Saturday, June 25th
Entering his sound-world isn’t hard. What’s hard is leaving.
Tristan Murail (1947-), La Barque mystique, 1993
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: cello
2016
Thursday, June 23rd
Music offers what airlines don’t—time travel.
Anton Webern (1883-1945), Langsamer Satz (1905)
Faust Quartet
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lagniappe
art beat
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)
2016
Saturday, May 7th
In Chicago last night, at Constellation, I heard her play. One-word review: riveting. How many musicians create their own vocabulary, their own syntax, their own inflections?
Okkyung Lee, cello
Live, London, 2009
***
Live, Latvia (Riga), 2014
2016
Saturday, April 30th
This is a sound-world I’d be happy to inhabit all day.
Anna Thorvaldsdóttir (1977-), Ró (2013); Esbjerg Ensemble, live
2016
Thursday, April 28th
MCOTD Hall of Fame
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), Durations I (1960); Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, live
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Chicago (Columbus Park)
2016
Wednesday, April 27th
sounds of Chicago
Ralph Shapey (1921-2003), Three for Six (1979); Oerknal!, live, Netherlands (The Hague, Amsterdam) 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
He ate and drank the precious Words—
His Spirit grew robust—
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was Dust—
He danced along the dingy Days
And this Bequest of Wings
Was but a Book—What Liberty
A loosened spirit brings——Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), 1593 (Franklin)
2016
Tuesday, April 26th
14 strings + drums
Tomeka Reid Quartet (TR, cello, compositions; Mary Halvorson, guitar; Jason Roebke, bass; Tomas Fujiwara, drums), live, New York, 3/8/16
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Chicago (Columbus Park)
2016
Wednesday, April 20th
More.
Henry Threadgill’s Society Situation Dance Band
Live, Germany (Hamburg), 1988
#1
#2
#3
*****
Henry Threadgill and His Very Very Circus
“Too Much Sugar for a Dime,” live, New York, 1995
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
2016
Tuesday, April 19th
MCOTD Hall of Famer—and, as of yesterday, Pulitzer Prize Winner.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid
Live, Poland (Warsaw), 2011
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Live, New York, 2013
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Live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
All music is classical music, you know. I don’t put up boundaries on music.
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Of course I started out in an ethnic community, with the blues and church music and jazz. But that was just one place to start. You read fiction then you start reading nonfiction! You start reading biographies and scientific accounts. It doesn’t change where you came from. It just broadens it. That’s what we do, we keep building on the foundation where we come from. You don’t lose it, you just keep building on it.
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I think we’ve gotten used to the dissonant, so it’s not even dissonant any more.
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[W]e have no control over anything but what we do. I just try to stay hopeful: I don’t want to get too pessimistic about anything.
—Henry Threadgill, The Guardian, 4/18/16
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the beat goes on
2,300 posts—and counting.
music clip of the day 