He does covers, too.
“Pale Blue Eyes” (L. Reed)
Alejandro Escovedo, live, Paris, 2007
***
Velvet Underground (The Velvet Underground, 1969)
What you want, sometimes, is to lose yourself, even if only briefly, in beauty.
Leo Janacek (1854-1928), String Quartet No. 1, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” excerpt (arr. Tognetti), Australian Chamber Orchestra
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lagniappe
random thoughts
When you’re young you want to find yourself; when you’re old you want to lose yourself.
*****
reading table
Variations for Two Pianos
for Thomas Higgins, pianist
by Donald Justice
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
Movers dismantled the instruments, away
Sped the vans. The first detour untuned the strings.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Up Main Street, past the cold shopfronts of Conway,
The brash, self-important brick of the college,
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
Warm evenings, the windows open, he would play
Something of Mozart’s for his pupils, the birds.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
How shall the mockingbird mend her trill, the jay
His eccentric attack, lacking a teacher?
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Happy (Belated) 103rd Birthday, Elliott!
Elliott Carter, composer, December 11, 1908-
The other night I put this on, thinking I’d do something else while it played; but, as it turned out, “something else” had to wait.
String Quartet No. 2 (1959), Composers Quartet
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lagniappe
Juilliard String Quartet with Elliott Carter, 2008
Rehearsing String Quartet No. 5
*****
musical thoughts
Mr. Carter has written 15 new works since his 100th birthday.
—Allan Kozinn, New York Times, 12/13/11
***
Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Webern, Bartok, Shostakovich, Carter, et al.: you could spend the rest of your life listening to nothing but string quartets without ever feeling deprived.
mysterious, adj. exciting wonder, curiosity, or surprise, while baffling efforts to comprehend or identify. E.g., the string quartet music of Anton Webern.
Anton Webern (1883-1945), Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5
Penderecki String Quartet, live
Falls Village, Connecticut (Music Mountain), 2010
Part 1
***
Part 2
More? Here.
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
Ignorance has a big upside: the more music you’ve never heard, the more there is to discover.
What I get from this guy I can’t quite put my finger on. But I do know this:
I don’t get it anywhere else.
Arthur Russell (1951-1992), singer, songwriter, cellist
“You And Me Both”
*****
“This Is How We Walk on the Moon”
*****
“That’s Us/Wild Combination”
*****
Terrace of Unintelligibility, live studio performance, 1985
Part 1
***
Part 2
(First three clips originally posted 11/23/09.)
Edward Wilkerson, Jr. (bass clarinet), Tomeka Reid (cello), Scott Hesse (guitar), live, Lakeside, Michigan (Lakeside Inn), 10/16/11*
Vodpod videos no longer available.No matter how long you’ve been listening to music there are always new things to hear. When, for instance, is the last time you heard a trio featuring bass clarinet, cello, and guitar?
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
This whole division between genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It’s terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.
*This concert was presented by portoluz as part of its Jazz on a Summer’s Day series.
You’re probably in the same boat—no MacArthur “genius” grant this year. Oh, well. These folks, unlike you and me, are half a million dollars richer than they were Monday.
Dafnis Prieto (b. 1974), drummer, composer
Proverb Trio: DP, drums; Kokayi, vocals; Jason Lindner, keyboards
Live, Puerto Rico (San Juan), 8/1/11
*****
Alisa Weilerstein (b. 1982), cellist
Zoltán Kodály, Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8 (1915), excerpt (1st Mvt.)
Live, Massachusetts (Worchester, College of Holy Cross), c. 2008
*****
Kay Ryan (b. 1945), poet
We’re Building the Ship as We Sail It
The first fear
being drowning, the
ship’s first shape
was a raft, which
was hard to unflatten
after that didn’t
happen. It’s awkward
to have to do one’s
planning in extremis
in the early years—
so hard to hide later:
sleekening the hull,
making things
more gracious.
The Niagara River
However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.
Steve Reich, WTC 9/11 (2010), excerpts
Kronos Quartet, with prerecorded tape
1st Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
3rd Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.—Wislawa Szymborska, “Photograph from September 11” (trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak)
*****
Barbarism is not the prehistory of humanity but the faithful shadow that accompanies its every step.
—Alain Finkielkraut, Le mécontemporain, (epigraph, Clive James, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002 [2003])
lucid, adj. suffused with light, luminous. E.g., Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet.
Morton Feldman, Piano and String Quartet (1985)
Kronos Quartet with Aki Takahashi (piano)
In a world that keeps getting faster and noisier, Feldman offers a refuge.
Here time slows. Quietly.
