Corky Siegel's Chamber Blues
Charles Osgood
Corky Siegel's Chamber Blues on stage at City Winery.
Corky Siegel's Chamber Blues
For the ensemble Chamber Blues, composer and multi-instrumentalist Corky Siegel gathered players from around the world and created a sound like nothing else. For an example, search on YouTube for the song “Angel Food Cake” (originally a song on the Siegel-Schwall ‘70 album). Reimagined for Chamber Blues, Siegel’s vocals and harmonica are joined by a chamber music string section and tabla drums; it’s instantly recognizable as the old S-S number but also a very different animal.
$40.
media release: CORKY SIEGEL’S CHAMBER BLUES featuring CORKY SIEGEL (harmonica/vocals), Chihsuan Yang (violin, erhu), Jaime Gorgojo (violin), Jeff Yang (viola), Jocelyn Butler-Shoulders (cello), Kalyan Pathak (tabla)
Harmonica master/composer/pianist Corky Siegel who has just turned 80, hasn’t let anything slow him down. In less than two years, he’s released three critically acclaimed CDs one of which garnered a nod for a best CD of the year by Downbeat Magazine. Currently, he’s in the middle of recording a monumental work titled Symphonic Blues #6 with members of Chamber Blues and musician friends from the Chicago Symphony and other orchestras around Chicago. He hasn’t stopped traveling, recently having returned from Germany where he was a symphony guest soloist with 5 sold-out performances of the epic work; “Street Music.” It was written for him by William Russo, and the recording is considered an American Classic, and one of the best selling releases for Deutsche Grammophon featuring the late Maestro Seiji Ozawa, Siegel on blues harmonica and piano, and the San Francisco Symphony.
Corky will be dedicating this tour to his mentor Maestro Ozawa who very recently passed away this year. Since they first stepped on numerous world renown concert stages together in the 60’s and 70’s, Ozawa had insisted that Siegel continue on this adventurous path by bringing elements of two divergent genres of Blues and Classical together. Siegel did just that. The 6 decades journey has been rewarding, bringing Corky around the globe always with the thrill of introducing exhilarating disparate musical landscapes to audiences of every nationality.
Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues most recent recording MORE Different Voices (Dawnserly Records/September 2022) features blues harmonica vs classical string quartet, with iconic voices. The 'different voices' include; Ernie Watts (2 x Grammy winning saxophonist), Frank Orrall (Poi Dog Pondering), Marcella Detroit (Shakespear’s Sister), Pavel Roytman (a Ukrainian Cantor) singing a Jewish chant for peace, Alligator Records' blues star Toronzo Cannon, country blues singer, Tracy Nelson (After the Fire is Gone with Willie Nelson), and bodacious diva, Lynne Jordan. The Chamber Blues ensemble members are: Jaime Gorgojo - violin (Madrid), Chihsuan Yang - violin (Taiwan), Rose Armbrust - viola, Jocelyn Butler-Shoulders - Cello, and Kalyan “Johnny Bongo” Pathak - Tabla (India).
Corky Siegel’s MORE Different Voices is more different than anything you might imagine and for more different reasons than what you might conjure. Always pushing boundaries, Siegel's Chamber Blues experiment continues the compositional interweaving of blues and classical in the form of his blues sonata and concerto adventures. But again, he reaches across the musical spectrum to explore the joyful diversity of other genres.
“My memory is a thing of the past / my future is an unopened present." This rolling and reverberating title of Corky Siegel’s ‘memoirs in progress’ is a true reflection of a long, unusual and extraordinary career still going full esteem ahead. As the Lone Ranger of the original ground-cracking genre known as Chamber Blues, Siegel has been bringing the diverse/opposing forces of both blues and classical music together, and blues and classical fans, shoulder to shoulder, for over 55 years, joyfully obliterating musical categorization and cultural boundaries in the process.
An innocent victim of incredible good fortune
1965: Corky Siegel stumbles unknowingly into the hangout of the Chicago blues masters and before he can say "one four five” (classical 12-bar blues changes) he and his guitar partner Jim Schwall are hired to front the house band every Thursday night and host the very blues deities he’s been idolizing on his hallowed recordings, including Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Little Walter. From under the wings of these music mentors Siegel and Schwall formed the Siegel-Schwall Band and within a year they were whisked up for another residency at Big Johns (known as ground zero of the American blues rock explosion).
And then it happened.
A blues player and a classical conductor walk into a bar
As Corky tells it;
“1966 … this fellow used to come into Big John’s night after night and stay all night. Apparently he’s a big fan of our music. One night he comes up to me and says;
'Corky, I’d like your band to jam with my band.’
I’m thinking; Who is this guy and what is his band? He was the renown Maestro Seiji Ozawa and his band was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra."
From Corky Siegel's historic performances as blues harmonica and piano soloist with major orchestras, beginning with his 1968 debut with the Chicago Symphony, he continued to bring blues and classical audiences together collaborating wit h the New York Philharmonic, Boston, Philadelphia, Suisse Romande, NHK Japan, San Francisco symphonies (38 orchestras and counting), including a Great Performances on PBS and two historic “American Classic” albums on Deutsche Grammophon. Siegel did this all while road-tripping with his blues band (RCA, Vanguard and Alligator recording artists) Siegel-Schwall, his solo singer-songwriter performances, and his Chamber Blues ensemble, while composing works that weave blues and classical flavors together taking everyone places they’ve never been before.
In 2017 Siegel launched his 6th blues/classical album, Different Voices, and with so much critical acclaim and so many still unrecorded centerpiece favorites in their regular repertoire of Corky originals, it was a springboard for MORE. "a significant step forward into new dimensions of feeling, content and technique -- a truly classification-shattering mix." (Jazziz) At the inauguration of the Damnpandic MORE Different Voices exploded into existence as Mother Nature sent us all to our rooms.
Not to be outdone by his own prolific creative moments including all his more than 150 video productions during the Damnpandic, Siegel has also just released, or is about to release, for the first time digitally; Chamber Blues - Complementary Colors (from 2001), Solo Flight (Siegel's singer/songwriter album 1975-1980) and a brand new solo album and CD; Somethin’ Wrong with three other albums on the back burner.
Little known facts about CORKY SIEGEL:
- The late Jim Schwall & I produced Joni Mitchell's last demo tape including "Circle Game".
- Worked with Rado and Ragni for many months on a four-man musical that would turn out to be the predecessor to the hit musical "Hair". ( Before "Hair" debuted Off Broadway Rado and Ragni came to my house and played all the songs on my piano.)
- During 1967's 'Summer of Love' Siegel-Schwall was managed by Chet Helms (often called the father of the 'Summer of Love'), putting them in the eye of the storm of the San Francisco hippie music scene.
- Toured with Bob Hope
- Toured extensively with George Carlin. "My wife Holly illustrated a book for George. Siegel-Schwall was opening a show for George when he got arrested at Milwaukee's Summerfest for the 7 dirty words and George often spoke about the band helping him out in that situation."
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