music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Category: piano

2014

Tuesday, June 17th

alone

Searching, searching—never finding.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major (Third Movt.), Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000), live, Japan, 1993

**********

lagniappe

reading table

Imaginary Number
by Vijay Seshadri (1954-)

The mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
is not big and is not small.
Big and small are

comparative categories, and to what
could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
be compared?

Consciousness observes and is appeased.
The soul scrambles across the screes.
The soul,

like the square root of minus 1,
is an impossibility that has its uses.

Leave a comment
2014

Wednesday, June 11th

voices I miss

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 1972


**********

lagniappe

art beat

Bruce Davidson (1933-), New York, 1980s

Bruce-Davidson-subway-07

 

Leave a comment
2014

Tuesday, June 3rd

two takes

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Prelude in C-sharp minor

Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano roll


***

Sun Ra (1914-1993), recording, 1980


**********

lagniappe

found words

Potentially fatal
dangers lurk in
your backyard

—AOL

*****

taking a break

I’m taking some time off—back in a while.

Leave a comment
2014

Monday, June 2nd

never enough

John Coltrane Quartet (JC, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums), “Impressions” (J. Coltrane), live (TV show), 1963


**********

lagniappe

random thoughts

What did we do to deserve such a beautiful world?

*****

art beat

Francis Wolff, Blue Trane recording session (JC, tenor saxophone; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone), Hackensack, N.J., 1957

Lee Morgan and John Coltrane

*****

A big birthday shout-out to my oldest listening companion, my brother Don, with whom (as I’ve noted before) I’ve shared more musical experiences than I could ever count: the Beatles (Comiskey Park, 1965), the Velvet Underground (Kinetic Playground, 1968), the MC5 (Lincoln Park, 1968) . . .

Leave a comment
2014

Tuesday, May 27th

the other night

The sky’s all thunder and lightning, and it’s almost midnight, and I’m sitting in a Walgreens parking lot near Midway Airport, waiting for my son Alex’s long-delayed flight to arrive, and if it weren’t for Rubinstein’s recordings of Chopin’s nocturnes, which I keep playing over and over amidst the rain and the neon, I’d be going absolutely bonkers.

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 1; Arthur [Artur] Rubinstein (1887-1982), piano

**********

lagniappe

random thoughts

Listening to Chopin, reading Chekhov: if I ever retire, maybe I’ll relocate to the 19th century.

Leave a comment
2014

Monday, May 26th

This piece had its world premiere in 1941; the venue wasn’t fancy—a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), live, ChamberFest Cleveland (Franklin Cohen, clarinet; Yura Lee, violin; Gabriel Cabezas, cello; Orion Weiss, piano), 2013

Leave a comment
2014

Saturday, May 24th

more

Sun Ra & His Arkestra (with John Gilmore, tenor saxophone, et al.), “Take the ‘A’ Train” (B. Strayhorn), live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 1976

Leave a comment
2014

Saturday, May 17th

beyond category

John Zorn, Book of Angels (excerpts); Uri Caine, piano; Masada String Trio (Mark Feldman, violin; Erik Friedlander, cello;* Greg Cohen, bass); live, France (Marciac), 2008

**********

lagniappe

reading table

There’s a line in Tarkovsky’s Solaris: we never know when we’re going to die and because of that we are, at any given moment, immortal.

—Geoff Dyer, “Diary,” London Review of Books, 4/3/14

***

*It’s all related: Erik’s the son of photographer Lee Friedlander, whose work is often featured here.

Leave a comment
2014

Thursday, April 24th

never enough

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor
Rafal Blechacz (1985-), piano, live

1st Movement

2nd Movement

3rd Movement

4th Movement

*****

can’t wait 

Tomorrow Blechacz (pronounced, I just learned, BLEH-hatch), who recently won the 2014 Gilmore Artist Award,* will be at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, playing Bach and Beethoven and Chopin.

***

*New York Times (1/8/14):

[O]ne of the great windfalls of the music world . . . the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award . . . is given every four years to an unsuspecting pianist deemed worthy of a great career by a panel of anonymous judges who conduct their worldwide talent search in secret.

Leave a comment
2014

Tuesday, April 22nd

Happy (92nd) Birthday, Mingus!

Charles Mingus, bassist, composer, bandleader
April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979

Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Booker Ervin, tenor saxophone; Ted Curson, trumpet; Dannie Richmond, drums) with guest Bud Powell (piano), “I’ll Remember April” (G. de Paul, P. Johnston, D. Raye), live, France (Antibes Jazz Festival), 1960

**********

lagniappe

radio

WKCR (Columbia University): all Mingus, all day.

Leave a comment