Only a world this noisy could produce music this quiet.
Evan Parker (soprano saxophone), et al.,* live, London (Freedom of the City festival), 2011
*Heledd Francis Wright (flute), John Russell (guitar), Augusti Fernandez (piano), Adam Linson (bass), Toma Gouband (percussion), Lawrence Casserley (electronics), Matt Wright (electronics).
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110; Hélène Grimaud (1969-), live, Germany (Berlin), c. 2001
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Each performer plays this piece differently, and each performance is different. Each listener hears it differently, and each listen is different. This isn’t one piece; it’s many.
*****
random thoughts
Two sons, two fathers. Saturday evening, as we were driving back to Bloomington from Indianapolis, where we’d celebrated his graduation from Indiana University at a grand old steakhouse, Luke got a call from a friend. A guy he knew, who grew up in the town right next to us and was a couple years behind him at IU, had just been in a terrible car accident—north of Indianapolis, on the highway to Chicago. He was on his way home for the summer. Now all I could think of was his father, whom I had never met. He would be getting into his car. He would be driving into Chicago on the Eisenhower Expressway, then going south on the Dan Ryan. He would be taking the Skyway into Indiana, then heading toward Indianapolis on Interstate 65. He would be going to get his son. For the last time.
one thing after
another after another
after another after another after . . .
John Cage (1912-1992), Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958); Variable Geometry (Jean-Phillippe Calvin, director), live, London, 2011
A performance like this can go wrong in so many ways. This one, to these ears, works wonderfully. Momentum, tautness, immediacy—it has them all.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Everything we do is music.
Let’s listen, after a week of bombings and explosions and earthquakes, to something spare, something quiet.
Erik Satie (1866-1925), Sonneries de la Rose + Croix – Air du Grand Prieur (1892); Reinbert de Leeuw, piano
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lagniappe
radio
Happy Birthday, Charles Mingus!
Today it’s all Mingus, all day at WKCR-FM (Columbia University).
He knocked me out with his concept of space, his lightness of touch, his understatement.
Ahmad Jamal Trio (AJ [1930-], piano; Israel Crosby [1919-1962], bass; Vernel Fournier [1928-2000], drums), “Excerpts From The Blues” (not “Ahmad’s Blues”), TV show, 1959
two takes
Julius Eastman (1940-1990), Evil Nigger (1979)
Julius Eastman, Frank Ferko, Janet Kattas, Patricia Martin, pianos; live, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.), 1980 (Unjust Malaise, New World Records, 2005)
*****
Jace Clayton, electronics; David Friend & Emily Manzo, pianos (The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, New Amsterdam Records, 2013)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Today’s composer, because of his problematical historical inheritance, has become totally isolated and self-absorbed. Those composers who have gained some measure of success through isolation and self-absorption will find that outside of the loft door the state of the composer in general and their state in particular is still as ineffectual as ever. The composer must become the total musician, not only a composer. To be only a composer is not enough.
*****
reading table
Ecstasy affords/the occasion and expediency determines the form.
—Marianne Moore (1887-1972), “The Past is the Present”
never enough
Von Freeman, tenor saxophone (1923-2012, MCOTD Hall of Famer); Jodie Christian (1932-2012), piano; Rufus Reid (1944-), bass; Jack DeJohnette (1942-), drums; “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” (E. Maschwitz & M. Sherwin), live, Harrisburg, Penn., 1994
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Your sound is who you are; it is what makes you different from me and any other saxophonist. We all have the same 12 notes. The only thing that differentiates us, one from the other, is our tone. If you don’t have a sound you can play a thousand notes and no one will hear you, but if you have a sound you can play only one note and everyone will hear you.
Jose James, “Do You Feel”
Live, KCRW Berkeley Street Session, Santa Monica, 12/17/12
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
R&B?
Jazz?
Pop?
We need a new vocabulary—or maybe none at all.
Feel like floating?
Steve Reich (1936-), Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76)
eighth blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, et al., live, Chicago, 2011
Rock drummers trying to play jazz usually sound like, well, rock drummers trying to play jazz. Jazz drummers trying to play rock are no different; they typically sound like tourists pretending to be natives. This guy, no matter the idiom (rock, jazz, gospel, whatever), sounds right at home.
Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band, live, Chicago, 3/14/13
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lagniappe
reading table
Maybe we think that nirvana is a place where there are no problems, no more delusions. Maybe we think nirvana is something very beautiful, something unattainable. We always think nirvana is something very different from our own life. But we must really understand that it is right here, right now.
—Taizan Maezumi, Appreciate Your Life (2001)
music clip of the day 