the radio. This year he will do this together with Co de Kloet in the program Co Live!. In the 2023 Christmas special, Oscar pays attention to alternative and sometimes even anti Christmas music. And especially the recently released new Christmas songs or unknown versions of existing well-known songs will be discussed.

Just a selection of what will pass during 'Oscar's Xmas Carols' on Saturday, December 23rd at 9:00 PM: Including the 50th anniversary of Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade, the Christmas single by punk veteran Captain Sensible (The Damned) and the Christmas album by Fred Schneider (of the B52's). Furthermore the Christmas album by Fred Eaglesmith and a new Christmas single with the Dutch band DeWolff.

Listen: Co Live!, Saturday December 23rd, 21:00 - 22:00 CET.

Saturday December 23

Theme: Jazz

The Zodiac Suite

Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981) was the great trailblazer. Nowadays we - fortunately - see more and more women entering the arena of jazz and improvisation music, but in Williams' days that was still a distant prospect. Some consider her the most important female musician jazz has produced.

Born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Atlanta, she performed as a child prodigy at an early age. At fifteen she joined the band of saxophonist John Williams, whom she would also marry. Later, Andy Kirk, who played tuba in John Williams' Memphis Stompers, took over the band and the orchestra achieved much fame as the Twelve Clouds of Joy. Mary Lou Williams Especially when the tearjerker Until The Real Thing Comes Along became a big hit in 1936. Williams had already proven that as a pianist she belonged in the same league as Earl Hines, in terms of creativity and daring. Moreover, her arrangements for the orchestra had attracted great admiration in the jazz world.

The fact that she left the band in 1942 had to do with the daily horror of touring (with a black orchestra) and the relentless amorous advances of the Eleven Clouds. Could she help it that she looked appetizing and could put all the Clouds to shame in terms of musicality and knowledge?

In the 1940s, Mary Lou Williams started working with her own combos and started arranging for other big bands. In '45 she wrote the Zodiac Suite. This made her once again a trailblazer, this time of the so-called Third Stream music, the fusion of jazz and classical music fifteen years later.

Listen: The Big Sound, Saturday December 23rd, 17:00 - 18:00 CET.

The night from Thursday December 21 to Friday December 22

Theme: Crosslinks | Contemporary Music

Winter Solstice 2023

During the winter solstice of 2023, we will broadcast the traditional ambient night from December 21, 11:00 PM to December 22, 7:00 AM.

At the winter solstice we close the road to the shortest day and take the road towards the new light. We do this by celebrating it extensively during the following holidays, while for dessert we chase away evil spirits during New Year's Eve. Then we will face a new year.

During the ambient night, at exactly 4:28 am, winter begins. Winter Solstice tells an eight hour long story with ambient music. The programme is already in its fifth edition and is a collaboration between four different programme makers:

23:00 CET: Roel Janssen (Space Exposure)
01:00 CET: Harrold Roeland (Sensenta and Bureau Radiophonie)
03:00 CET: Bob Rusche (X-Rated and X-Ray)
05:00 CET: Peter van Cooten (DreamScenes)

Each programme maker will thus be broadcasting for two hours. You can hear how that sounded last year here.