Saturday, October 5th
alone
Arthur Russell (1951-1992), “Soon-To-Be Innocent Fun,” 1985
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alone
Arthur Russell (1951-1992), “Soon-To-Be Innocent Fun,” 1985
love it or hate it
Anthony Braxton 12+1tet, Composition 355, live, Italy (Venice), 2012
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Anthony, a MacArthur “genius” award winner (1994) and professor at Wesleyan University, talks about this and that:
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music can take us places we’ve never been before, if we’re willing to listen to sounds we’ve never heard before.
good news, bad news
24 Recipients of MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant Named
First the bad news: MCOTD was passed over, again. The good news? This guy, often featured here, wasn’t.
Vijay Iyer (1971-), pianist, composer, soon-to-be Harvard professor
“Imagine” (J. Lennon), live, Germany (Leverkusen), 2011
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“Actions Speak” (V. Iyer), live (Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums), New York, 2012
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“Somewhere” (L. Bernstein), recording (Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums), Historicity, 2009
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
the stillness of the valley
is itself a kind of music—Du Fu (AKA Tu Fu; 712-770; “Visting the Fengxian Monastery” [excerpt]; translated from Chinese by David Young)
what’s new
Chvrches, “Gun,” 2013
love it or hate it
Weasel Walter (drums), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Peter Evans (trumpet), live, New York (Death By Audio, Brooklyn), 2012
serendipity
Yesterday. Late afternoon, working on an old murder case. Happen upon this: windows open, letting in a breeze.
Mary Halvorson Quintet (MH, guitar, compositions; Jon Irabagon, alto saxophone; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; John Hebert, bass; Ches Smith, drums), “Love in Eight Colors,” “Hemorrhaging Smiles,” live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
From now on
it’s all clear profit,
every sky.—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), on his fiftieth birthday (translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
what’s new
Have you heard the new Julia Holter? This is honestly, seriously good. It may be the best album I’ve heard this year.
—my son Alex (now twenty-five), before playing me this track
Julia Holter, “World,” 2013
sounds of Chicago
Edward Wilkerson, tenor saxophone (with Kidd Jordan, tenor saxophone; Henry Grimes, bass, violin; Isaiah Spencer, drums, et al.), live, Chicago, 2010
alone
Paal Nilssen-Love (drums), live, Norway (Kongsberg Jazzfestival), 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
Faces are motion, which is why all the photos of you are bad. Even the most natural-looking portrait is a sentence interrupted, one note of an aria, held. Though faces themselves hide a deeper motion. You seem to sit there and meet my eyes across the table, but you are so many other places, clinging here for a moment against all the currents that will soon sweep you onward. We are so moved by the faces caught in the windows of trains going the other way because they tell us how all faces really are.
—James Richardson, “Ten-Second Essay #134”
Today, our fourth birthday, we revisit our first post.
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One left Cuba after the revolution, the other stayed. Here they play together: pianists—father and son—Bebo and Chucho Valdes.
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taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back soon.
music clip of the day 