sounds of Chicago & Norway & the Netherlands
Who needs coffee?
Lean Left (Ken Vandermark, reeds [Chicago]; Paal Nilssen-Love, drums [Norway]; Andy Moers & Terrie Hessels, guitars [Netherlands]), live, Belgium (Brussels), 2014
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lagniappe
musical (& other) thoughts
Ken Vandermark has a lot of interesting things to say about improvised music and life as a musician, about politics and movies and journalism and New York, as you can hear in this podcast-interview.
sounds of Norway
Maja S. K. Ratkje, live (music begins at 1:40), Norway (Punkt Festival, Kristiansand), 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
A Prison gets to be a friend —
Between its Ponderous face
And Ours — a Kinsmanship express —
And in its narrow Eyes —We come to look with gratitude
For the appointed Beam
It deal us — stated as Our food —
And hungered for — the same —We learn to know the Planks —
That answer to Our feet —
So miserable a sound — at first —
Nor ever now — so sweet —As plashing in the Pools —
When Memory was a Boy —
But a Demurer Circuit —
A Geometric Joy —The Posture of the Key
That interrupt the Day
To Our Endeavor — Not so real
The Check of Liberty —As this Phantasm Steel —
Whose features — Day and Night —
Are present to us — as Our Own —
And as escapeless — quite —The narrow Round — the Stint —
The slow exchange of Hope —
For something passiver — Content
Too steep for looking up —The Liberty we knew
Avoided — like a Dream —
Too wide for any night but Heaven —
If That — indeed — redeem ——Emily Dickinson (1830-1886; Franklin #456)
Why not begin the week with something beautiful?
Lou Harrison (1917-2003), Second Symphony (“Elegiac,” 1988); BBC National Orchestra of Wales
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lagniappe
reading table
never growing old
Mr. and Mrs.
Butterfly—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
four takes
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
Isaiah, live, Chicago, 2014
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Albert Ayler, recording, 1964
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Parliament Funkadelic (“Swing Down, Sweet Chariot”), live Houston, 1976
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Fisk University Jubilee Quartet, recording, 1909
voices I miss
Albert Collins (1932-1993), “Cold, Cold Feeling,” live, Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 1979
Nobody sounds like this guy, whose 1978 album Ice Pickin’, recorded at Curtis Mayfield’s studio in Chicago and nominated for a Grammy, I’m happy to say I co-produced.
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), Birmingham, Ala., 1963
only rock ’n’ roll
Spoon, live (studio performance), Seattle, 7/24/14
sounds of Chicago
Marcos Balter (1974-), Dark Rooms (2007); Third Coast Percussion, 2014
If someone asked me to describe this, I wouldn’t know how to begin—which I mean as a compliment.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
[Y]oung musicians need Balter as much as Bach.
—Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 12/3/13
Let’s return to New York for another take on piano and string quartet.
Vijay Iyer (piano) and the Brentano String Quartet, from “Time, Place, Action” (V. Iyer), live, New York, 2014
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Happy (88th) birthday to my mother, who’s been dead almost two decades. When it comes to longevity, my genes are lousy. But, always, there’s today.
alone
Terry Riley (piano), live (sound: 0:16-), Moscow, 2000
