reading table | music clip of the day

Category: reading table

2013

Saturday, December 21st

never enough

Johann Sebastian Bach, Goldberg Variations (excerpts); Glenn Gould (piano), live, 1964

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lagniappe

radio: Bach Festival 2013

If, like me, you can’t get enough Bach, you’re in luck. Tonight through New Year’s Eve, it’s all Bach all the time at WKCR-FM (Columbia University).

*****

reading table

One, seven, three, five—
Nothing to rely on in this or any world;
Nighttime falls and the water is flooded with moonlight.
Here in the Dragon’s jaws:
Many exquisite jewels.

—Setcho Juken (980-1052)

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2013

Tuesday, December 17th

sounds of Chicago

Tonight these guys, who play all over the world, will be at a little club on the city’s northwest side, the Hideout, as will I.

DKV Trio (Hamid Drake, drums; Kent Kessler, bass; Ken Vandermark, reeds), live, Italy (Sant’Anna Arresi Jazz Festival), 2008

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Joy—no one gives me more than Hamid Drake.

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reading table

God keep me from ever completing anything.

—Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby-Dick

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2013

Sunday, December 15th

two takes

The Caravans (feat. Cassietta George), “Walk Around Heaven All Day”

Live

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Recording, 1964

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reading table

Interview of Alice Munro, last month

It’s hard to imagine a male writer, having just won the Nobel Prize in Literature, being so direct, so natural, so down to earth.

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2013

Friday, December 13th

only rock ’n’ roll

Superchunk, “Void” (2013)

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reading table

Cormac McCarthy, particularly in a book like Blood Meridian, is writing an English very remote from our own. It’s more like the King James Bible on acid, right?

—David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), in Quack This Way: David Foster Wallace & Bryan A. Garner Talk Language and Writing (2013)

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2013

Tuesday, December 10th

keep on dancing

Theo Parrish, live, London (Boiler Room), 2013

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reading table

Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die

—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by Sam Hamill)

*****

the beat goes on

Fifteen hundred posts—and counting.

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2013

Monday, December 9th

sounds of Chicago

Something quiet to begin the week.

Tobias Broström (1978-), “Twilight”; Third Coast Percussion, live

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quite remarkable
being born human . . .
autumn dusk.

—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)

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2013

Saturday, December 7th

serendipity

Last night I was feeling glum. Then I happened upon this. Listen to this piano sing.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major; Maria João Pires (piano), Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Trevor Pinnock, cond.), live

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Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love.

—Louise Glück, “From the Japanese” (excerpt)

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2013

Wednesday, December 4th

two takes

Eugene Ysaye (1858-1931), Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor (1923)

Maxim Vengerov, live

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Hilary Hahn, live

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reading table

Fragments from the December issue of Poetry:

Mother died last night,
Mother who never dies.

—Louise Glück, “Nocturne”

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The purpose
Life is
To find

—May Swenson, “Banyan”

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Poetry knows we are as close as a feather to disaster.

—Marianne Boruch, “Melodrama”