music clip of the day

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Category: piano

Monday, 1/10/11

Happy Birthday, Max!

No drummer is more clear, more precise, more melodic.

Max Roach, January 10, 1924-August 16, 2007

“The Third Eye,” live

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“The Drum Also Waltzes” (Drums Unlimited), 1966

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With Sonny Rollins (saxophone), “St. Thomas” (Saxophone Colossus), 1956

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With Clifford Brown (trumpet), “Sweet Clifford” (Brown and Roach Incorporated), 1955

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With Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Charlie Parker (saxophone), Bud Powell (piano), Charles Mingus (bass), “Salt Peanuts,” live, 1953

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

In this music, you have to find out who you are, what you feel, what you want to say. That’s one of the reasons that it’s so American. You have to be yourself.

That’s also one way jazz is different from classical music. In classical music, you learn to study and come up with the finest interpretation of a work that you can. That’s a different way of expressing your personality. You have to learn to use what’s written already to express yourself. In jazz, you have to learn to be who you are, and create the music from that.

—Max Roach (in Gene Santoro, Highway 61 Revisited [2004])

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radio

Today it’s all Max all day at WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).


Tuesday, 1/4/11

Talk about a one-two punch.

9/10
The MacArthur Foundation awards him a “genius grant.”

12/10
The Village Voice, in its annual Jazz Critics’ Poll, names his album Ten the year’s best. 

Jason Moran (piano) and the Bandwagon (Tarus Mateen, bass; Nasheet Waits, drums), live, Virginia (Rosslyn), 9/11/10

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lagniappe

fathers and sons

While still a teenager, Moran began studying with Jaki Byard—a relationship that lasted four years.

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reading table

I’m interested in how close our orderly lives are to utter chaos.

—Scott Spencer

Saturday, 1/1/11

Happy New Year!

Hearing her talk about music, as I discovered yesterday during WKCR-FM’s Bach Festival (where she played deejay for a couple hours), is nearly as enthralling as hearing her play.

Bach, Goldberg Variations (excerpt)/Simone Dinnerstein, piano (Bach & Friends, 2010)

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lagniappe

new year’s resolution

To try to bring the excitement that Roscoe, my son Luke’s dog (who’s staying with us over Christmas break), brings to opening the front door and walking outside—as if, each time, it’s a new world (which, of course, it is).


Monday, 12/27/10

Of beauty you cannot have too much.

Frederic Chopin, Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (1835-36)

Take 1: Vladimir Horowitz, live, New York (Carnegie Hall)

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Take 2: Krystian Zimerman, live

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Take 3: Claudio Arrau

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Take 4: Alfred Cortot

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Take 5: Sviatoslav Richter, live (Kiev)

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More Chopin? Here. And here. And here.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

[T]he things we feel in life are not experienced in the form of ideas, and so their translation into literature, an intellectual process, may give an account of them, explain them, analyse them, but cannot recreate them as music does, its sounds seeming to take on the inflections of our being, to reproduce that inner, extreme point of sensation which is that thing that causes us the specific ecstasy we feel from time to time and which, when we say ‘What a beautiful day! What beautiful sunshine!’, is not conveyed at all to our neighbour, in whom the same sun and the same weather set off quite different vibrations.

—Marcel Proust, The Prisoner (1925) (trans. Carol Clark [2002])

Sunday, 12/26/10

Music has always been like medicine to me.

—Aaron Neville

Aaron Neville (with Allen Toussaint, piano), “I Know I’ve Been Changed” (excerpt), “I Done Made Up My Mind” (excerpt), 2010

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Saturday, 12/25/10

Merry Christmas!

Bessie Smith (with Joe Smith, cornet; Charlie Green, trombone; Fletcher Henderson, piano), “At the Christmas Ball” (1925)

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Lowell Fulson, “Lonesome Christmas (I & II)” (1950)

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Sonny Boy Williamson, “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues” (1951)

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lagniappe

radio: all Bach, all the time

WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is currently in the midst of their annual Bach Festival, which runs through the end of the year.

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reading table

Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.

—Mitzuta Masahide (trans. Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto), 1657-1723

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going forward

I won’t be here every day; but I’ll be here often.

Saturday, 12/18/10

Captain Beefheart (AKA Don Van Vliet), January 5, 1941December 17, 2010

replay: a clip too good for just one day

For some people, going their own way seems to be the only way they could possibly go.

Captain Beefheart (AKA Don Van Vliet)

The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart (BBC Documentary, 1997)

Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3

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Part 4

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Part 5

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Part 6

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lagniappe

Don’t you think that somebody like Stravinsky . . . it would annoy him if somebody bent a note the wrong way?

—Captain Beefheart

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About the seventh or eighth time [I listened to Trout Mask Replica], I thought it was the greatest album ever made—and I still do.

—Matt Groening

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art beat

Paintings by Don Van Vliet

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(Originally posted 3/6/10.)

Having posted this, I’m going to return to the break I mentioned the other day—back soon.

Saturday, 12/11/10

The older you get, the more time you don’t have.

—James Moody

James Moody, March 26, 1925-December 9, 2010

“Easy Living” (with Barry Harris, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Alan Dawson, drums), 1969 (I have no idea why, but this track, on my Mac, seems to play much better with Safari than Firefox.)

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With Moody, it’s all meat—there’s nothing superfluous.

Want more? Here.

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lagniappe

radio

WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) pays tribute to Moody through noon (EST) today.

Friday, 12/10/10

two voices

Some voices are so distinctive and indelible that, once heard, they occupy rooms all their own in your mind.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, “Hound Dog,” live (TV broadcast; Buddy Guy, guitar; Fred Below, drums), Europe, 1965 (originally recorded 1952)

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Happy (180th) Birthday, Emily!

I’d subscribe to her Twitter feed in a heartbeat.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

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Escape is such a thankful Word

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Our lives are Swiss –

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I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

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My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

—Emily Dickinson (first lines)

Thursday, 12/9/10

Some music asks nothing more than to be a source of delight.

Wim Mertens Ensemble, “Maximizing the Audience,” live, Spain (Madrid), 1998

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