alone
Need a jump-start?
Cecil Taylor (1929-), piano, “Looking (Berlin Version) Solo,” live, Berlin, 1989
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
When you are playing, whether you know it or not, you are dancing.
*****
art beat
Lee Friedlander (1934-)
tonight*
Andrew Hill (1931-2007), “Smoke Stack”
Vijay Iyer Trio (VI, piano; Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums), Historicity, 2009
***
Andrew Hill (with Richard Davis, bass; Eddie Khan, bass; Roy Haynes, drums), Smoke Stack (AKA Smokestack), 1966 (rec. 1963)
This is one of my favorite albums of all time, of any artist, on any instrument.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
More and more I find myself seeking sounds that don’t convey a particular feeling or mood but, instead, create a space I can inhabit, physically, emotionally, intellectually, if only for a short while.
*****
*On WKCR-FM (Columbia University), from 6-9 p.m. (EST), Vijay Iyer, pianist, composer, recent MacArthur “genius” grant winner, future Harvard professor, will be joining host Mitch Goldman “for a deep focus on Andrew Hill.”
never enough
Thelonious Monk Quartet (TM, piano, compositions; Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Larry Gales, bass; Ben Riley, drums), “Epistrophy,” “Straight, No Chaser,” “Hackensack,” “Rhythm-a-Ning,” “Epistrophy,” live (TV show, Jazz 625 [BBC]), England, mid-’60s
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
*****
“Actions Speak” (V. Iyer), live (Stephan Crump, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums), New York, 2012
*****
“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)
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)
For over thirty years he’s been taking me places no one else does.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, live, New York, 2013
#1
#2
*****
It’s not just notes on a page. Threadgill really reaches out and grabs you by the lapels. Someone else described it to me as ‘every time Threadgill enters, it’s like the curtains just parted.’ He has this way of cutting right through the texture of the music.
—pianist Vijay Iyer
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lagniappe
reading table: passings
Between my fingers and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.—Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939-August 30, 2013), “Digging” (excerpt)
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
The Engines (9/1; Dave Rempis, saxophones, Jeb Bishop, trombone; Kent Kessler [filling in for Nate McBride], bass; Tim Daisy, drums), live, Columbia, South Carolina, 2013
#1
#2
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet (8/30), Louis Moholo, drums, Steve Noble, drums, live, London, 2010
#1
#2
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lagniappe
reading table
What a glut of books! Who can read them?
—Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
can’t wait: Chicago Jazz Festival, 8/29-9/1
Hamid Drake, drums (artist-in-residence at this year’s festival) and Pasquale Mirra, vibraphone, live, Sardinia (Osilo), 2012
#1
#2
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lagniappe
reading table
In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something can be called, for lack of a better name, a wind-swept spirit, for it is much like thin drapery that is torn and swept away by the slightest stirring of the wind.
—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), “The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel” (excerpt, translated from Japanese by Noboyuki Yuasa)
alone
Earl Hines (1903-1983; piano), “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” 1928
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lagniappe
reading table
“At Lake Haptacong” (excerpt)
By David Ferry (1924-)The trees look thinly leaved, as if it were
Late autumn, early spring, or winter in a place
Where dead leaves cling to trees all winter long.You cannot tell what weather or season it is.
My mother, as in all those early pictures,
Although in this one already having lostHer girlish slimness, looks sexually alive,
Full of energy, her hair dark, abundant,
Her smile generous (though maybe less so thanIn the pictures taken a few years earlier).
Somewhere in this picture there is inscribed
The source or secret, somewhere inscribed the cause,Of the anxious motherly torment of disapproval,
The torment not resisted by my father,
Visited by my mother on my sister,The baby in the picture, torment that was
Perhaps in turn the cause of the alcoholism
That, many years later, the baby in the pictureWon out over. But it’s all unreadable
In this charming family photograph which, somehow,
Perhaps because of the blankness of the sky,Looks Russian, foreign, of no country I know.
music clip of the day 