Sat. 5 pm. P. T. Bridgeport returns this week with tales of faraway places, Oscar Peterson, Gary Schmidt, A Tale of Two Cities and more. 10/27/2018

P. T. Bridgeport returns this week with tales of faraway places, Oscar Peterson, Gary Schmidt, A Tale of Two Cities and more.  

Did you ever hear the jazz clavichord?  Well Oscar Peterson put out an album with Joe Pass, the master guitarist, where he plays some of the music of Porgy and Bess.  We’ll also have Lawrence Blatt on guitar with strings, FLOW on a cat with an extra life, Monica Williams with her hybrid flute, and Baden Powell with music of el norte.

The clavichord is an ancient instrument, going back to the 15th century.  It’s actually a precursor of the piano, with the strings hit with small metal blades.  It’s a versatile instrument but also has a very soft sound, so soft that musicians had given up on it by the mid-19th century.  It couldn’t compete with instruments that had a bigger sound, like the oboe.  Some modern musicians have gone back to it, but a Porgy and Bess album, featuring the great pianist Oscar Peterson, was considered a stretch.