sounds of Cameroon
Jovi, “Zélé,” 2015
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reading table
Maybe you go looking for one thing and find another.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Don Quixote (translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman; internal quotation marks omitted)
more sounds of Kinshasa*
Mbongwana Star, “Malukayi” (feat. Konono No. 1), 2015
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*Democratic Republic of Congo.
Aretha’s daddy
One of these days, the cloud will be lifted . . .
—Rev. C. L. Franklin
Rev. C. L. Franklin, live, Detroit
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lagniappe
reading table
The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that ships are sometimes wrecked.
—Simone Weil (1909-1943), “The Love of God and Affliction” (translated from French by Richard Rees)
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random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
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the beat goes on
2,200 posts—and counting.
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.
This guy takes me places no one else does.
Tim Berne’s Snakeoil (TB, alto saxophone; Oscar Noriega, clarinet; Matt Mitchell, piano; Ches Smith, drums, vibraphone), “Small World in a Small Town” (T. Berne), live, Brazil (Sao Paulo), 2015
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lagniappe
art beat: other day, Art Institute of Chicago
Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), City Landscape, 1955
Close your eyes . . .
John Luther Adams (1953-), . . . and bells remembered . . . (2005)
Callithumpian Consort, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
aware of the sun
setting, the butterfly
flits away—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue
sounds of Kinshasa*
Mbongwana Star, “Kala,” 2015
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Birds, plants, music—one of the most astonishing things about this most astonishing world is its variousness.
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*Democratic Republic of Congo.
Feel like floating?
Steve Reich (1936-), Six Marimbas (1986); Undergraduate Recital (Colin Van de Reep, Noam Bierstone, Sandro Valiante, Mark Morton, Ben Reimer, Ben Duinker), McGill University, Montreal, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
—Simone Weil (1909-1943; quoted at Orange Crate Art)
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 