Close your eyes.
Listen—just listen.
If you don’t have time for this, what do you have time for?
Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), From me flows what you call Time (1990); La Jolla Symphony (Steven Schick, cond.), live, San Diego, 2008
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lagniappe
reading table
Come, see
real flowers
of this painful world.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), translated from Japanese by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
tonight in Chicago
These guys will be playing at Elastic.
Dave Rempis (saxophones) & Tim Daisy (percussion), live, Copenhagen, 2014
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Chicago (Columbus Park)
MCOTD Hall of Fame
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), For Philip Guston (1984), excerpt; Claire Chase (flute, alto flute, piccolo), Steven Schick (percussion), Sarah Rothenberg (piano, celesta), live, Houston (Rothko Chapel), 2014
percussion festival
day four
Augusta Read Thomas (1964-), Resounding Earth (2012)
Third Coast Percussion, live
#1
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#2
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#3
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#4
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lagniappe
reading table
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;/ But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four/ hills and a cloud.
—Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), from “Of the Surface of Things”
percussion festival
day three
Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), “Claviers” (from Pléïades [1978]); Yale Percussion Group, live, 2009
percussion festival
day two
John Cage (1912-1992), Third Construction (1941); So Percussion, live
percussion festival
day one
Edgard Varèse (1883-1965), Ionisation (1929-31); Ensemble InterContemporain (Pierre Boulez [1925-2016], cond.), live
Mozart one day, another day this—how lucky to live in a world so various.
Konono No. 1, “Yaya Mikolo,” live, France (Saint-Nazaire), 2009
sounds of Chicago and Oslo
Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone), Paal Nilssen-Love (percussion), “Song for Terrie,” live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 5/26/16
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
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A big birthday shout-out to my brother Don, my first listening companion. All these years later, the basement jukebox still plays: “Wake Up Little Susie” (Everly Brothers) . . .”North to Alaska” (Johnny Horton) . . .”(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” (Gene Pitney) . . . Hear it?
sounds of New York
Sandbox Percussion, live (excerpts from S. Reich, “Drumming”; A. Weiser, “Anatomy of a Drum Roll”; S. Reich, “Music for Pieces of Wood”), New York (Washington Square Park), 2014
music clip of the day 