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Category: saxophone

2016

Friday, June 10th

voices I miss

Albert Collins (1932-1993), live, Switzerland (Montreux), 1979


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lagniappe

art beat: other day, Art Institute of Chicago 

Aaron Siskind (1903-1991), Chicago 28 1957 (Abstractions, through 8/14/16)

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tonight in Chicago

The Chicago Blues Festival celebrates the 45th anniversary of Alligator Records, where, in the ’70s, barely out of college, I had the good fortune to co-produce recordings by Albert Collins, Koko Taylor, Son Seals, Fenton Robinson, Jimmy Johnson, Carey Bell, et al.

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2016

Thursday, June 2nd

sounds of Chicago and Oslo

Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone), Paal Nilssen-Love (percussion), “Song for Terrie,” live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 5/26/16


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lagniappe

random sights

this morning, Oak Park, Ill.

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A big birthday shout-out to my brother Don, my first listening companion. All these years later, the basement jukebox still plays: “Wake Up Little Susie” (Everly Brothers) . . .”North to Alaska” (Johnny Horton) . . .”(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” (Gene Pitney) . . . Hear it?

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2016

Tuesday, May 31st

Need a lift?

Angelika Niescier (alto saxophone), Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Florian Weber (piano), Chris Tordini (bass), Tyshawn Sorey (drums), “The Barn Thing” (A. Niescier), live, Germany (Krefeld), 2013


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lagniappe

art beat: other day, Art Institute of Chicago 

Aaron Siskind (1903-1991), Martha’s Vineyard Rocks 127B 1954 (Abstractions, through 8/14/16)

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2016

Monday, May 30th

Vancouver folkie + iconic Memphis rhythm section.

This should never have worked.

But it does, wonderfully.

Frazey Ford, “September Fields” (Indian Ocean), 2014


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lagniappe

reading table

The climate is pretty.
I wrote everything on it.
That’s the activity where it
gets relatively inauspicious.

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And you were sitting there
in the night of life. It sure was good.
My favorite desserts were there.
And when they invite you, it’s like an important document
goes missing. I’ll give you an example:
a twelve-year struggle upstate, in
the slick atmosphere of the breakfast room.
It might have gotten stuck in her farthingale.

Otherwise no reply.

—John Ashbery (1927-), “As Someone Who Likes Travel,” fragments (New Yorker, 5/30/16)

To read Ashbery is to read English as a foreign language—which I mean as a compliment.

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2016

Wednesday, May 25th

Unfailing clarity, lyricism—how apt to hear him shortly after Mozart.

Sonny Rollins, live (“On Green Dolphin Street,” “St. Thomas,” “Four”), Denmark, 1968*


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lagniappe

reading table

dripping from the flower vendor’s
display
morning dew

—Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1828 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)

*****

*With Kenny Drew (piano), Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen (bass), Albert “Tootie” Heath (drums).

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2016

Saturday, May 21st

tonight in Chicago

They’ll be playing at the Art Institute, where I’ll be listening.

Peter Brotzmann (tenor saxophone), Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), Steve Noble (drums), live, London, 2014


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lagniappe

random sights

other day, Chicago (outside the Art Institute)

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2016

Thursday, May 12th

sounds of New York

Music is, in part, a function of place. Can you imagine these sounds coming out of San Diego?

Charles Gayle Trio (CG, tenor saxophone, piano; Larry Roland, bass; Michael Wimberly, drums), live, Germany (Cologne), 2012


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lagniappe

reading table

It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness –

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), 535 (Franklin), fragment

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2016

Tuesday, May 10th

never enough

What do I watch when he’s at the piano? His feet.

Thelonious Monk Quartet (TM, piano, compositions; Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Larry Gales, bass; Ben Riley, drums), live, France (Amiens), 1966


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lagniappe

reading table

Thought forms in the soul in the same way clouds form in the air.

—Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), 1786 (The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, translated from French by Paul Auster)

(Thanks to Orange Crate Art for introducing me to Joubert.)

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2016

Wednesday, April 20th

More.

Henry Threadgill’s Society Situation Dance Band
Live, Germany (Hamburg), 1988

#1


#2


#3


*****

Henry Threadgill and His Very Very Circus
“Too Much Sugar for a Dime,” live, New York, 1995


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lagniappe

random sights

this morning, Oak Park, Ill.

FullSizeRender (66)

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2016

Tuesday, April 19th

MCOTD Hall of Famer—and, as of yesterday, Pulitzer Prize Winner.

Henry Threadgill’s Zooid

Live, Poland (Warsaw), 2011


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Live, New York, 2013


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Live, Washington, D.C., 2013


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lagniappe

musical thoughts

All music is classical music, you know. I don’t put up boundaries on music.

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Of course I started out in an ethnic community, with the blues and church music and jazz. But that was just one place to start. You read fiction then you start reading nonfiction! You start reading biographies and scientific accounts. It doesn’t change where you came from. It just broadens it. That’s what we do, we keep building on the foundation where we come from. You don’t lose it, you just keep building on it.

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I think we’ve gotten used to the dissonant, so it’s not even dissonant any more.

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[W]e have no control over anything but what we do. I just try to stay hopeful: I don’t want to get too pessimistic about anything.

—Henry Threadgill, The Guardian, 4/18/16

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the beat goes on

2,300 posts—and counting.

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