Sonny Rollins, Joe Lovano, et al., talk about Ben Webster
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mail
You are sending out some great stuff at all times. . . . It’s always interesting, and the one you sent out today, Onmutu Mechanicks, was especially cool, since I hadn’t ever crossed their path.
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz) —Out to Lunch (Various, jazz)
—Jazz Profiles (Various, jazz)
—Jazz Alternatives (Various, jazz)
—Afternoon New Music (Various, classical and hard-to-peg)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
—Rag Aur Taal (Various, Indian)
—Morning Ragas (Various, Indian)
—Amazing Grace (Various, gospel)
—Live Constructions (Various, hard-to-peg)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads(Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Give The Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis)
—Transpacific Sound Paradise (Rob Weisberg, “popular and unpopular music from around the world”)
—Daniel Blumin (sui generis)
—Airborne Event (Dan Boodah, sui generis)
—The Push Bin with Lou (Lou Z., sui generis)
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art beat
One of the great things about having friends is that they invite you to things you’d never get to, or even know about, otherwise—like, for instance, this wonderful exhibit of illustrated architecture books (dating from 1511), something I wouldn’t have gotten to but for my friend Bob Blythe.
Robert Pete Williams (1914-1980), “Scrap Iron Blues”
Live, Louisiana (Baton Rouge), 1971
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lagniappe
It’s difficult to approve the banalities of most blues singers after listening to Robert Pete Williams. The blues tradition is frequently cited to explain a singer’s conventionality. We see with Robert Pete Williams, however, the possibilities of the blues. He relies upon none of the cliches, either of music or of lyric, which bluesman after bluesman will invoke. He makes each song unmistakably his own and while at times his genius may seem perverse in its oddness, when he succeeds and each odd element comes together, he will convey a tone of almost unbearable sadness.
One of the things I love about radio—and, for my money, being able to tune in to radio stations from all over the world is one of the greatest things about the ’net—is that you can listen for hours, while doing this and that, as I was last night (WFMU-FM, The Push Bin with Lou), and not hear a single track, or even a single artist, that you’ve ever heard before, knowing all the while that whatever is playing means enough to at least one person (the DJ, that is) that, at that moment, it’s being shared, eagerly, with whoever happens to be listening.
More? Here(with Battles, a group he’s since left).
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lagniappe
If you had to take five albums, books or DVDs on tour with you, which ones would they be, and why?
I picked 5 records and they are:
1. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra & Marin Alsop: Takemitsu: The Flock Decsends Into The Pentagonal Garden
Honestly I always take this piece and the score with me on tour everywhere I go. It’s one of my favorite pieces.
2. Fela Kuti: Underground System
This record is a force. Infectious.
3. Black Dice: Miles Of Smiles
One of my favourites from this band. The mood it creates is wholly its own.
4. Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Pierre Boulez: Boulez Conducts Varèse
Varese is where my head has been for the past couple of months. Amériques is such a mind boggling piece.
5. The Bulgarian State Radio & Television Choir: Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares 1&2
Another go-to old favorite. Stop what you’re doing and order this right now.
For DVDs, the complete Six Feet Under, The Wire and Entourage. Is any other network up to the challenge to even attempt to compete with an HBO series?
Books:
Donari Braxton: The Invisible Alphabet
New novel from my brother. It’s seriously amazing. He seems to have an inexhaustible amount of ideas and has such a great sense of control in his craft. I looked to him and his work when struggling to flesh out my own.
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
Such an incredible book. Ross fed into my already glorified view of the 20th century composers and made them into the lead characters in one of the most compelling stories I’ve ever read.
John Adams: Hallelujah Junction
It’s great to hear a very down to earth narration of a composer who you respect.
kaleidoscopic, adj. 1. changing form, pattern, color, etc., in a manner suggesting a kaleidoscope. 2. continually shifting from one set of relations to another. E.g., the music of the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Art Ensemble of Chicago (Roscoe Mitchell, saxophone; Joseph Jarman, saxophone; Lester Bowie, trumpet; Malachi Favors, bass; Don Moye, drums), live, Europe, 1980s
Part 1
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One of my all-time favorite musicians—no matter the instrument, no matter the genre—is the guy playing bass. If I’m feeling down, he lifts me up. If I’m feeling good, he makes things even better.
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Part 2
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How many trumpeters play so many different colors?
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Part 3
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Part 4
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Part 5
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Part 6
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Avant-garde? Their use of polyphony recalls the earliest New Orleans jazz.
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Part 7
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How many musicians not only roam so widely but swing so hard?
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lagniappe
more
Art Ensemble of Chicago with Fontella Bass, “Theme de Yoyo” (1970)
music clip of the day 