music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Category: piano

Monday, May 31, 2010

impeccable, adj. faultless, flawless; irreproachable. E.g., Hank Jones.

Hank Jones, July 31, 1918-May 16, 2010

“Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’,” live, Paris, 2009

*****

“This Is This” (with Joe Lovano, saxophone), live

*****

“Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” (with Charlie Haden, bass), 1995

**********

lagniappe

When you listen to a pianist, each note should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.—Hank Jones

*****

mail

Really dumb!

[Micachu & The Shapes, 5/29/10]

Sunday, May 30, 2010

You’re sitting, in 1926, in the back of a little church in Dallas. It’s hot and the windows are open. This woman, who’s been at the piano since you walked in, begins to play.

Arizona Dranes, piano, “Crucifixion,” 1926

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Chicago, Texas, Louisiana, West Coast—blues comes in lots of different shades.

Freddie King, with Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown; live (TV broadcast [The !!!! Beat]), 1966

Part 1

*****

Part 2 (“Funnybone”)

*****

Part 3 (“Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”)

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Funeral last week.

Ill this week.

What to listen to?

Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111/Claudio Arrau, piano (1970)

1st Movement

*****

2nd Movement

#1

#2

lagniappe

A fascinating lecture-recital on this sonata, by pianist Andras Schiff, can be heard here.

*****

Speaking of the second movement, pianist Alfred Brendel said:

. . . perhaps nowhere else in piano literature does mystical experience feel so immediately close at hand.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Here’s a piece that sounds different every time you hear it.

John Cage, 4’ 33” (1952)/David Tudor, piano

lagniappe

***

*****

I didn’t wish it [4′ 33″] to appear, even to me, as something easy to do or as a joke. I wanted to mean it utterly and be able to live with it.

***

Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.

—John Cage

*****

mail

Thank you so much for this.

—Robert Ambrose (in response to an email letting him know that he and Bent Frequency were featured here)

*****

art beat

Tomorrow’s the last day to see the William Eggleston exhibit at Chicago’s Art Institute.

Want more? Here. Here.


Saturday, May 15, 2010

replay: a clip too good for just one day

The world became a less interesting place the day Lester Bowie died.

Digable Planets (with Lester Bowie [trumpet], Joe Sample [keyboard], Melvin “Wah-Wah Watson” Ragin [guitar]), “Flying High in the Brooklyn Sky,” live

Want to hear more of Lester? Here.

**********

lagniappe

Part of the job of a musician is that of a messenger. If you ain’t ready to be a messenger, forget it. You need to get a job in the post office or somewhere. If you ain’t ready to travel, pack up your family, or pack up yourself and hit the road, you’re in the wrong business. Because that’s what music is about. It’s about spreading knowledge and education, and re-education. It’s about spreading. You have got to travel with it to spread the word. Like all the people in the past that have had to travel to spread the music.

*****

It’s life itself that this [music] is about.

—Lester Bowie (in George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music [2008])

(Originally posted 10/28/09.)

Friday, May 14, 2010

no redeeming value whatsoever

Andre Williams & His Orchestra, “Sweet Little Pussycat” (1966)

lagniappe

Andre Williams, 2010

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Dear MCOTD,

What would go well with a bottle of sleeping pills?

Chet Baker, “Almost Blue” (Let’s Get Lost [1988])

**********

lagniappe

Here’s a big birthday shout-out to my 19-year-old son Luke, who’s opened my ears to more things than I could ever count.

Wednesday, 5/12/10

Is the greatest electric guitar player of all time a guy who died in 1942?

Charlie Christian, July 29, 1916-March 2, 1942

“Waiting for Benny” (1941 [recorded at a Benny Goodman session, while the engineers were testing the equipment])

*****

Live, New York (Minton’s), 1941

“Swing To Bop”

***

“Stompin’ at the Savoy”

lagniappe

TV news piece, Oklahoma City, 2007 (following CC’s induction into the Jazz Hall of Fame)

Monday, 5/10/10

YouTube giveth, and YouTube taketh away.

I’ve posted other clips that were subsequently removed by YouTube. But this is the first time where I’ve posted something that was removed the very same day.

Oh, well—more tomorrow.

**********

When the tempo is perfect, the music unfolds in what seems to be the only way it could. “Fast” and “slow” lose their meaning. Time disappears.

Frederic Chopin, 24 Preludes for Solo Piano, Op. 28/Friedrich Gulda, piano

Nos. 15, 10, 9, 3, 4

*****

Nos. 7, 13, 21, 24

Want more? Here.