Ernst Reijseger (cello) with Harmen Fraanje (organ), “Shadow” (Cave of Forgotten Dreams), live
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lagniappe
art beat
Timothy H. O’Sullivan (1840-1882), Pyramid Lake, Nevada, 1867
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Each week brings new discoveries. Yesterday, on the radio (WFMU, Give the Drummer Some), I heard this cellist for the first time. This photographer I bumped into Wednesday at the Art Institute of Chicago. Next week?
alone
Mochizuki Harutaka (alto saxophone), live, Japan (Hamamatsu), 2011
#1
#2
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lagniappe
reading table
Even in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo’s cry—
I long for Kyoto.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
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art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (lunch hour)
Ilse Bing (1899-1998), Three Men Sitting on Steps at the Seine, Paris (1931)
tonight in Chicago
This guy will be playing two sets—one by himself, the other with vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and drummer Frank Rosaly—at the Hideout.
James Falzone (clarinet), live, New Haven, 2014
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (lunch hour)
Paul Cezanne, The Bay of Marseilles, Seen From L’Estaque, c. 1885
sounds of Chile
Ana Tijoux, “Vengo,” live (studio performance), Santa Monica, 2014
Listening to a language I know not at all—pure sound.
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), New York, 1980s
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
music clip of the day 