music - PFT Media

The Major Scale – African-American Art in the 20th Century in the Sunshine State

December 2, 2019 By Chris

The Major Scale is proud to present a three-part special for Cornell Fine Arts Museum’s exhibit African American Art in the 20th Century, on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It’s a bounty of bold and brilliant masterworks that showcases paintings and sculptures from 32 African American artists. In our special series, we delve into the stories that tie together the exhibit’s themes, including jazz and civil rights, as well as the music with the show’s curator, Virginia Mecklenburg.

Part 3:

Among the many amazing artists in the exhibit is Purvis Young, a native to Florida. We thought it apt since the exhibit since both Cornell Fine Arts Museum and the Major Scale are based in Central Florida that we take the time to explore some of the regional roots. Young, the term “Outsider Art”, and the legendary Highwaymen are on the table for conversation as well as some of the Sunshine State’s – Slim Galliard, Fats Navarro, Charles Tolliver, Gigi Gryce, Pee-Wee Ellis, Archie Shepp, and more.

This special series is a must for curious eardrums.Continue Reading …

The Major Scale – Cat Toren & Kyle Eastwood

March 20, 2019 By Chris

Cat Toren hails from Vancouver, a positive wellspring of musical talent. She’s a distinctive voice in modern music, most well known as a lead performer of the Juno award winning band Pugs And Crows. Human Kind is her album, her band, her inspiration, and her greatest work to date. The music is a suite of deep feelings, pensive melody, hypnotic groove, and a sensitive yearning for hope. In this time of numerous contemporary musical landmarks, she is certainly staking her claim. The music seeks to respond to what can actually make America right again.

Kyle Eastwood comes from a family of music lovers, especially Jazz, but he’s the practitioner of it. For decades he’s been making solid and soulful bop, and in recent years Eastwood has really come into his own as a bandleader and composer. If the Adderley Brothers and Cleveland Eaton passed the baton, he grasped it firmly and then some. He joins in to talk about his 20 years of output and his most recent release, In Transit.Continue Reading …

The Major Scale – Tommy Guerrero

March 13, 2019 By Chris

The Major Scale raises a glass to Tommy Guerrero, a multi-disiplined, multikulti cultural icon.

Guerrero’s first blip on the radar was as a pro-skater with Powell Peralta’s legendary Bones Brigade. Yet music was always a constant in his life, and as time went on it quickly rose to the forefront. Through the trajectory of skate culture he traveled the worlds of Hip-Hop, D.I.Y. punk, electronica, world beat, and the vibrant visual arts, all culminating in an impressive body of work that he describes as, “…..breakbeat, noir, spaghetti western, surf soundtracks”.

What he can do with a guitar, a four track, and a sampler has attracted some of the best collaborators of our time to him. Guerrero’s sound is rooted somewhere in-between Gabor Szabo, with the post-modern ethics of Durutti Column – he’s a must for curious eardrums.

The Major Scale – Kaia Kater & a Cannonball Adderley Tribute

November 21, 2018 By Chris

In this episode we’re featuring Kaia Kater and a nod to the Brothers Adderley.

First up, the new roots and blues of Kaia Kater. She’s Canadian born, yet embodies all the musical treasures the Americas have to offer. From bluegrass, folk, and jazz, to MC’s like Rakim and Kendrick Lamar, it all comes together in this burgeoning artist’s style of songwriting. Along with Ms. Kater, music columnist Bao Le-Huu (This Little Underground/The Orlando Weekly) joins in the conversation.

Speaking of taking in all the sounds of America (and the world at large in this case), we pay tribute to the brothers Adderley: Cannonball and Nat. With a body of work that left no stone unturned, these two did it all with a sense of musical adventure and accessibility with a bit of show-biz gleen. All types of great music passed through the brothers’ horns, ranging in themes to folklore, Broadway, afrobeat, astrology, religion, and psychedelia. Along the way the left a trail of bonafide classics – Work Song, Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, and Sack O’ Woe – not to mention a who’s who of talents they helped to foster, from Joe Zawinul, Charles Lloyd, George Duke, Yusef Lateef, and more.