passings
Jimmy Scott, singer, July 17, 1925-June 12, 2014
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” live, New York (Birdland), 2000
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lagniappe
reading table
If you were to open up Iona’s chest and pour all the grief out of it, you would probably flood the entire planet, yet it is not visible.
—Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), “Grief” (often rendered as “Misery”; translated from Russian by Rosamund Bartlett)
Ornette, at 84, still plays some of the most haunting blues I’ve ever heard.
Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone), with Henry Threadgill (alto saxophone), David Murray (tenor saxophone), Savion Glover (tap dance), et al., live, New York (Prospect Park), 6/12/14
*****
With Don Cherry (trumpet), Charlie Haden (bass), Billy Higgins (drums), The Shape Of Jazz To Come, 1959
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), East 100th St., New York, 1966
sounds of Brazil & Jamaica
Slavish imitation. Contrived reinvention. Tributes usually leave me wondering why they even bothered. Not this.
Gilberto Gil (1942-), Tribute to Bob Marley, live, Brazil (Sao Paulo), 2001
sounds of Chicago
One-word review: mesmerizing.
Art Ensemble of Chicago, live, France (Chateauvallon), 1970
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lagniappe
reading table
Despite all my inner crumblings,
I’m still able to recognize a perfect day:
sea without shadow,
sky without wrinkles,
air hovering over me like a blessing.—Nina Cassian (1924-2014), “Summer X-Rays” (fragment)
voices I miss
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 1972
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), New York, 1980s
Why not listen to something new?
Ellen Fullman (1957-), long string instrument (with Theresa Wong, cello; Abby Alwin, cello; James Cornish, trumpet), live, Detroit, 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is a loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.
—Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
two takes
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Prelude in C-sharp minor
Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano roll
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Sun Ra (1914-1993), recording, 1980
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lagniappe
found words
Potentially fatal
dangers lurk in
your backyard—AOL
*****
taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back in a while.
Life as a criminal-defense lawyer involves travel to many glamorous destinations. Just this week, for instance, I went to Lisbon, Ohio (pop. 2,821), where I whiled away a sunny morning at the federal prison.
Bon Iver, “Lisbon, OH” (Bon Iver, 2011)
[Justin] Vernon composed the instrumental as he was writing letters to his friend Ian Wallace serving three years in prison in Lisbon, Ohio. . . . [H]is pal ended up in jail as a result of attempting to blow-up two university buildings for the Earth Liberation Front.
Feeling too good for TV keeps getting harder.
The Handsome Family, “Far From Any Road”
True Detective (2014), theme song
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Live, England (Lochside Theatre, Castle Douglas), 2008
No matter where you are, new sounds are just around the corner.
Marcos Balter (1974-), Strohbass (2011), Shanna Gutierrez (bass flute) and Ryan Muncy (baritone saxophone), live, Evanston, Ill., 2011
music clip of the day 