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Category: piano

2013

Thursday, March 21st

the other night

I heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with pianist Yefim Bronfman, perform this piece. In The Human Stain Phillip Roth wrote of Bronfman: “Then Bronfman appears. Bronfman the brontosaur! Mr. Fortissimo. Enter Bronfman to play Prokofiev at such a pace and with such bravado as to knock my morbidity clear out of the ring.” Isn’t that what we want from music, one of the things, anyway—to have our “morbidity” “knock[ed] . . . clear out of the ring,” if only for a while, until it creeps back in?

Bela Bartok (1881-1945), Piano Concerto No. 2; Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana (Zoltan Pesko, cond.), Zoltan Kocsis, piano; live, 1995

1st Movement


2nd Movement (A)


2nd Movement (B)


3rd Movement


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lagniappe
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xkwlo2_pierre-boulez-talks-about-bela-bartok-s-music_music#.UUpW0xn_JiU

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2013

Wednesday, March 20th

two takes

It’s spring!

“Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” (T. Wolf & F. Landesman)

Betty Carter (1929-1998), Inside Betty Carter, 1964


*****

Bob Dorough (1923-), Right On My Way Home, 1997


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lagniappe

reading table

spring rain—
the uneaten ducks
are quacking

—Kobayashi Issa, 1813 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)

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2013

Saturday, March 16th

old school

Arthur Conley (1946-2003), “Nothing Can Change This Love” (S. Cooke), live (TV show), Netherlands (Amsterdam), 2001

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2013

Monday, February 25th

two takes

“When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” (I. Hayes & D. Porter)

Sam & Dave, live, Germany (Offenbach), 1967


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Isaac Hayes, TV Show (Top of the Pops), England, 1995


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lagniappe

reading table

“The World Contracted to a Recognizable Image”
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

at the small end of an illness
there was a picture
probably Japanese
which filled my eye

an idiotic picture
except it was all I recognized
the wall lived for me in that picture
I clung to it as a fly

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2013

Wednesday, February 20th

basement jukebox

Magic Sam (AKA Samuel Maghett, 1937-1969), Cobra Records, Chicago

“All Your Love,” 1957

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“Love Me with a Feeling,” 1957

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“Everything Gonna Be Alright,” 1958

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“21 Days In Jail,” 1958

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taking a break

I’m taking some time off—back soon.

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2013

Tuesday, February 12th

a week in New Orleans: day two 

Bon Mardi Gras

Professor Longhair, December 19, 1918-January 30, 1980

“Mardi Gras in New Orleans” (AKA “Go to the Mardi Gras”), 1950


***

“Big Chief”


***

“Tipitina” (with the Meters)

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2013

Thursday, February 7th

1 + 1 = infinity

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), Sonata for Viola (1975); Yuri Bashmet (viola), Ksenia Bashmet (Yuri’s daughter, piano)


This is the last thing Shostakovich composed before he died.

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lagniappe

Here’s another take on the last movement, with a younger Yuri Bashmet and Sviatoslav Richter.

#1


#2

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2013

Tuesday, February 5th

serendipity

This guy I stumbled upon yesterday afternoon, listening to the radio.* It had been a hard weekend; my 88-year-old mother-in-law died Saturday. These were just the sounds I needed, though I didn’t realize it—spare, precise, open.

Jesse Stacken Trio,** “Bagatelle No. 4,” recording session (Bagatelles for Trio, 2012)

*WFMU-FM (Give the Drummer Radio, webstream), Destination: Out.

**JS, piano; Eivind Opsvik, bass; Jeff Davis, drums.

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2013

Monday, February 4th

Miles

Miles Davis Quintet (MD, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano, Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums), live, Europe (Karlsruhe, Germany; Stockholm, Sweden), 1967

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Miles may not be the greatest trumpet player in the history of jazz, but he’s arguably the greatest bandleader. Only someone with supreme self-confidence could do what he did. A brilliant judge of talent, a leader who expected, and enabled, others to flourish, he could seem, at times, the least interesting player in his own band.

*****

reading table

Winter solitude—
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.

—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694, translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)

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2013

Tuesday, 1/22/13

soundtrack of a marriage

On my first date with Suzanne, in 1974, we went to Chicago’s Jazz Showcase (then upstairs on Lincoln, just south of Fullerton), where we saw Sun Ra & His Arkestra. With a start like that, how could one ever go wrong? When we got married, on this date in 1977, Von Freeman played at the wedding, with pianist John Young. Years later John told me: “When I marry ’em, they stay married.”

Sun Ra & His Arkestra, live, Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, 1974

*****

Von Freeman, live (with John Young, piano), “Remember,” Chicago (Jazz Showcase), New Year’s Eve 1983 (according to the clip) or 1979 (according to NPR)

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lagniappe

Want to hear what Von and John sounded like on that cold, snowy night thirty-six years ago, at a church north of Chicago? Here (give it a few seconds). As you’ll hear, they played before, during (the processional was Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood”), and after the ceremony.

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