Friday he was at a nightclub in Vancouver. Today he’s playing a different venue—his father’s Shreveport church.
Choir (with Brian Blade, drums), Zion Baptist Church (Brady Blade Sr., pastor), Shreveport, La., December 23, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
celestial geese—
none of them come down
to my pine—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
only rock ’n’ roll
MC5: A True Testimonial (2002)
Thanks to my brother Don for the tip. We first encountered these guys in Chicago’s Lincoln Park during the 1968 Democratic Convention. The park is still there. But that moment, when, as a teenager, nothing mattered more than intensity and attitude, is long gone.
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lagniappe
found words
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the advertising from the conceptual art. Last night, while driving to Hyde Park to hear pianist Rafal Blechacz, I came upon a billboard:
BE AMBITIOUS.
NOT THIRSTY.
Who knew Diet Coke could be so deep?
only rock ’n’ roll
Black Dub (Daniel Lanois, guitar, vocals; Trixie Whitley, keyboards, vocals; Jim Wilson, bass, vocals; Brian Blade, drums), “Ring the Alarm,” live, Vancouver, 2011
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lagniappe
art beat
Danny Lyon (1942-), Four Boys, Uptown, Chicago (1965)
never enough
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor
Rafal Blechacz (1985-), piano, live
1st Movement
2nd Movement
3rd Movement
4th Movement
*****
can’t wait
Tomorrow Blechacz (pronounced, I just learned, BLEH-hatch), who recently won the 2014 Gilmore Artist Award,* will be at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, playing Bach and Beethoven and Chopin.
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*New York Times (1/8/14):
[O]ne of the great windfalls of the music world . . . the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award . . . is given every four years to an unsuspecting pianist deemed worthy of a great career by a panel of anonymous judges who conduct their worldwide talent search in secret.
sounds of New Orleans
Let Me Do My Thang: Rebirth Brass Band (Keith Reynaud, 2000)
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Day after day tiptoeing through minefields, until finally our luck runs out.
Happy (92nd) Birthday, Mingus!
Charles Mingus, bassist, composer, bandleader
April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Booker Ervin, tenor saxophone; Ted Curson, trumpet; Dannie Richmond, drums) with guest Bud Powell (piano), “I’ll Remember April” (G. de Paul, P. Johnston, D. Raye), live, France (Antibes Jazz Festival), 1960
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR (Columbia University): all Mingus, all day.
old stuff
Jeannette and Her Synco Jazzers (Mary Lou Williams, piano, et al.), “The Bumps” (rec. 1927, Chicago)
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Whistling was said to be popular among ancient Chinese hermits as a way of achieving oneness with nature.
—Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei (translations by Tony Barnstone, Willis Barnstone, Xu Haixin)
sounds of Chicago
Mixon Singers, live, Chicago, 2013
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lagniappe
art beat
Walter Unbehaun (a 74-year-old client sentenced this week, in Chicago, to 42 months for bank robbery), African Preacher (Kankakee County Jail, 2014)
*****
reading table
God’s Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)The world is charged with the grandeur of God.It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oilCrushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;And though the last lights off the black West wentOh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —Because the Holy Ghost over the bentWorld broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Yesterday this piece, by a composer often heard here, won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for music.
John Luther Adams (1953-), Become Ocean (2013); Seattle Symphony
*****
taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back in a while.
never enough
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23
Krystian Zimerman (1956-), piano, live
music clip of the day 