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)
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
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
serendipity
What a joy to bump into this.
Charles Curtis (cello), live, West Hollywood, Calif., 2015
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Chicago
Ashley Fure (1982-), Soma (2012)
Curious Chamber Players, live, Germany (Darmstadt), 2012
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Why shouldn’t our music be as mysterious as our life?
sounds of Chicago, and Germany, and Norway – in Japan
Peter Brotzmann (Germany, alto saxophone), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Chicago, cello), Paal Nilssen-Love (Norway, drums), live, Japan (Chiba), 2011
spellbinding
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano (1978); Natalia Gutman (cello), Vassily Lobanov (piano)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
How sad that some miss out, put off by an unfortunate label – “classical.”
sounds of Chicago and Switzerland
Need a jolt?
Easel (Christoph Erb, tenor saxophone [Switzerland]; Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello, electronics [Chicago]; Michael Zerang, drums [Chicago]), live, Moscow, 2015
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Note to self: Listen, always, as if it was the first time—and the last.
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random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
The only thing hard about listening to this is letting go of everything else.
John Luther Adams (1953-), Dream in White on White (1992); Virtuoso String Orchestra (Joaquin Valdepenas, cond.), Sanya Eng (harp), live, Toronto, 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.—Mizuta Masahide, 1657-1723 (translated from Japanese by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto)
Why start the new week with the same old stuff?
Julia Wolfe (1958-), Believing (2001); Bang on a Can All-Stars, live, South Korea (Tongyeong International Music Festival), 2014
lagniappe
art beat
Regular readers may recognize this drawing, which was posted last year. The artist is a client of mine, Walter Unbehaun, a seventy-something bank robber whose story is told in the January issue of GQ magazine (Kathy Dobie, “The Curious Case of the Homesick Bank Robber”). This drawing makes an appearance:
[H]e’d created a strong bond with his lawyer. He considered ‘Rich’ a friend, giving him two finely wrought pencil sketchings. One was of an ancient and deeply wrinkled Peruvian woman, the other of a plump African woman wearing glasses.
Walter Unbehaun, African Preacher (Kankakee County Jail, 2014)
music clip of the day 