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Category: piano

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

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lagniappe

random thoughts

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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

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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.

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*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.

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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

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lagniappe

radio

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

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2014

Monday, April 21st

old stuff

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

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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)

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2014

Monday, April 14th

never enough

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23
Krystian Zimerman (1956-), piano, live

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2014

Wednesday, April 9th

alone 

Clarity, mystery: they often act like strangers—not here.

Anton Webern (1883-1945), Variations for Piano, Op. 27 (1936)
Andy Costello (piano), live

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2014

Saturday, April 5th

alone

Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006), Piano Etudes (Book 1), No. 6 (Automne a Varsovie [Autumn in Warsaw]); Susanne Anatchkova (piano), live

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lagniappe

reading table

[N]othing has ever been—nor will it ever be—the way it used to be.

—Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives

*****

yesterday

Some things cannot be planned for, nor can they be explained. Such was the case this week when a friend of my son Alex—someone who was in our house, full of conversation, just a few weeks ago—killed himself. The funeral was yesterday. Before it began Alex and I talked briefly with the mother and father, whom I had never met. I told them one of the things I appreciated about their son was that he wasn’t merely polite to me, his friend’s father. He wanted to connect. A greater sorrow a parent could not know.

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