What I love about the ’net is that sometimes, like yesterday, when I happened upon this, you find yourself being lifted out of your seat by something you didn’t even know existed two minutes ago.
Ned Rothenberg (clarinet, alto saxophone) & Samir Chatterjee (tabla), “Interstellar Duo #3,” live, New York, 2009
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lagniappe
reading table
The more I read, the less I understand.
—Charles Simic, “Serving Time” (New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012)
With just one horn, there’s a lot of space for the other players—the so-called “rhythm section”—to fill, which these guys do as well as anyone I’ve heard in a long time.
David Murray’s Black Saint Quartet (DM, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet; Lafayette Gilchrist, piano; Jaribu Shahid, bass; Hamid Drake, drums), live, Berlin, 2007
Happy 100th Birthday, Teddy!
Teddy Wilson, pianist, November 24, 1912-July 31, 1986
“Rosetta,” 1934
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“Body and Soul,” with the Benny Goodman Trio (BG, clarinet; TW, piano; Gene Krupa, drums), 1935
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“Foolin’ Myself,” Teddy Wilson Orchestra (TW, piano; Billie Holiday, vocals; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Freddie Green, guitar; Jo Jones, drums, et al.), 1937
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM’s celebration of his centennial, which I mentioned the other day, runs through midnight Sunday.
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musical thoughts
John Cage (whose centennial we recently celebrated), Conlon Nancarrow (ditto), Teddy Wilson—they’d make a helluva band.
Some folks sing with their feet.
Duke Ellington Orchestra, Bunny Briggs (dance), Jon Hendricks (vocal), “David Danced Before the Lord with All His Might,” live, San Francisco (Grace Cathedral), 1965
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lagniappe
reading table
And David danced before the Lord with all his might . . .
—2 Samuel 6:14 (King James)
my favorite 103-year-old composer
Elliott Carter (December 11, 1908-), Esprit Rude/Esprit Doux (1985); Claire Chase (flute),* Joshua Rubin (clarinet), International Contemporary Ensemble; live, Brazil (Sao Paulo), 2012
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
The “opportunity cost” of listening to something you already know, to borrow from the dreary world of economics, is that you’re forgoing an opportunity to discover something new.
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found words
Last night, after a concert at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall (Takacs Quartet), I stopped at Harold’s Chicken Shack on 53rd Street, as much for old times’ sake as anything else (Harold got me through law school), and found this at the bottom of the receipt:
REFUNDS WITHIN 24 HOURS
MUST BRING FOOD BACK
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*Winner of a 2012 MacArthur “genius grant.”
riveting
Anton Bruckner (1824-96), Symphony No. 5 in B flat major; Berlin Philharmonic (Wilhelm Furtwangler, cond.), live, Berlin, 1942
(Yeah, I realize this performance took place in Nazi Germany during World War II and, no, I don’t have anything profound, or even interesting, to say about how such beauty and such horror could coexist.)
Sometimes more is more.
Anton Bruckner (1824-96), Symphony No. 8 in C minor; Vienna Philharmonic (Herbert von Karajan, cond.), live, Austria (Abbey of St. Florian), 1979
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Once upon a time, before the human attention span began to shrink, people could actually sit still and pay attention to something—a single thing—for over an hour.
love it or hate it
Fire Room (Ken Vandermark, reeds; Lasse Marhaug, electronics; Paal Nilssen-Love, percussion), live, Poland (Poznań), 2011
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
What Emily Dickinson says of poetry applies to music too: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
You don’t need to be asleep to be lost in a dream.
Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto in G Major (1929-31); Martha Argerich, piano; Orchestre National de France (Charles Dutoit, cond.); live, Germany (Frankfurt), 1990
George Lewis (1952-), “Will to Adorn” (2011)
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Chicago, 2012
[W]hen writing “The Will To Adorn,” Lewis was especially “interested in this idea of adornment—color, color, color everywhere.” The piece represents Lewis’ current musical goal to get “more color energy into the pieces.”
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
In February, when I left this concert, which took place on a Sunday afternoon at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, I felt both exhilarated and wistful. This performance, which had been such a joy to hear, I would never be able to experience again. Or so I thought, until, just the other day, I discovered this recording online. Young people, many of them, anyway, would see nothing remarkable in being able, thanks to the ’net, to return to a musical experience whenever, and wherever, you want. To me it seems a small miracle.
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reading table
I was trying to assert myself as the man in the house, taking charge of things no one could control.
—Richard Ford, Canada (2012)
music clip of the day 