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Category: cello

Monday, April 18th

Feel like floating?

Music for Airports, “1/1” (B. Eno, R. Davies, R. Wyatt), 1978; Bang on a Can All-Stars, live (arr. Michael Gordon), San Diego Airport, 2015


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lagniappe

reading table

To a Snail
By Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

If “compression is the first grace of style,”
you have it. Contractility is a virtue
as modesty is a virtue.
It is not the acquisition of any one thing
that is able to adorn,
or the incidental quality that occurs
as a concomitant of something well said,
that we value in style,
but the principle that is hid:
in the absence of feet, “a method of conclusions”;
“a knowledge of principles,”
in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.

Wednesday, April 6th

sounds of New York

Oliver Lake and the FLUX String Quartet, live, New York, 2014

Thursday, March 31st

Something to wash over you.

John Luther Adams (1953-), The Light Within (2007); New Music Detroit, live, Detroit, 2014


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lagniappe

reading table

spring rain—
the uneaten ducks
are quacking

—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)

Thursday, March 24th

Uneasy sounds for an uneasy world.

Iancu Dumitrescu (1944-), Hyperspectres for doublebasses, cellos, and percussion, live, Paris, 2011


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lagniappe

reading table

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow / And leaden-eyed despairs

—John Keats (1795-1821), “Ode to a Nightingale”

Wednesday, March 23rd

More cello.

Marcos Balter (1974-), Memoria (2007); Katinka Kleijn, live, Brazil (Manaus), 2014


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lagniappe

reading table

. . . and the mystery itself is the gateway to perception.

—Lao Tzu (c. 5th cent. B.C.), Tao Te Chingtranslated from Chinese by Sam Hamill

Tuesday, March 22nd

More cello.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir (1977-), Transitions (2014); Michael Nicolas, live, Chicago, 2015


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lagniappe

reading table

Let Emily sing for you because she cannot pray . . .

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), letter to cousins Louis and Frances Norcross (on the death of their father), 1863

Monday, March 21st

I can’t think of a finer way to begin the week.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Cello Suite No. 6, excerpt (Allemande); Natalia Gutman (1942-), live, Moscow, 1987

Saturday, March 5th

This sound-world I could inhabit, happily, all weekend.

Gérard Grisey (1946-1998), Vortex Temporum (1994-96)
Ensemble Sonorama, live, Argentina (Buenos Aires), 2013


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lagniappe

reading table

When we recognize we ‘think again’
without knowing what or if
we thought before.

—Rae Armantrout, “Fusion,” excerpt (New Yorker, 3/7/16)

Thursday, March 3rd

Ever tire of a world so busy?

Alvin Lucier (1931-), Charles Curtis (solo cello with slow sweep pure wave oscillators [2002]), on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon (solo cello with pure wave oscillator [2000]), Alvin Lucier (electronics), Charles Curtis (cello), live, Detroit, 2014

 

Friday, February 19th

Want to be swept away?

Claude Debussy (1862-1918), String Quartet in G minor (1893); New England Conservatory Student Quartet (Minchae Kim & Harry Chang, violins; Heejin Chang, viola; Hsiao-Hsuan Huang, cello), live, Boston, 2014