refuge from the storm
Hariprasad Chaurasia, bansuri (bamboo flute)
Raag Shivanjali, live, Germany (Stuttgart), 1995
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lagniappe
art beat: more from Friday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Utagawa Hiroshige, Sparrows and Camellia in Snow, c. 1831-33
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reading table
singing in the tree
are you a widower, Crow
Milky Way above—Kobayashi Issa, 1804 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
Miles
Miles Davis Group,* live, Germany (Berlin), 1971
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lagniappe
art beat: Friday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building)
Allen Ruppersberg, No Time Left To Start Again/The B and D of R’n’R (through 1/6/13)**
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*With Gary Bartz, saxophones; Keith Jarrett, keyboards; Michael Henderson, bass; Leon Chancler, drums; Don Alias & James Mtume, percussion.
**“B and D”=birth and death.
Happy (100th) Birthday, John!
John Cage, composer, September 5, 1912-August 12, 1992
Today, celebrating his centennial, we revisit past clips.
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10/9/09
No matter where you are, this landscape is just around the corner.
John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948); Stephen Drury, piano
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music is a means of rapid transportation.
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What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude—that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.
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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
—John Cage
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5/22/10
Here’s a piece that sounds different every time you hear it.
John Cage, 4’ 33” (1952); David Tudor, piano
lagniappe
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*****
musical thoughts
I didn’t wish it [4′ 33″] to appear, even to me, as something easy to do or as a joke. I wanted to mean it utterly and be able to live with it.
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Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
—John Cage
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3/8/12
John Cage, Two (1987)
Live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 2009
Dante Boon (piano), Rutger van Otterloo (soprano saxophone)
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Recording, 1991 (hat Art)
Marianne Schroeder (piano), Eberhard Blum (flute)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Every something is an echo of nothing.
—John Cage, Silence (1961)
*****
7/23/12
Monday, n. the day the weekly tide of confusion rolls in.
How about something simple?
John Cage (1912-1992), Six Melodies (for violin and keyboard; dedicated to Josef & Anni Albers), 1950; Annelie Gahl (violin) & Klaus Lang (electric piano), 2010
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lagniappe (new stuff)
radio
Today it’s all Cage all day at WKCR-FM.
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art beat: more from Sunday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Agnes Martin, Untitled #12, 1977 (detail)
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another birthday, closer to home
Today also marks the birthday of MCOTD—our third.
joy, n. listening to Paul Motian play Monk.
Paul Motian Trio (PM, drums; Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone; Bill Frisell, guitar), “Misterioso” (T. Monk), live, New York (Village Vanguard), 2005
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Jasper Johns, Corpse and Mirror II (1974-75)
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reading table
up to today
such a healthy singer . . .
katydid—Kobayashi Issa, 1813 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
timeless
Sly and the Family Stone
“Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again),” TV Show (Soul Train), 1974
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“In Time,” Fresh, 1973
Jazz legend Miles Davis was so impressed by the song “In Time” . . . that he made his band listen to the track repeatedly for a full 30 minutes. Composer and music theorist Brian Eno cited Fresh as having heralded a shift in the history of recording, “where the rhythm instruments, particularly the bass drum and bass, suddenly [became] the important instruments in the mix.”
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lagniappe
art beat: more from Tuesday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape in Fog (1996)
Music, for some people, is no less vital than oxygen.
James Rhodes, talking and playing (2010)
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lagniappe
reading table
To Praise the Music
by William Bronk (1918-1999)
Evening. The trees in late winter bare
against the sky. Still light, the sky.
Trees dark against it. A few leaves
on the trees. Tension in their rigid branches as if
–oh, it is all as if, but as if, yes,
as if they sang songs, as if they praised.
Oh, I envy them. I know the songs.
As if I know some other things besides.
As if; but I don’t know, not more
than to say the trees know. The trees don’t know
and neither do I. What is it keeps me from praise?
I praise. If only to say their songs,
say yes to them, to praise the songs they sing.
Envied music. I sing to praise their song.
(Want to hear Bronk, a MCOTD Hall of Famer, read this? Here.)
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art beat: more from Tuesday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Roy Lichtenstein, Mirror #3 (Six Panels) (1971)
It’s impossible, sometimes, to separate our experience of music, especially pop music, from the surrounding circumstances. The other day, for instance, I was taking my son Luke back to school in Bloomington, Indiana. He was playing dashboard DJ. As we rolled through the hills of southern Indiana, nearing our destination, this came on after a long stretch of hip-hop (Lil Wayne, Eminem, Young Jeezy, Tyga, et al.), and the electronic intro, the Björk-like voice—they lit up the highway.
Ellie Goulding, “Lights”
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after a hearing at the nearby federal court building)
Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective (through 9/3/12)
Look Mickey (1961)
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Artist’s Studio “Look Mickey” (1973)
two takes
Robert Glasper Experiment, “Always Shine” (feat. Lupe Fiasco & Bilal)
TV show (David Letterman), 2/29/12
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Recording, Black Radio (2012)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Jazz, classical, R&B: so much great music, no matter the genre, shares a particular quality—density.
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reading table
It’s as if your body were itself a person
And the person wasn’t you.—Frederick Seidel, “Track Bike” (excerpt), London Review of Books, 7/19/12
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art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (between court hearings at the nearby federal court building)
Willem de Kooning, Untitled XI (1975)
keep on dancing
Robyn, live, Belgium (Werchter), 7/3/11
“We Dance to the Beat”/”Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”
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“Indestructible”
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“With Every Heartbeat”
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (between court hearings at the nearby federal court building)
Dawoud Bey, Harlem, U.S.A. (late 1970s), through 9/9/12
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two takes
The Mighty Clouds of Joy (feat. Joe Ligon, lead vocals)
“Steal Away To Jesus”
TV show (TV Gospel Time), early 1960s
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Live, South Carolina (Charleston), 1996
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at Harvard’s Sackler Museum (Cambridge, Mass.)
Lyonel Feinenger, Black Ice and Fog on the Burgkuhnauer Allee, November 1928
music clip of the day 