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Category: violin

2013

Tuesday, February 19th

Kidd Jordan Quartet (KJ, tenor saxophone; Billy Bang, violin; William Parker, bass; Hamid Drake, drums), New York (Vision Festival), 2008

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

We tend to take musical instruments for granted, as if their existence were inevitable. But the fact that something exists doesn’t mean it had to. We could’ve been born into a world that never heard a violin.

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reading table

“What kind of heaven is that, you can’t have your records?”

—Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

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2013

Monday, February 18th

yesterday afternoon 

I took a journey that began in late 18th-century Austria, proceeded to mid-20th-century Russia, and concluded in early 20th-century France. Joseph Haydn, Dmitri Shostakovich, Maurice Ravel—they were the hosts. These folks, playing at the University of Chicago’s new Logan Arts Center, were the guides. If one day I learned that my life would be over at midnight, I’d be happy to spend the afternoon, after lunching at a Mexican restaurant (maybe Nuevo Leon on 18th Street), listening to a string quartet.

Pacifica Quartet, New York, 2009; Leo Janacek (1854-1928), String Quartet No. 2 (“Intimate Letters”), first movement

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2013

Saturday, February 16th

alone

Johann Sebastian Bach, Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, 2nd movement (fugue)
Henryk Szeryng (1918-1988), violin


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lagniappe

musical thoughts

A world where Bach could be heard via the internet by anyone, anywhere, anytime, could seem, so long as other things were overlooked, a paradise.

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From an interview with composer and conductor Pierre Boulez:

Q. What is the main problem with young conducting students?

A. They think too much or too little.

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2013

Saturday, 1/26/13

last night

I heard these guys at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, where the program ranged from Felix Mendelssohn to John Zorn.

Philip Glass, Mishima (1984-85, excerpt); Brooklyn Rider, New York, 2006

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2013

Monday, 1/21/13

last night

I went back to Northwestern’s Pick-Staiger Hall—they’re in the midst of a Winter Chamber Music Festival—where I heard this string quartet, along with this clarinetist, play this piece.

Aaron Jay Kernis (1960-), Perpetual Chaconne (2012); Calder Quartet with John Bruce Yeh (clarinet), 2012

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

When we go out to hear live music, we realize, again, something that seldom occurs to us when we listen at home: the world, in its messy unpredictability, its insistent particularity, is way more interesting than we are.

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the music of words

Martin Luther King, Jr., Shreveport, La. (Galilee Baptist Church), 1958

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2013

Saturday, 1/19/13

last night

I heard these folks at Northwestern University’s Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, where they played another piece by this composer (Last Round), a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient.

Osvaldo Golijov, Tenebrae; A Far Cry, Boston, 2011

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lagniappe

Here’s another take (four players, no conversation).

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musical thoughts

Nobody sits down and thinks, “I’m going to create some classical music.”

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2012

Saturday, 12/15/12

A reader writes:

Dear Richard:

I think you should check out the YouTube link below. From Dore Stein who is the host of a great radio show on Sat. nights on the SF United School District’s radio station, KALW.

Melos: Mediterranean Songs (filmed in Tunisia and Germany, 2011)*

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taking a break

I’m taking some time off—back in a while.

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*With Dorsaf Hamdani & Ensemble (Tunisia), En Chordais (Greece), Juan Carmona & Ensemble (Spain), Keyvan Chemirani (France/Iran), et al.

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2012

Wednesday, 11/7/12

post-election special

Weary of words?

John Luther Adams, The Light That Fills the World (chamber version, revised 2001), excerpt

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lagniappe

art beat: Saturday at the Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Strand, The Court, New York (1924)
Film and Photo in New York (through 11/25/12)

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2012

Thursday, 11/1/12

Forget harps—my heaven’s full of string quartets.

Franz Schubert, String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (“Death and the Maiden,” 1824), excerpt (mvt. 2), Takacs Quartet, live, Scotland (outside Edinburgh), 1998

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2012

Wednesday, 10/24/12

The last band I heard with this lineup—trumpet, violin, accordion, bass—was, uh, let’s see . . .

Dave Douglas (trumpet), Charms of the Night Sky*
Live, Germany (Frankfurt), 1999

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

I am moved by more music now than I have ever been. Trying to see it from a wider and deeper perspective only makes it clear that the lake itself is wider and deeper than we thought.

—David Byrne, How Music Works (2012)

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*With Mark Feldman (violin), Guy Klucevsek (accordion), Greg Cohen (bass).

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