Sunday, November 6th
Marion Williams (1927-1994), “I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song” (T.A. Dorsey), live, France, 1969
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Is any art more intimate?
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random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: musical thoughts
2016
2016
Thursday, October 6th
more
Kris Davis & Craig Taborn, live, Washington, D.C., 10/3/16
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Musicians wrestle everywhere –
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), #229 (Franklin)
2016
Wednesday, October 5th
tonight in Chicago
They’ll be playing, together, at Constellation.
Kris Davis & Craig Taborn, “Fox Fire” (Duopoly), 2016
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Is not all music, even the most niggardly, beautiful to the person who loves the very being and existence of music?
—Robert Walser (1878-1956), “The Walk” (translated from German by Christopher Middleton and Susan Bernofsky)
2016
Monday, August 8th
sounds of Chicago
DJ Mike Dunn, live, Chicago (Gramaphone Records), 2015
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Yeah, everybody’s got a bomb
We could all die any day,
But before I’ll let that happen
I’ll dance my life away.—Prince, “1999”
2016
Saturday, July 2nd
MCOTD Hall of Fame
Henry Threadgill (1944-, composer, alto saxophonist, flutist, bandleader, 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner), playing and talking, 2010
2016
Thursday, June 23rd
Music offers what airlines don’t—time travel.
Anton Webern (1883-1945), Langsamer Satz (1905)
Faust Quartet
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lagniappe
art beat
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)
2016
Wednesday, June 8th
sounds of New York
Lea Bertucci, “The Cepheid Variations,” live, New York, 2015
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
New sounds are heard in the dark.
2016
Monday, May 23rd
I love his approach to Mozart. He’s never fussy or mannered. He plays simply, directly—like a bird flying from tree to tree.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Piano Sonata No. 12 in F major (:07-), Fantasia in C minor (22:42-), Sonata No. 14 in C minor (39:54-); Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000), live, Germany (Munich), 1990
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Mozart was a kind of idol to me—this rapturous singing . . . that’s always on the edge of sadness and melancholy and disappointment and heartbreak, but always ready for an outburst of the most delicious music.
—Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
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reading table
If, instead of the words ‘good’ or ‘right’ (or ‘sacred’) we use the words ‘beautiful’ or ‘pleasurable’ or ‘enlivening,’ . . . how would our lives be different?
—Adam Phillips, Unforbidden Pleasures (quoted in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review)
2016
Tuesday, April 19th
MCOTD Hall of Famer—and, as of yesterday, Pulitzer Prize Winner.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid
Live, Poland (Warsaw), 2011
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Live, New York, 2013
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Live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
All music is classical music, you know. I don’t put up boundaries on music.
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Of course I started out in an ethnic community, with the blues and church music and jazz. But that was just one place to start. You read fiction then you start reading nonfiction! You start reading biographies and scientific accounts. It doesn’t change where you came from. It just broadens it. That’s what we do, we keep building on the foundation where we come from. You don’t lose it, you just keep building on it.
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I think we’ve gotten used to the dissonant, so it’s not even dissonant any more.
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[W]e have no control over anything but what we do. I just try to stay hopeful: I don’t want to get too pessimistic about anything.
—Henry Threadgill, The Guardian, 4/18/16
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the beat goes on
2,300 posts—and counting.
2016
Saturday, April 2nd
American in Paris
Steve Lacy Trio, live, Paris, 1982
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
‘Make the drummer sound good.’
—Steve Lacy, recalling Thelonious Monk’s advice (Robin D. G. Kelly, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original [2009]])
music clip of the day 