music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Friday, 12/2/11

what’s new

Black Star (Talib Kweli, Yasiin Bey [formerly known as Mos Def])
TV broadcast (The Colbert Report), 2011

“Fix Up”

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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“Astronomy (8th Light)”

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More? Here.

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lagniappe

reading table

I’m on a crowded ship
and I’ve been served the wrong breakfast.

This small mound
of soggy dough
is not what I ordered.

“Why don’t you just say
what you mean?”

Why don’t I?

*****

To be awake
is to discriminate

among birdcalls,
fruits, seeds,
“to work one’s way,”
as they say,

“through.”

*****

Apes can mind-read.
Studies show

what makes us human
is our tendency to point.

*****

I am not alone in this
sentence.

—Rae Armantrout, Money Shot (2011), misc. fragments

Thursday, 12/1/11

No matter how often I hear it, this piece—Beethoven’s final piano sonata—never fails to astonish.

Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 32
Rudolf Serkin (piano), live, Austria (Vienna), 1987

#1: 1st movement

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#2: 2nd movement, part 1

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#3: 2nd movement, part 2

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If I knew I had a week to live, this is one of the things I’d want to listen to—more than once.

***

Another take on this sonata? Here (Claudio Arrau).

More of Serkin playing Beethoven? Here.

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lagniappe

100

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400

500

600

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Today marks our 800th post.

*****

reading table

A Day! Help! Help!
Another Day!
Your prayers – Oh Passer by!

—Emily Dickinson, c. 1858 (58 [Franklin], excerpt)

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musical thoughts

If it wasn’t for the music, I don’t know what I’d do.

“Last Night A DJ Saved My Life”