music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Category: musical thoughts

Wednesday, August 27th

sounds of Chicago & Norway & the Netherlands

Who needs coffee?

Lean Left (Ken Vandermark, reeds [Chicago]; Paal Nilssen-Love, drums [Norway]; Andy Moers & Terrie Hessels, guitars [Netherlands]), live, Belgium (Brussels), 2014

**********

lagniappe

musical (& other) thoughts

Ken Vandermark has a lot of interesting things to say about improvised music and life as a musician, about politics and movies and journalism and New York, as you can hear in this podcast-interview.

Leave a comment

Thursday, August 21st

sounds of Chicago

Marcos Balter (1974-), Dark Rooms (2007); Third Coast Percussion, 2014

If someone asked me to describe this, I wouldn’t know how to begin—which I mean as a compliment.

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

[Y]oung musicians need Balter as much as Bach.

—Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 12/3/13

Leave a comment

Monday, August 4th

What would it be like to live in a world without music?

Leave a comment

Saturday, July 26th

2ⁿ

Meredith Monk and Theo Bleckmann, “Hocket” (M. Monk, from Facing North), live, Santa Fe, 2004

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

With the music, it’s about opening up space for people and making something that they can experience in themselves, in their own way. It could be memories. It could be that they feel more themselves when they hear the music. They feel more alive. They feel that magic. That’s what I’m trying for.

—Meredith Monk (interview, Believer, July/August 2014)

Leave a comment

Monday, May 12th

sounds of joy

This I could listen to all day.

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938-; bansuri [bamboo flute]) & Vijay Ghate (1964-; tabla), Raag Jog, live, Italy (Cabella), 2007

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music offers an escape from the swamp of the self.

Leave a comment

Wednesday, May 7th

basement jukebox

Howlin’ Wolf, “Moanin’ at Midnight,” 1951*

Who needs chord changes?

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

Wolf’s harmonica playing was always the right amount. He would never do anything on the harmonica that would detract from you waiting to get back to Wolf’s voice. . . . There is a certain lonesomeness about the harmonica that just fit the Wolf’s character in voice, in song, in lyric; and he just played that just enough to titillate things he was going to do next with his voice.

—Sam Phillips

***

*HW (AKA Chester Burnett [1910-1976], vocals, harmonica), Willie Johnson (guitar), Willie Steel, drums.

Leave a comment

Monday, April 21st

old stuff

Jeannette and Her Synco Jazzers (Mary Lou Williams, piano, et al.), “The Bumps” (rec. 1927, Chicago)

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

Whistling was said to be popular among ancient Chinese hermits as a way of achieving oneness with nature.

—Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei (translations by Tony Barnstone, Willis Barnstone, Xu Haixin)

Leave a comment

Tuesday, March 25th

Happy (85th) Birthday, Cecil!

Cecil Taylor (March 25, 1929-), pianist, composer, MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, 2013 Kyoto Prize Laureate in Arts and Philosophy, etc.

Today, celebrating his musical life, we revisit three favorites.

Live, Germany (Nürnberg), 1984

***

Live (with Rashid Bakr, drums; Thurman Barker, marimba, miscellaneous percussion), 1995

***

Live (with Max Roach, drums), New York (Columbia University), 2000

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes.

—Cecil Taylor

Leave a comment

William Parker (bass), Christian McBride (bass), Cooper-Moore (drums), Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone), Hamiett Bluiett (baritone saxophone), Jason Kao Hwang (violin), live (benefit concert), New York, 2012

**********

lagniappe

musical thoughts

Q: What would you do if you were not a composer?

Augusta Read Thomas (1964-): . . . I would spend all day listening. I could listen all day long until the day I die to music I’ve never heard and only begin to scratch the surface. There’s so much new. . . .

—chicagomusic.org