Saturday, January 30th
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
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: cello
2016
2016
Thursday, January 21st
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?
2016
Tuesday, January 19th
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
2016
Monday, January 18th
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.”
2016
Saturday, January 2nd
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.
*****
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
2015
Tuesday, December 22nd
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)
2015
Monday, December 21st
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)
2015
Friday, December 18th
lucid, adj. translucent, pellucid, clear. E.g., Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.
Steve Reich (1936-), Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76)
Ensemble Intercontemporain with Synergy Vocals, live, Paris, 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
the door latch
rusting scarlet . . .
winter rain—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue
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random sights
this morning, Chicago (Columbus Park)
2015
Monday, December 14th
This I turned to late yesterday afternoon, amidst darkness and rain and news of a neighbor’s terminal illness. I’ve been living with this piece for forty-some years, and it has never let me down—never failed, whatever the circumstances, to make life seem lighter, brighter, more porous, more spacious. Never.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Suite No. 1 in G major for Unaccompanied Cello; Mischa Maisky, cello
2015
Saturday, December 5th
Thurston Moore (guitar), Okkyung Lee (cello), Ikue Mori (laptop)
Live, New York, 2009
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music, too, is a continually expanding universe.
music clip of the day 