Saturday, December 29th
sounds of London
NÉRIJA, “The Fisherman,” live (studio), 2016
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: trombone
2018
Tuesday, October 23rd
like nobody else
Rahsaan Roland Kirk (tenor saxophone, clarinet, etc. [1935-1977]) and the Vibration Society (Dick Griffin, trombone; Ron Burton, piano; Vernon Martin, bass; Jerome Cooper, drums; Joe Texidor, percussion), live, Paris, 1970
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
reading table
All the people at the controls are opportunists or gangsters. The sweetness of reason died out of our public life with FDR. There doesn’t even seem to be a normal intelligence at work in the affairs of the nation.
—Tennessee Williams, letter to publisher James Laughlin, April 9, 1947
2018
Tuesday, March 27th
How about two minutes of joy?
Felix Quartet (Michael Moore, alto saxophone; Wolter Weirbos, trombone; Wilbert de Joode, bass; Michael Vatcher, drums), live, 2017
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lagniappe
reading table
That gorgeous kite
rising
from the beggar’s shack.—Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1827 (translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
2017
Tuesday, September 12th
Sometimes a simple melody can be more than enough.
Frank Lacy and 10³²K (FL, trombone; Kevin Ray, bass; Andrew Drury, percussion), “I’ll Be Right Here Waiting” (S. McCall), live, Troy, N.Y., 2016
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lagniappe
reading table
from the mist
stinging insects
emerge—Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1827 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
2017
Thursday, May 11th
timeless
James P. Johnson (piano), Sidney DeParis (trumpet), Vic Dickenson (trombone), Ben Webster (tenor saxophone), Jimmy Shirley (guitar), John Simmons (bass), Sidney Catlett (drums), “After You’ve Gone” (T. Layton, M. Harris), 1944
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lagniappe
reading table
Your actual experience is a complete flux.
—Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
2017
Thursday, March 9th
MCOTD Hall of Fame
William Parker’s In Order To Survive (WP, bass, composition; Hamid Drake, drums, MCOTD Hall of Fame;* Lewis Barnes, trumpet; Rob Brown, alto saxophone; Cooper-Moore, piano), “Criminals in the White House,” live, New York, 2013
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lagniappe
radio
Today—his birthday—it’s all Ornette Coleman all day on WKCR-FM (Columbia University).
*****
*With saxophonists Von Freeman and Henry Threadgill; trumpeter Lester Bowie; gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates; composer Morton Feldman; poets John Berryman, William Bronk, and Wislawa Szymborska; and photographer Helen Levitt.
2016
Saturday, July 30th
keep on dancing
M.A.K.U. SoundSystem, live (TV show), New York, 2016
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.
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.
***
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.
***
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
*****
the beat goes on
2,300 posts—and counting.
2016
Wednesday, March 16th
sounds of joy
Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra, “Lavoro” (S. Bergin, borrowing from “Moten Swing”), live, Amsterdam, 2013
Joyful? Yes. But sad, too. Pianist (and cofounder) Misha Mengelberg’s encroaching dementia, which has since sidelined him altogether, provides a poignant counterpoint.
