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)
sounds of Ireland
“The Bucks of Oranmore,” “Come West Along the Road,” live, Dublin (The Ferryman Pub), St. Patrick’s Day, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
The narrative got punctured.
***
. . . picking up crumbs like there was no tomorrow, which
there isn’t.—John Ashbery (1927-), “Tall Order” (excerpts), Breezeway (2015)
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?
One-word review: Wow!
Nicole Mitchell’s Sonic Projections (NM, flute; David Boykin, tenor saxophone; Craig Taborn, piano; Chad Taylor, drums), live, New York, 2014
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lagniappe
art beat: Sunday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), An Icy Night, New York, 1898 (Alfred Stieglitz and the 19th Century, through 3/27/16)
Once I enter this world, I never want to leave.
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), For Philip Guston (1984); Either/OR (Richard Carrick, piano/celesta; Margaret Lancaster, flutes; David Shively, percussion), live, Philadelphia, 2015
serendipity
When this came on the radio the other day (WKCR, Columbia University), background became foreground.
Luciano Berio (1925-2003), Differences (1959)
Even in death he remains a source of rare beauty.
Henry Threadgill (MCOTD Hall of Fame, bass flute) and Jason Moran (piano), “Sail” (H. Threadgill), live, New York (Ornette Coleman Memorial Service), 6/27/15
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lagniappe
reading table
The world she grew up in was so different it was hard to believe she was ever in it.
—Anne Enright, The Green Road (2015)
MCOTD Hall of Fame
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid,* live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
Nothings’s a Gift
by Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012; translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
I’m drowning in debts up to my ears.
I’ll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.Here’s how it’s arranged:
The heart can be repossessed,
the liver, too,
and each single finger and toe.Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid,
and I’ll be fleeced,
or, more precisely, flayed.I move about the planet
in a crush of other debtors.
Some are saddled with the burden
of paying off their wings.
Others must, willy-nilly,
account for every leaf.Every tissue in us lies
on the debit side.
Not a tentacle or tendril
is for keeps.The inventory, infinitely detailed,
implies we’ll be left
not just empty-handed
but handless too.I can’t remember
where, when, and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.We call the protest against this
the soul.
And it’s the only item
not included on the list.
*****
the beat goes on
Two thousand posts—and counting.
*****
*HT (flute, alto saxophone), Liberty Ellman (guitar), Jose Davila (tuba, trombone), Christopher Hoffman (cello), Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums).
Whether you live for 50 years, 500 years, or 5,000 years, it makes no difference: always there are new things to hear.
Dieter Ammann (1962-), Violation (1999); Lemanic Modern Ensemble (William Blank, cond.) with Karolina Öhman, cello; live, Russia (St. Petersburg), 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
The old pond—
a frog jumps in,
sound of water.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
career plans for the next life
Maybe, instead of those other things (tap dancer, rubboard player in a zydeco band, bass player in a reggae band, guitar player in a Malian band, cellist in a string quartet), I’ll be a bird.
John Luther Adams (1953-), songbirdsongs (1974-80), Callithumpian Consort (Stephen Drury, dir.), recording (2012)
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art beat
Tony Fitzpatrick (1958-), Lunch Drawing #48: A Bird for Bruce Lee
music clip of the day 