Why not start the week with something strange?
Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), Tetras (1983); JACK Quartet, live, Philadelphia, 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
Trust in the Unexpected —
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), #561 (Franklin)
Two voices in the dark, singing.
Mat Maneri (viola), Daniel Levin (cello), live, Rome, 2015
string festival
day four
Alfred Schnittke (1934-98), Piano Quintet (1972-76), live (Katya Apekisheva, piano; Boris Brovtsyn, Julia-Maria Kretz, violins; Amihai Grosz, viola; Torleif Thedéen, cello), Netherlands, 2010
string festival
day three
Wolfgang Rihm (1952-), String Quartet No. 13
Arditti Quartet, live, London, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
One peers down into regions where one’s feet would never, never have trod, because in certain regions, indeed in most, one has no purpose whatever.
—Robert Walser (1878-1956), “Balloon Journey,” 1914 (translated from German by Christopher Middleton)
string festival
day two
Leroy Jenkins (1932-2007), violin and viola, live, Atlanta, 1999
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lagniappe
random thoughts
What will the world be like the first day you are no longer in it? The second? The third?
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), Rothko Chapel (1971); Seattle Modern Orchestra (with Julia Tai, conductor; Melia Watras, viola; Stephen Olsen, celesta; Brian Yarkovsky, percussion; Sarah Marroquin, soprano), live, Seattle, 2012
Today Morton Feldman enters the MCOTD Hall of Fame, joining saxophonists Von Freeman and Henry Threadgill, trumpeter Lester Bowie, poets William Bronk and Wislawa Szymborska, photographer Helen Levitt, and gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates.
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lagniappe
reading table
This performance reminds me at times of Emily Dickinson:
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
Between the Heaves of Storm——No. 591 (Johnson), “I heard a Fly buzz”
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art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Jean-Luc Mylayne (1946-), No. 560, 2008 (Mutual Regard, through August 23rd)
astonishing
Lee Hyla (1952-2014), String Quartet No. 4 (1999); Spektral Quartet, live, Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.), 2011
Need a jolt?
Felipe Lara (1979-), Corde Vocale (2006)
Mivos Quartet, live (studio performance), New York, 2013
This I listened to for the first time yesterday. Then I listened again. And again.
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lagniappe
radio
Tuesday is the centennial of Billie Holiday’s birth and WKCR (Columbia University) is celebrating in the best possible way, featuring her music all day tomorrow and, because twenty-four hours just aren’t enough, the next day too.
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taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back in a while.
otherworldly
Turgut Ercetin (1983-), String Quartet No. 1 (“December”); The Jack Quartet, live, Stanford University, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
Lacan said that there was surely something ironic about Christ’s injunction to love thy neighbour as thyself—because actually, of course, people hate themselves.
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We know almost nothing about ourselves because we judge ourselves before we have a chance to see ourselves.
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Self-criticism is an unforbidden pleasure: we seem to relish the way it makes us suffer.
—Adam Phillips, “Against Self-Criticism,” London Review of Books, 3/5/15
music clip of the day 