Thursday, 8/9/12
Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 18 in D. major, K. 576 (1789)
Mitsuko Uchida, piano
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Listening to Mozart is like entering a room where the walls, the ceiling, even the floor are made entirely of glass.
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: musical thoughts
2012
2012
Wednesday, 7/25/12
Suppose that, for the rest of your life, you could listen to only one piece of music.
What would you choose?
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), For Bunita Marcus (1985)
Hildegard Kleeb, piano (1994)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
[Morton Feldman and I] were driving back from some place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily. Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, “Now that things are so simple, there’s so much to do.” And then he went back to sleep.
—John Cage, in Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage (1961)
2012
Tuesday, 7/24/12
George Lewis (1952-), “Will to Adorn” (2011)
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Chicago, 2012
[W]hen writing “The Will To Adorn,” Lewis was especially “interested in this idea of adornment—color, color, color everywhere.” The piece represents Lewis’ current musical goal to get “more color energy into the pieces.”
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
In February, when I left this concert, which took place on a Sunday afternoon at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, I felt both exhilarated and wistful. This performance, which had been such a joy to hear, I would never be able to experience again. Or so I thought, until, just the other day, I discovered this recording online. Young people, many of them, anyway, would see nothing remarkable in being able, thanks to the ’net, to return to a musical experience whenever, and wherever, you want. To me it seems a small miracle.
*****
reading table
I was trying to assert myself as the man in the house, taking charge of things no one could control.
—Richard Ford, Canada (2012)
2012
Saturday, 7/21/12
Johann Sebastian Bach, Air on the G String (adapted from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, 2nd Mvt.), Friedrich Gulda, piano, 1980s (?)
(Yeah, that’s Chick Corea at 2:57.)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
This would make a helluva blurb:
Bach’s music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded a complete failure.
2012
Friday, 7/20/12
two takes
Robert Glasper Experiment, “Always Shine” (feat. Lupe Fiasco & Bilal)
TV show (David Letterman), 2/29/12
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Recording, Black Radio (2012)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Jazz, classical, R&B: so much great music, no matter the genre, shares a particular quality—density.
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reading table
It’s as if your body were itself a person
And the person wasn’t you.—Frederick Seidel, “Track Bike” (excerpt), London Review of Books, 7/19/12
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art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (between court hearings at the nearby federal court building)
Willem de Kooning, Untitled XI (1975)
2012
Tuesday, 7/10/12
keep on dancing
Sometimes I don’t want to listen.
What I want are sounds washing over me.
Theo Parrish, “Summertime Is Here” (originally released 1999; reissued 2006)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
[W]hat we find in our mind and our thought is the same as what we find in our ear and in sound: an ocean in constant flux. Just as our ear turns out to be nothing but a construct, and likewise sound, neither can we isolate anything we might call our mind or thought, much less our self.
—The Heart Sutra, translation (from Sanskrit) and commentary (from which this is drawn) by Red Pine, AKA Bill Porter (2004)
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reading table
the whining mosquito
also thinks I’m old . . .
edge of my ear—Kobayashi Issa, 1819 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
2012
Wednesday, 7/4/12
rock ’n’ roll
country
gospel
blues
jazz
A world without American music: what would it sound like?
The Blasters, “American Music,” Champaign, Ill., 1985
(Originally posted 7/5/10.)
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Merle Haggard, “Lonesome Fugitive,” Buck Owens Ranch Show, 1966
(Originally posted 4/6/12.)
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Slim and the Victory Aires, “Alright Now,” Paducah, Ky., 2008
(Originally posted 3/11/12)
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Johnny Shines (1915-1992), vocals, guitar; David “Honeyboy” Edwards (1915-2011), guitar; Big Walter Horton (1917-1981), harmonica; “For The Love of Mike,” 1978
(Originally posted 10/4/11.)
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Von Freeman, tenor saxophone; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone (first solo); Willie Pickens, piano; Dan Shapera, bass; Robert Shy, drums; “Oleo” (S. Rollins), Chicago (Chicago Jazz Festival), 1988
(Originally posted 5/3/12.)
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lagniappe
radio
All Pops, all day:
Tune in on July 4th, Independence Day . . . as we celebrate the professed (although according to historians, not actual) birthday of Jazz great and American Hero, the trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong, by playing 24 hours straight of his music, from midnight to midnight.
*****
encore*
Dave Alvin with the Blasters, “4th of July,” Berwyn, Ill. (Fitzgerald’s), 2010
*By popular demand (see Comments).
2012
Saturday, 6/30/12
only rock ’n’ roll
Joy Division, live (TV show), England, 1979
“Transmission”
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“She’s Lost Control”
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
On any given day—today, for instance—how many dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of people will be making, or listening to, music?
2012
Wednesday, 6/27/12
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Wach (excerpt)
The Ensemble for Intuitive Music Weimar
Live (rehearsal), Austria (Klosterneuberg), 2009
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Would I want to listen to this every day?
Nah.
But I don’t feel like listening to Junior Wells every day either.
Why shouldn’t our music be as various as our days?
2012
Monday, 6/25/12
something cheery to start the week
There’s some things, you reach a certain point in life when you just don’t have time to get better from it.
—Randy Newman
Randy Newman, “Losing You,” live, London, 2011
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
How many of my records, I wondered the other day while sorting CDs, will I never listen to again? How many will never be heard again by anyone?
music clip of the day 