violin | music clip of the day

Tuesday, 7/24/12

George Lewis (1952-), “Will to Adorn” (2011)
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Chicago, 2012

[W]hen writing “The Will To Adorn,” Lewis was especially “interested in this idea of adornment—color, color, color everywhere.” The piece represents Lewis’ current musical goal to get “more color energy into the pieces.”

—Joe Bucciero, Columbia Spectator, 11/10/11

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

In February, when I left this concert, which took place on a Sunday afternoon at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, I felt both exhilarated and wistful. This performance, which had been such a joy to hear, I would never be able to experience again. Or so I thought, until, just the other day, I discovered this recording online. Young people, many of them, anyway, would see nothing remarkable in being able, thanks to the ’net, to return to a musical experience whenever, and wherever, you want. To me it seems a small miracle.

*****

reading table

I was trying to assert myself as the man in the house, taking charge of things no one could control.

—Richard Ford, Canada (2012)

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2012

Monday, 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

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2012

Wednesday, 6/20/12

bread and circuses

This is my idea of good government.

A Summer Solstice Backyard Parade and Procession

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
[Garfield Park, Chicago]

Featuring Mucca Pazza, the Circus Punk Marching Band, Kaotic Drumline, Oper-a-matic, Food Trucks, and More!

Marching bands, both traditional and unique, will be lining up in our backyard space for a mid-summer’s night march. Chicago’s inspiring community drum corps Kaotic, as well as the fantastic punk rock marching band Mucca Pazza will be parading throughout our backyard spaces, in a non-traditional community parade. Instrument making stations will be stationed throughout the event. Come make your own parade.

*****

Mucca Pazza, live, Evanston (Ill.), 6/30/11

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Kaotic Drumline, 2009

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2012

Sunday, 5/20/12

three takes

“Trials, Troubles, Tribulations” (E.C. Ball)
(AKA “Tribulations”)

Andrew Bird
Live, Nashville (Grimey’s New & Preloved Music), 2009

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Wayne Henderson, Martha Spencer & Jackson Cunningham
Live, Maryland (Rockville), 2010

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E.C. Ball & Lacey Richardson
Recording (Alan Lomax), 1959-60

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lagniappe

listening room: (some of) what’s playing

• Face A Frowning World: An E.C. Ball Memorial Album (Tompkins Square)

• Merle Haggard, If I Could Only Fly (Anti- Records)

• The Canton Spirituals, The Live Experience 1999 (Verity Records)

• Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex & Guests, Moa Anbessa (Terp Records)

• Derek Bailey, Bill Laswell, Tony Williams, Arcana (DIW Records)

• Peter Brotzmann Octet, Machine Gun (FMP)

• Peter Brotzmann Sextet & Quartet, Nipples (Atavistic Records/Unheard Music Series)

• Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967 (Columbia)

• Cecil Taylor European Orchestra, Alms/Tiergarten (Spree) (FMP)

• Alfred Cortot, piano, The Master Pianist (EMI, Icon Series)

• Nathan Milstein, violin, J.S. Bach: Sonatas & Partitas (Deutsche Grammaphon)

• Arnold Schoenberg, Das Klavierwerk, Peter Serkin, piano (Arcana)

• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)

—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)

• WFMU-FM

—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Cherry Blossom Clinic (Terre T, rock, etc.)
—Fool’s Paradise (Rex; “Vintage rockabilly, R & B, blues, vocal groups, garage, instrumentals, hillbilly, soul and surf”)
—Downtown Soulville (Mr. Fine Wine, soul, etc.)

• WHPK-FM (broadcasting from University of Chicago)

—The Blues Excursion (Arkansas Red)

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2012

Wednesday, 5/16/12

It’s easy to play a lot of notes; what’s hard is to play a few.

Jon Hassell (trumpet), “Last Night The Moon Came,” live, Switzerland (Lausanne), 2009

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lagniappe

reading table

Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.

—Mitzuta Masahide, 1657-1723 (translated from Japanese by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto)

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2012

Wednesday, 5/9/12

If I knew I had a week to live (as someday I will, whether I know it or not), this is one of the things I’d want to hear.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Chaconne in D minor for solo violin (Partita for Violin No. 2 [BWV 1004]); Isaac Stern (violin), live

Another take?

Here (Nathan Milstein).

And here (Gidon Kremer).

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.

—Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann (translated from German)

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2012

Thursday, 4/26/12

Not even with all the fingers on all the hands of all the people in the city of Chicago could you count the possibilities offered by just three instruments.

Gyorgy Ligeti, Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982); Tomas Major (violin), Zora Sloka (horn), Denes Varjon (piano), 2009

Part 1

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Part 2

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lagniappe

art beat: Sunday at the Art Institute of Chicago

Robert Rauschenberg, Short Circuit, 1955

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2012

Friday, 4/20/12

passings

Levon Helm, drummer, singer, songwriter, actor, etc.
May 26, 1940-April 19, 2012

Live, 2/12, Woodstock, NY (Levon’s home)

“Ophelia”

***

“The Weight”

*****

“When I Go Away,” recording (Electric Dirt, 2009)

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lagniappe

Levon Helm will always hold a special place in my heart. He was as great of an actor as a musician. For me watching him play the role of my daddy in Coal Miner’s Daughter is a memory I will always treasure.

—Loretta Lynn

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When I heard The Band’s Music from Big Pink, their music changed my life. And Levon was a big part of that band. Nigel Olson, my drummer, will tell you that every drummer that heard him was influenced by him. He was the greatest drummer and a wonderful singer and just a part of my life that was magical. They once flew down to see me in Philadelphia and I couldn’t believe it. They were one of the greatest bands of all time. They really changed the face of music when their records came out. I had no idea he was sick so I’m very dismayed and shocked that he died so quickly. But now my son [Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John] has his name.

—Elton John

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He was my bosom buddy friend to the end, one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation. This is just so sad to talk about. I still can remember the first day I met him and the last day I saw him. We go back pretty far and had been through some trials together. I’m going to miss him, as I’m sure a whole lot of others will too.

—Bob Dylan

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2012

Monday, 4/16/12

two takes

“Honky Tonk Man” (J. Horton, et al.)

Dwight Yoakam
Live, mid-1980s

*****

Johnny Horton
Recording (Billboard Hot Country Singles, #9), 1956

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lagniappe

reading table

Hank Williams . . . was essentially the first rock star. He was a hillbilly singer, but he was a rock star. As Chet Atkins said, the year that Elvis hit, it ruined country music. Because they had rural America and southern America’s teenage audience. And then they couldn’t keep them. Elvis had changed everything.

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I was a Monkees kid. For a ten-year-old like myself, the Monkees were a cultural access point that the Beatles weren’t. I was an oldest kid, teaching myself, and the Beatles were a bit beyond my grasp. Television delivers the Monkees to me in a different way; A Hard Day’s Night was not on TV in 1965. . . . The Monkees . . . came inside my living room, and there was a familiarity that allowed me to really understand what this new thing was. I had the first two Monkees albums, and I couldn’t have gotten a better education, retrospectively, in songwriting, when you think about it, than listening to Neil Diamond, Carole King, Boyce and Hart compositions. The world in two-and-a half to three minutes.

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I had the jeans, the boots . . . There was a whole Hud element to that cowboy culture that I knew that could be introduced, the Route 66 Americana, not the Nashville Dixie country. Beyond James Dean, beyond Giant. This Route 66 Corvette cowboy. So let’s just call it that—it’s beyond Cadillac Cowboy. It’s Corvette cowboy.

—Dwight Yoakam (in Don McLeese, Dwight Yoakam: A Thousand Miles From Nowhere [2012])