sounds of Chicago
Ralph Shapey (1921-2003), Three for Six (1979); Oerknal!, live, Netherlands (The Hague, Amsterdam) 2014
**********
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)
14 strings + drums
Tomeka Reid Quartet (TR, cello, compositions; Mary Halvorson, guitar; Jason Roebke, bass; Tomas Fujiwara, drums), live, New York, 3/8/16
**********
lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Chicago (Columbus Park)
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
**********
lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
MCOTD Hall of Famer—and, as of yesterday, Pulitzer Prize Winner.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid
Live, Poland (Warsaw), 2011
***
Live, New York, 2013
***
Live, Washington, D.C., 2013
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
All music is classical music, you know. I don’t put up boundaries on music.
***
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.
***
I think we’ve gotten used to the dissonant, so it’s not even dissonant any more.
***
[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
*****
the beat goes on
2,300 posts—and counting.
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
**********
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.
sounds of New York
Oliver Lake and the FLUX String Quartet, live, New York, 2014
Something to wash over you.
John Luther Adams (1953-), The Light Within (2007); New Music Detroit, live, Detroit, 2014
**********
lagniappe
reading table
spring rain—
the uneaten ducks
are quacking—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
Uneasy sounds for an uneasy world.
Iancu Dumitrescu (1944-), Hyperspectres for doublebasses, cellos, and percussion, live, Paris, 2011
**********
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”
More cello.
Marcos Balter (1974-), Memoria (2007); Katinka Kleijn, live, Brazil (Manaus), 2014
lagniappe
reading table
. . . and the mystery itself is the gateway to perception.
—Lao Tzu (c. 5th cent. B.C.), Tao Te Ching, translated from Chinese by Sam Hamill
music clip of the day 