piano | music clip of the day

Category: piano

Wednesday, 9/5/12

Happy (100th) Birthday, John!

John Cage, composer, September 5, 1912-August 12, 1992

Today, celebrating his centennial, we revisit past clips.

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10/9/09

No matter where you are, this landscape is just around the corner.

John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948); Stephen Drury, piano

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Music is a means of rapid transportation.

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What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude—that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.

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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

—John Cage

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5/22/10

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

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

lagniappe

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musical thoughts

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.

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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

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3/8/12

John Cage, Two (1987)

Live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 2009
Dante Boon (piano), Rutger van Otterloo (soprano saxophone)

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Recording, 1991 (hat Art)
Marianne Schroeder (piano), Eberhard Blum (flute)

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Every something is an echo of nothing.

—John Cage, Silence (1961)

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7/23/12

Monday, n. the day the weekly tide of confusion rolls in.

How about something simple?

John Cage (1912-1992), Six Melodies (for violin and keyboard; dedicated to Josef & Anni Albers), 1950; Annelie Gahl (violin) & Klaus Lang (electric piano), 2010

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lagniappe (new stuff)

radio

Today it’s all Cage all day at WKCR-FM.

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art beat: more from Sunday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago

Agnes Martin, Untitled #12, 1977 (detail)

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another birthday, closer to home

Today also marks the birthday of MCOTD—our third.

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Tuesday, 9/4/12

You don’t need to be asleep to be lost in a dream.

Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto in G Major (1929-31); Martha Argerich, piano; Orchestre National de France (Charles Dutoit, cond.); live, Germany (Frankfurt), 1990

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Thursday, 8/30/12

playing this weekend at the Chicago Jazz Festival

Matt Wilson’s Arts & Crafts* (Sunday, 3:30 p.m.)
“We See” (T. Monk), live, New York, 2011

(Paul Motian, this guy—drummers seem to have a particular feeling for Monk.)

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Steve Coleman and Five Elements** (Sunday, 7:10 p.m.)
Live, New York, 2010

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Ken Vandermark’s Made To Break Quartet*** (Sunday, 2:20 p.m.)
Live, Barcelona, 2011

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*MW, drums; Terell Stafford, trumpet; Gary Versace, piano; Martin Wind, bass.

**SC, alto saxophone; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; Tim Albright, trombone; Miles Okazaki, guitar; David Virelles, piano; Thomas Morgan, bass; Marcus Gilmore, drums.

***KV, reeds; Christof Kurzmann, electronics; Devin Hoff, bass; Tim Daisy, drums.

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Thursday, 8/23/12

Music, for some people, is no less vital than oxygen.

James Rhodes, talking and playing (2010)

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lagniappe

reading table

To Praise the Music
by William Bronk (1918-1999)

Evening. The trees in late winter bare
against the sky. Still light, the sky.
Trees dark against it. A few leaves
on the trees. Tension in their rigid branches as if
–oh, it is all as if, but as if, yes,
as if they sang songs, as if they praised.
Oh, I envy them. I know the songs.

As if I know some other things besides.
As if; but I don’t know, not more
than to say the trees know. The trees don’t know
and neither do I. What is it keeps me from praise?
I praise. If only to say their songs,
say yes to them, to praise the songs they sing.
Envied music. I sing to praise their song.

(Want to hear Bronk, a MCOTD Hall of Famer, read this? Here.)

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art beat: more from Tuesday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago

Roy Lichtenstein, Mirror #3 (Six Panels) (1971)

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2012

Friday, 8/17/12

two takes

“Moment’s Notice” (J. Coltrane)

McCoy Tyner Quartet (MT, piano; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Charnett Moffett, bass; Eric Harland, drums), live, England, 2002

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John Coltrane (tenor saxophone, with Lee Morgan trumpet; Curtis Fuller, trombone; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums), recording (Blue Train), 1957

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lagniappe

random thoughts

Hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, tasting: what sense is missing from our repertoire that, if you came from some other world, you couldn’t imagine living without?

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2012

Monday, 8/13/12

A lot of musicians sound like they’re perfectly happy to be right where they are. Not this guy—he seems intent on getting somewhere else.

Art Pepper (alto saxophone), with Milcho Leviev (piano), Tony Dumas (bass), Carl Burnett, drums; “Caravan,” conversation, and more; Norway, 1980

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2012

Sunday, 8/12/12

back to church

“Sending Up My Timber,” Male Choir, Macedonia Baptist Church, North Carolina, c. 2008

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2012

Saturday, 8/11/12

Sometimes what you’re looking for—when, say, your hard drive crashes (as mine just did)—is something where not much seems to happen, beautifully.

John Luther Adams, “The Farthest Place” (2001); piano (Clint Davis), vibraphone (Brian Archinal & Andy Bliss) bass (Satoru Tagawa), violin (Lydia Kabalen); University of Kentucky (Lexington), 2008