music clip of the day

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Category: piano

2012

Sunday, 4/8/12

Aretha testifies

Aretha Franklin, “Surely God Is Able,” live, Detroit, 1990

More? Here. And here. And here. And here.

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lagniappe

random thoughts: Marcel Proust (or is it Samuel Beckett?) on Opening Day

You look forward to it like a birthday party when you’re a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.

Actually, it’s Joe DiMaggio. But for Joltin’ Joe, like Marvelous Marcel and Slammin’ Sammy, life consists largely of “look[ing] forward” to things, “wonderful” things—things that seldom, if ever, actually “happen.” Just ask the Cubs: going into the eighth inning of Thursday’s opener, they were winning 1-0; they lost 2-1.

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2012

Friday, 4/6/12

Happy (75th) Birthday, Merle!

Merle Haggard, live

“Lonesome Fugitive,” Buck Owens Ranch Show, 1966

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“Working Man Blues,” Austin City Limits, 1978

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“Today I Started Loving You Again,” with Tammy Wynette, England (Wemberly), 1988

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2012

Tuesday, 4/3/12

One singer’s garbage is another’s gold.

Nina Simone, “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life” (adapted from Hair)
Live, New York (Harlem Cultural Festival), 1969

More? Here. And here.

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lagniappe

yesterday

Listening to the radio, where they were talking about post-war modernist architecture, I learned a new term for people my age: “mid-century.”

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2012

Wednesday, 3/28/12

What better experience for playing with the Velvet Underground, whose mentor, Andy Warhol, once observed “the channels switch, but it’s all television,” than to appear on I’ve Got a Secret?

I’ve Got a Secret (Garry Moore, host; John Cale, guest), 1963

The piece he plays at the end, Vexations, was composed in the early 1890s by Erik Satie.

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lagniappe

MCOTD’s granddog, and muse, Roscoe

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2012

Saturday, 3/17/12

Listening to this is like surfing: the trick is to catch a wave and ride it.

Charles Gayle Trio,* live, New York (Knitting Factory), 1996

Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3

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Part 4

More? Here.

*Charles Gayle (piano, tenor saxophone), Gerald Benson (bass), Gerald Cleaver (drums).

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2012

Tuesday, 3/13/12

Music doesn’t care who you are, where you come from, what you know. It asks only that you pay attention.

Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), Piece in Three Parts for Piano and Sixteen Instruments (1961), Peter Serkin (piano), Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Oliver Knussen, cond.)

More? Here.

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2012

Thursday, 3/8/12

John Cage, Two (1987)

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

*****

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

More? Here. And here.

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Every something is an echo of nothing.

—John Cage, Silence (1961)

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2012

Monday, 3/5/12

Has there ever been a finer hour of jazz—of music—on TV?

The Sound of Jazz (CBS), 1957*

(A couple excerpts have been posted previously—here and here—but until the other day I’d never seen the whole show.)

*With Count Basie (piano), Thelonious Monk (piano), Billie Holiday (vocals), Jimmy Rushing (vocals), Coleman Hawkins (tenor saxophone), Ben Webster (tenor saxophone), Lester Young (tenor saxophone), Gerry Mulligan (baritone saxophone), Jimmy Giuffre (tenor saxophone, clarinet), Pee Wee Ellis (clarinet), Henry “Red” Allen (trumpet), Roy Eldridge (trumpet), Vic Dickenson (trombone), Danny Barker (guitar), Freddie Green (guitar), Jim Hall (guitar), Milt Hinton (bass), Jo Jones (drums), et al.

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2012

Sunday, 3/4/12

going back home

Davis Sisters, “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home”
TV Gospel Time (introduced by Brother Joe May), early 1960s

More? Here. And here.

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lagniappe

Here’s a secular take.

John Lee Hooker, “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home” (That’s My Story: John Lee Hooker Sings The Blues, 1960)

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reading table

Home is never what you think it is.

Meaning lies in meaning’s absence. The mist
Is always just about to lift.

—J. Allyn Rosser, “Sugar Dada” (excerpt)

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2012

Monday, 2/27/12

protean, adj. 1. Of or resembling Proteus in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms. 2. Displaying great diversity or variety. E.g., Miles Davis.

Miles Davis Quintet (MD, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums), “I Fall In Love Too Easily,” live, Germany (Karlsruhe), 1967

More? Here. And here. And here.

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lagniappe

last night

There’s something in nothing, and we’ll never know what it is.

—Susan Howe, poet, after a performance of Frolic Architecture with composer and musician David Grubbs at the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel

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