Happy (82nd) Birthday, Ornette!
Ornette Coleman Quartet with guests Joshua Redman (tenor saxophone), James Blood Ulmer (guitar), Charlie Haden (bass), live, Netherlands (North Sea Jazz Festival, Rotterdam), 2010
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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Part 4
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Part 5
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM (Columbia University): all Ornette, all day.
He does covers, too.
“Pale Blue Eyes” (L. Reed)
Alejandro Escovedo, live, Paris, 2007
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Velvet Underground (The Velvet Underground, 1969)
What you want, sometimes, is to lose yourself, even if only briefly, in beauty.
Leo Janacek (1854-1928), String Quartet No. 1, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” excerpt (arr. Tognetti), Australian Chamber Orchestra
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lagniappe
random thoughts
When you’re young you want to find yourself; when you’re old you want to lose yourself.
*****
reading table
Variations for Two Pianos
for Thomas Higgins, pianist
by Donald Justice
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
Movers dismantled the instruments, away
Sped the vans. The first detour untuned the strings.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Up Main Street, past the cold shopfronts of Conway,
The brash, self-important brick of the college,
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
Warm evenings, the windows open, he would play
Something of Mozart’s for his pupils, the birds.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
How shall the mockingbird mend her trill, the jay
His eccentric attack, lacking a teacher?
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Happy (Belated) 103rd Birthday, Elliott!
Elliott Carter, composer, December 11, 1908-
The other night I put this on, thinking I’d do something else while it played; but, as it turned out, “something else” had to wait.
String Quartet No. 2 (1959), Composers Quartet
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lagniappe
Juilliard String Quartet with Elliott Carter, 2008
Rehearsing String Quartet No. 5
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musical thoughts
Mr. Carter has written 15 new works since his 100th birthday.
—Allan Kozinn, New York Times, 12/13/11
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Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Webern, Bartok, Shostakovich, Carter, et al.: you could spend the rest of your life listening to nothing but string quartets without ever feeling deprived.
mysterious, adj. exciting wonder, curiosity, or surprise, while baffling efforts to comprehend or identify. E.g., the string quartet music of Anton Webern.
Anton Webern (1883-1945), Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5
Penderecki String Quartet, live
Falls Village, Connecticut (Music Mountain), 2010
Part 1
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Part 2
More? Here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Ignorance has a big upside: the more music you’ve never heard, the more there is to discover.
three takes
“N’teri”
Habib Koité, live, c. 2007
*****
Regina Carter (violin), Yacouba Sissoko (kora), Will Holshouser (accordion)
Live, radio broadcast (KPLU-FM), 2011
Kora, violin, accordion—even the names of these instruments sound good together. You have, in succession, words of two, three, and four syllables. Consonants repeat (k/c, r, n), as do vowels (o, a). The last word (“accordion”) echoes both syllables of the first (“kora”), reversing them, as well as the end of the second (“violin”). What does any of this mean? Nothing—it’s simply, for me, a small source of additional pleasure.
*****
Habib Koité, recording, 2007
clear, adj. bright, luminous, transparent. E.g., Wadada Leo Smith’s trumpet playing.
Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), live, London (Cafe Oto), 9/5/11
A performance like this opens up, I’ve found, once you quit trying to find
a foothold.
serendipity
The other night, as I listened to the radio,* this (“Patient Observation”) floated out of the speakers.
Falling From Trees, Neon Productions, music by Peter Broderick
Premiered at The Place, London, 1/09
Excerpt, Part 2, “Patient Observation”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Full Length
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Falling From Trees is a 30-minute production set in a psychiatric hospital that delves into the mind of a resident patient. The piece explores how a neurological disease can alter your sense of self and relationship to the world and people around you. Peter Broderick’s score has been created solely on piano and strings; it is also the first time Broderick has created music specifically for dance.
*Mudd Up! with DJ/Rupture, WFMU-FM, Monday, 8 p.m. (EST), archived shows here
Steve Reich, WTC 9/11 (2010), excerpts
Kronos Quartet, with prerecorded tape
1st Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
3rd Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.—Wislawa Szymborska, “Photograph from September 11” (trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak)
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Barbarism is not the prehistory of humanity but the faithful shadow that accompanies its every step.
—Alain Finkielkraut, Le mécontemporain, (epigraph, Clive James, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002 [2003])
