Unheralded virtuosos of little discussed instruments (and also non-instruments)

Chuck Mangione, unchallenged master of the Flugelhorn.

-- John Justen, Wednesday, August 1, 2007 5:16 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Freddie Hubbard and Clark Terry might beg to differ

Probably old & new Down Beat polls - the Miscellaneous Instruments category -- would deserve a longer look again. There must be quite a few "virtuosos of little discussed instruments", I suppose. (e.g. Steve Turre: conch shells; etc.)

Krys Brobrowski - Dried Kelp Horns

http://www.wired.com/news/images/full/edgetone1_f.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/djll/201272818/in/set-72157600072211726/

she plays in the amazing group Vorticella which has yet to record an album, over ten years into playing, you have to go to the shows, they're one of my favorite live bands

Gibby from the Butthole Surfers useta do some really cool stuff with various electronic vocal-distortion devices during their classic period.

And hey, how about the guy who played the marimba in Starbuck?!

worked a jake shimabukuro show tonight: pretty good way to get paid. (he has a lil kid now! i'm old.) he did an uncommonly beautiful version of bohemian rhapsody, cut right to its knotty heart.

may have been the wrong thread. it was this, "unfancied instruments", or the one about virtuosos who are not wanky.

A friend of mine invented the Fluid Piano, a piano which enables the pianist to tune individual notes on the fly and thereby play microtones that are found in non-western music but cannot normally be played on the piano:

http://www.thefluidpiano.com

I've always been amazed by Steve Albini's drum machine programming assuming that's him who did the Big Black stuff. Certainly sounded to me as as good as a lot of actual drummers at the time.

That fluid piano looks great. I imagine it's horribly expensive, though.

Yeah they run to about £10K.