-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
This guy sounded so good the other day—let’s hear some more.
B.B. King with T-Bone Walker, “Bad News”/“Sweet Sixteen”
Live, Monterey Jazz Festival (Monterey, California), 9/16/1967
Joseph Haydn, Piano Sonata No. 24 in D major, excerpt (2nd Movement)
Sviatoslav Richter, live
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart.
—Sviatoslav Richter
*****
reading table
After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no taxes to Caesar.I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.—Tomas Transtromer (winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature), “Allegro,” trans. from the Swedish by Robert Bly
*****
clear, adj. bright, luminous, transparent. E.g., Wadada Leo Smith’s trumpet playing.
Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), live, London (Cafe Oto), 9/5/11
A performance like this opens up, I’ve found, once you quit trying to find
a foothold.
No one could convince me, when I’m listening to the clarinet, that any instrument is more beautiful.
Shabaka Hutchings, clarinet, with Kit Downes, keyboards; John Edwards, bass; Mark Sanders, drums; Leafcutter John, electronics; live, London (St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate), 7/14/11
Vodpod videos no longer available.Great music, unlike great food, doesn’t fill you up.
It leaves you wanting more.
Bach, Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826
Martha Argerich, piano, live, Switzerland (Verbier Festival), 2008
Part 1
Vodpod videos no longer available.
***
Part 2
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Bach? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here.
**********
reading table
Last night, opening a book at random, I came upon this—another reminder that Emily Dickinson, surely one of my desert-island writers, takes a backseat to no one when it comes to strangeness.
I see thee better — in the Dark —
I do not need a Light —
The Love of Thee — a Prism be —
Excelling Violet —I see thee better for the Years
That hunch themselves between —
The Miner’s Lamp — sufficient be —
To nullify the Mine —And in the Grave — I see Thee best —
Its little Panels be
Aglow — All ruddy — with the Light
I held so high, for Thee —What need of Day —
To those whose Dark — hath so — surpassing Sun —
It deem it be — Continually —
At the Meridian?—Emily Dickinson
Happy Birthday, Thelonious!
Thelonious Monk, composer, pianist, bandleader
October 10, 1917-February 17, 1982
Monk’s music—its exquisite mix of logic and lyricism—sometimes makes me think of Mozart.
“’Round Midnight” (AKA “’Round About Midnight”) (T. Monk)
Take 1: Bill Evans Trio (BE, piano; Eddie Gomez, bass; Marty Morrell, drums), live, Sweden, 1970
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Take 2: Don Pullen (piano), rec. 1984 (Don Pullen Plays Monk)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Take 3: Milt Jackson (vibes), live, Japan, 1990
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Monk? Here. And here. And here. And here.
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
If it wasn’t for music, man, life wouldn’t be nothing—it’s all about music.
—Thelonious Monk
*****
Sonny Rollins talks about Monk:
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
radio
All Monk, all day: WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).
It’s easy to forget, sometimes, just how great somebody could be.
B.B. King, “How Blue Can You Get?”
Live, Sing Sing Prison (Ossining, New York), 1972
**********
lagniappe
last night
W. S. Merwin, who just finished a term as U.S. Poet Laureate, gave a reading at Chicago’s downtown library, where he talked about this and that:
The English language is a great dump. Everything that has come into it has stayed there.
***
Poetry begins . . . with listening.
***
I wanted to be open . . . to anything that sounded like poetry.
***
To animals the meaning is the sound—and that’s pretty close to poetry.
***
Time is one of the great human fictions.
***
Many of the most important things we do are not calculated. They take us by surprise.
***
What the arts are made of is nothing but pure attention.
*****
radio
Happy (100th) Birthday, Papa Jo! WCKR-FM’s Centennial Festival, mentioned Monday, continues until noon tomorrow.
serendipity
The other night, as I listened to the radio,* this (“Patient Observation”) floated out of the speakers.
Falling From Trees, Neon Productions, music by Peter Broderick
Premiered at The Place, London, 1/09
Excerpt, Part 2, “Patient Observation”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Full Length
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Falling From Trees is a 30-minute production set in a psychiatric hospital that delves into the mind of a resident patient. The piece explores how a neurological disease can alter your sense of self and relationship to the world and people around you. Peter Broderick’s score has been created solely on piano and strings; it is also the first time Broderick has created music specifically for dance.
*Mudd Up! with DJ/Rupture, WFMU-FM, Monday, 8 p.m. (EST), archived shows here
music clip of the day 