WCRS Podcast - Night Tunes

The string quartet has been called the "royal discipline" of chamber music, and the man primarily responsible for establishing the form's high status was the prolific 18th-century Austrian, Franz Joseph Haydn. Movements from Haydn quartets are the warm core of this week's program, which also includes fine performances by the Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, James Taylor, and Neil Young.

Sometimes, when two recording artists who have never gotten together to play before finally do, the result sounds so natural and good that you wonder why they waited so long to collaborate. Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau worked their collective magic in 2009, and that CD is featured this week. You'll also hear ambient music from Israel, some Shaker tunes, and sides by Rikki Lee Jones and fiddler Elana James.

This is a repeat of the program first broadcast on 10/15/2012. It features Buddy Miller's The Majestic Silver Strings.

For more than 40 years, mandolin virtuoso David "Dawg" Grisman has been a tireless advocate of acoustic music, performing all over the world in bluegrass, jazz, classical, and pop settings. This week, the Dawg shines in duets with Jerry Garcia, Martin Taylor, and Denny Zeitlin. Our year-end hour of sweet sounds also includes memorable tunes by Simon and Garfunkel and from the group Ayreheart, led by lutenist Ronn McFarlane. Rounding out the program are a couple of little piano tone poems from a compilation on the Narada label.