Lei Liang (1972-), Ascension (for brass quintet and percussion, 2008); Andy Kozar (trumpet), Gareth Flowers (trumpet), David Byrd-Marrow (horn), William Lang (trombone), Dan Peck (tuba), Russell Greenberg (percussion), live, New York, 2016
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.
***
[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’s Zooid,* live, Washington, D.C., 2013
**********
lagniappe
reading table
Nothings’s a Gift
by Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012; translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)
Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
I’m drowning in debts up to my ears.
I’ll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.
Here’s how it’s arranged:
The heart can be repossessed,
the liver, too,
and each single finger and toe.
Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid,
and I’ll be fleeced,
or, more precisely, flayed.
I move about the planet
in a crush of other debtors.
Some are saddled with the burden
of paying off their wings.
Others must, willy-nilly,
account for every leaf.
Every tissue in us lies
on the debit side.
Not a tentacle or tendril
is for keeps.
The inventory, infinitely detailed,
implies we’ll be left
not just empty-handed
but handless too.
I can’t remember
where, when, and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.
We call the protest against this
the soul.
And it’s the only item
not included on the list.
*****
the beat goes on
Two thousand posts—and counting.
*****
*HT (flute, alto saxophone), Liberty Ellman (guitar), Jose Davila (tuba, trombone), Christopher Hoffman (cello), Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums).
Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy (LB, trumpet; Steve Turre, trombone; Frank Lacy, trombone; Bob Stewart, tuba; Phillip Wilson, drums, et al.), live, Berlin, 1986
