Charles Mingus Quintet,* “So Long Eric,” “Peggy’s Blue Skylight,” “Meditations On Integration” (all by Mingus), live (TV show), Belgium, 1964 Mingus’s music, it seems, has everything. Call it “simple” or “complex” and you’d be both right and wrong—it’s both. Compositional elegance is balanced, exquisitely, with improvisational unruliness. Rhythmic momentum is no less—and no more—important than melodic invention. [...]
Archive for the ‘flute’ category
Monday, 4/23/12
04/23/2012Tuesday, 3/13/12
03/13/2012Music doesn’t care who you are, where you come from, what you know. It asks only that you pay attention. Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), Piece in Three Parts for Piano and Sixteen Instruments (1961), Peter Serkin (piano), Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Oliver Knussen, cond.) More? Here.
Thursday, 3/8/12
03/08/2012John Cage, Two (1987) Live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 2009 Dante Boon (piano), Rutger van Otterloo (soprano saxophone) ***** Recording, 1991 (hat Art) Marianne Schroeder (piano), Eberhard Blum (flute) More? Here. And here. ********** lagniappe musical thoughts Every something is an echo of nothing. —John Cage, Silence (1961)
Saturday, 12/10/11
12/10/2011If sounds define a space as much as walls and windows, you don’t need to knock out a wall to open up a room—just play this. International Contemporary Ensemble with Steve Lehman Impossible Flow (S. Lehman), live, New York (Le Poisson Rouge), 4/19/11 The moment this ends I want to hear it again. Is there [...]
Saturday, 11/12/11
11/11/2011Labels are often worse than useless. This guy, for instance, is often tagged as “cerebral.” But here’s something you can’t—I can’t, anyway—listen to without smiling. Anthony Braxton, Composition No. 58 Taylor Ho Bynum Chicago Big Band,* live, 2009, Chicago ***** Here’s another take—Braxton’s original recording (The Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton [Mosaic], rec. 1976). [...]
Saturday, 9/24/11
09/24/2011Morton Feldman, For Christian Wolff (flute, piano, celesta; 1986) Listening to this, you can find it hard to remember, after an hour or so, what the world sounded like before it began playing. More? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. ********** lagniappe Imagine a long, narrow hallway with paintings—subtle, shimmering abstracts by Mark Rothko—hung along both walls. Imagine [...]
Monday, 5/30/11
05/30/2011Today we remember him with a mix of new clips and old favorites. Gil Scott-Heron, April 1, 1949-May 27, 2011 new clips “The Bottle,” live, Jamaica (Montego Bay, Reggae Sunsplash), 1983 Cool Runnings: The Reggae Movie (1983) ***** “We Almost Lost Detroit,” live, Austria (Vienna), 2010 ***** Interview, England (London), 2010 ***** old favorites Here’s [...]
Wednesday, 4/6/11
04/05/2011I’m surprised that I got this old and know so little. —Terry Riley Terry Riley, talking and playing, California, 2010 ***** In C (excerpt), Terry Riley, 1964 Take 1 Terry Riley, Center of Creative and Performing Arts (SUNY-Buffalo), 1968 *** Take 2 Ars Nova, Percurama Percussion Ensemble, Paul Hillier (cond.), 2007 ********** lagniappe art beat: [...]
Thursday, 3/3/11
03/03/2011You have no idea one moment what’s going to happen the next (assuming, that is, you’re not following the score). This can be disorienting, or exhilarating, or both. Milton Babbitt (1916-2011), Composition for Four Instruments (flute, clarinet, violin, cello; 1948) More? Here. ********** lagniappe musical thoughts Babbit was not quite as difficult as he seemed. [...]
Monday, 1/24/11
01/24/2011Does anyone play Mozart with more verve? Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, KV. 466, first movement; Friedrich Gulda (piano and conducting), Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, live, Germany (Munich), 1986 Part 1 *** Part 2 More? Here. ********** lagniappe Friedrich Gulda has refused to succumb to the increasing specialization of our age, refused to [...]
