old stuff
The great thing about the 21st century is that it’s so easy to leave.
Count Basie Orchestra (Don Byas, tenor saxophone; Harry “Sweets” Edison and Buck Clayton, trumpets; Freddie Green, guitar; Jo Jones, drums, et al.), “Dance of the Gremlins,” “Swingin’ the Blues,” 1941
passings
David S. Ware, saxophonist, composer, bandleader
November 7, 1949-October 18, 2012
“Mikuro’s Blues,” live, Europe, 200?*
*****
Live, Lithuania (Vilnius), 2007*
**********
lagniappe
reading table
“Variations On A Text By Vallejo”
By Donald Justice (1925-2004)
Me moriré en Paris con aguacero …
I will die in Miami in the sun,
On a day when the sun is very bright,
A day like the days I remember, a day like other days,
A day that nobody knows or remembers yet,
And the sun will be bright then on the dark glasses of strangers
And in the eyes of a few friends from my childhood
And of the surviving cousins by the graveside,
While the diggers, standing apart, in the still shade of the palms,
Rest on their shovels, and smoke,
Speaking in Spanish softly, out of respect.
I think it will be on a Sunday like today,
Except that the sun will be out, the rain will have stopped,
And the wind that today made all the little shrubs kneel down;
And I think it will be a Sunday because today,
When I took out this paper and began to write,
Never before had anything looked so blank,
My life, these words, the paper, the gray Sunday;
And my dog, quivering under a table because of the storm,
Looked up at me, not understanding,
And my son read on without speaking, and my wife slept.
Donald Justice is dead. One Sunday the sun came out,
It shone on the bay, it shone on the white buildings,
The cars moved down the street slowly as always, so many,
Some with their headlights on in spite of the sun,
And after awhile the diggers with their shovels
Walked back to the graveside through the sunlight,
And one of them put his blade into the earth
To lift a few clods of dirt, the black marl of Miami,
And scattered the dirt, and spat,
Turning away abruptly, out of respect.
*****
*With Matthew Shipp (piano), William Parker (bass), Guillermo Brown (drums).
only rock ’n’ roll
The Ex & Brass Unbound,* live, Dublin, 2010
**********
lagniappe
last night
He read at the Art Institute of Chicago, where I sat rapt and happy.
Seamus Heaney, “Postscript,” Dublin, 2011
*****
*Mats Gustafsson (baritone saxophone), Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone), Wolter Wierbos (trombone), Roy Paci (trumpet).
Some folks sing with their feet.
Duke Ellington Orchestra, Bunny Briggs (dance), Jon Hendricks (vocal), “David Danced Before the Lord with All His Might,” live, San Francisco (Grace Cathedral), 1965
**********
lagniappe
reading table
And David danced before the Lord with all his might . . .
—2 Samuel 6:14 (King James)
bloodlines
Ravi Coltrane (JC’s son), tenor saxophone; Matt Garrison, bass (son of Coltrane bassist Jimmy Garrison); Nikki Glaspie, drums; live (Le Poisson Rouge), New York, 1/7/12
shhhh . . .
Joe McPhee, “Old Eyes” (for Ornette Coleman), live, New York, 2009
old stuff
Count Basie Orchestra (feat. Jimmy Rushing [vocals] & Herschel Evans [tenor saxophone]), “When My Dreamboat Comes Home,” live (radio broadcast), New York (Savoy Ballroom, Harlem), 1937
The other day, driving to Rockford for a hearing in a murder case, listening to this for the first time, I couldn’t quit hitting the repeat button: “and once again the fields of gloom are adroitly plowed under.”
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
What music from today will folks be listening to in 2087?
earthy (horns) + ethereal (vibes) = enthralling
Peter Brötzmann (saxophones, tarogato) and Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), live, New York (Le Poisson Rouge), 9/5/12
Part 1
***
Part 2
***
Part 3
***
Tonight these guys will be at the Hideout, a little club on Chicago’s near northwest side, which is where I’ll be too.
**********
lagniappe
reading table
Four trees – upon a solitary Acre –
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action –
Maintain –The Sun – upon a Morning meets them –
The Wind –
No nearer Neighbor – have they –
But God –The Acre gives them – Place –
They – Him – Attention of Passer by –
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply –
Or Boy –What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature –
What Plan
They severally – retard – or further –
Unknown –—Emily Dickinson
love it or hate it
Fire Room (Ken Vandermark, reeds; Lasse Marhaug, electronics; Paal Nilssen-Love, percussion), live, Poland (Poznań), 2011
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
What Emily Dickinson says of poetry applies to music too: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
Happy (100th) Birthday, John!
John Cage, composer, September 5, 1912-August 12, 1992
Today, celebrating his centennial, we revisit past clips.
*****
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
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music is a means of rapid transportation.
***
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.
***
As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
—John Cage
*****
5/22/10
Here’s a piece that sounds different every time you hear it.
John Cage, 4’ 33” (1952); David Tudor, piano
lagniappe
***
*****
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.
***
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
*****
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)
**********
lagniappe
musical thoughts
Every something is an echo of nothing.
—John Cage, Silence (1961)
*****
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
*****
lagniappe (new stuff)
radio
Today it’s all Cage all day at WKCR-FM.
***
art beat: more from Sunday’s stop at the Art Institute of Chicago
Agnes Martin, Untitled #12, 1977 (detail)
***
another birthday, closer to home
Today also marks the birthday of MCOTD—our third.
music clip of the day 