Episodes
| Title | First Broadcast | Repeated | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hit It! | 20220911 | 20220918 (R3) | Vibes player Corey Mwamba delves into the many colours of an underappreciated instrument. The vibraphone is a tuned percussion instrument, and in this episode, Corey celebrates the ways in which it has been treated as a drum. Composers and improvisers have experimented with the materiality of the instrument and the sounds that can be drawn from it, from the first jazz vibraphone recording, by Luis Russell in 1929, through to Christopher Deane's Mourning Dove Sonnet and beyond. Played with chains (Els Vanderweyer) or bows (Steve Reich's Sextet), microtonally retuned (Emil Richards) or electronically processed (Patricia Brennan), the vibraphone has a huge dynamic and timbral range that has often gone unnoticed. Produced by Chris Elcombe A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3 Vibes player Corey Mwamba celebrates the vibraphone's relationship to the drum Corey Mwamba shows us how to listen to an underappreciated instrument with fresh ears. |
| Screaming, Like A Bell | 20220918 | 20220925 (R3) | Vibes player Corey Mwamba delves into the many colours of an underappreciated instrument. In the final episode, Corey showcases the lyrical possibilities of the vibraphone. He investigates how swing musicians such as Lionel Hampton were influenced by the brass and wind players of their day, and how these ways of communicating connect the vibraphone to an older heritage: that of the bell, as illustrated by Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles and the soundtrack to Columbo. Throughout the history of humankind, the bell has been an amplified voice that calls; and Corey argues that the vibraphone is a construction made of bells - of shouting, roaring, barking bars, with which the musician expresses their individuality. Corey shows the variations in voice-like playing of Milt Jackson and Marjorie Hyams through their experimentation with vibrato, and the different ways in which Bobby Hutcherson called to us through his phrasing and touch. We hear how the vibraphone is an expressive voice beyond jazz, in the reggae stylings of Lennie Hibbert, and multi-instrumentalist Laura MacFarlane's choir of metal. Produced by Chris Elcombe A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3 Vibes player Corey Mwamba showcases the lyrical possibilities of the instrument. Corey Mwamba shows us how to listen to an underappreciated instrument with fresh ears. |
| To Reach All The Notes | 20220904 | Corey Mwamba delves into the many colours of an underappreciated instrument. The percussive nature and motor-driven vibrato of the vibraphone have led to a perception that it can only produce a homogeneous sound. Vibes player Corey Mwamba passionately dismantles this and encourages us to listen more closely. In this first episode, Corey explores different ways in which the vibraphone has been played like a piano. We hear how the four-mallet, chordal approach, often attributed to Gary Burton in the 1960s, can in fact be traced back to the earliest vibraphone recordings of the 1920s. We follow the changes in jazz piano language through stride and bebop, and how these were translated onto the vibraphone by the likes of Red Norvo, Terry Pollard and Walt Dickerson. And we listen to the impact of electronic processes on the more recent keyboard-styled approaches of Mike Mainieri and Sasha Berliner. Produced by Chris Elcombe A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3 Corey Mwamba shows us how to listen to an underappreciated instrument with fresh ears. |