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Music Interviews
3:50 pm
Thu October 11, 2012

'Looper': A World Of Musical Clicks And Pops

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Credit Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment
Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in the science-fiction thriller Looper.
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Looper score composer Nathan Johnson
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Originally published on Tue January 8, 2013 1:19 pm

When you think about the great music of science fiction, a few staples spring to mind — say, the theme from the classic Star Trek series, or John Williams' compositions for the Star Wars movies.

Nathan Johnson, the composer for the new time-travel thriller Looper, wanted to break with tradition. Instead of going for that slick, orchestral sound, he immersed himself in the world of the film to find his source material.

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A Blog Supreme
3:47 pm
Thu October 11, 2012

The 'Class Presidents' Of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers

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Credit Robert Abbott Sengstacke / Getty Images
The band led by drummer Art Blakey (center) groomed more than 150 alumni members, including saxophonist Wayne Shorter and trumpeter Lee Morgan.
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My fellow Americans, jazz fans, and NPR Music browsers around the globe:

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Music Interviews
3:44 pm
Thu October 11, 2012

Blake's Poems, Reborn As Bluesy Folk Tunes, Burn Bright

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Martha Redbone's new album is The Garden of Love: Songs of William Blake.
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Originally published on Fri October 12, 2012 4:13 pm

The words of the English poet William Blake still resonate 185 years after his death. Blake, who was also a painter and printmaker, wrote the famous lines, "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night."

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Mountain Stage
3:39 pm
Thu October 11, 2012

Steve Brown & The Bailers On Mountain Stage

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Originally published on Mon October 15, 2012 9:08 am

Steve Brown and his band The Bailers make their first appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live on the campus of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. When Mountain Stage began planning its trip to Fairbanks in late 2011, host Larry Groce set out to find some of the state's most talented musicians to feature on the show, and one of the names that popped up repeatedly was Steve Brown & The Bailers.

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The Salt
3:23 pm
Thu October 11, 2012

How A Sleepy Pennsylvania Town Grew Into America's Mushroom Capital

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Credit Eliza Barclay / NPR
Four hundred million pounds of mushrooms come from farms in Chester County, Pa.
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Farms in Chester County, Pa., produce 400 million pounds of mushrooms annually. That's about half of all mushrooms grown in the U.S. They're grown indoors in long, gray cinder-block houses built into the side of a hill.
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Shiitake mushrooms in a growing room at Phillips Mushroom Farms, one of the big mushroom producers in Kennett Square.
Credit Eliza Barclay / NPR
Southeast Asian workers cut shiitake mushrooms at Phillips Mushroom Farms. The mushroom industry in Chester County, Pa., has relied on several waves of immigrant workers, beginning with Italians in the late 1800s.
Credit Eliza Barclay / NPR
At an industrial compost facility that supplies the mushroom industry in Kennett Square, ground-up corn cobs are mixed with chicken manure, hay, cocoa shells and horse manure. Over time, growers have learned that mushrooms grow best with this blend of nutrients.
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Cocoa shells from a Hershey's chocolate plant in Hershey, Pa., are just one ingredient in the compost that mushroom growers use to feed the fungi.
Credit Eliza Barclay / NPR
Every 10 weeks, the beds inside the mushroom rooms are filled with compost mixed with spores, and covered with peat moss. The spores germinate and create a thick web of white threads called mycelia, shown here. As the fungi try to reproduce, they send up their fruit — the mushrooms.
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A Mexican worker at Phillips Mushroom Farms. Workers are paid a little more than minimum wage to cut at least 55 pounds of mushrooms an hour.
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Originally published on Fri October 12, 2012 4:13 pm

Here's an astonishing fact: Half of America's mushrooms are grown in one tiny corner of southeastern Pennsylvania, near the town of Kennett Square.

But why? It's not as though this place has some special advantage of climate or soil, the kind of thing that led to strawberry fields in Watsonville, Calif., or peach orchards in Georgia. Mushrooms can grow indoors. They could come from anywhere.

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