alone
John Cage, Solo for flute, from Concert for Piano (1958); Eric Lamb, flute (International Contemporary Ensemble); Chicago, 2012
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music is theater for the ear. Take this performance. The phrasing, the interplay between sound and silence—this unfolds like something by Samuel Beckett.
*****
taking a(nother) break
Back in a while.
Lord, have mercy . . .
Rev. Gary Davis, “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” c. 1970
last night
I heard a concert, at the University of Chicago, devoted to the work of this man, a composer, a longtime professor, a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient. The performances featured different combinations of violin, viola, cello, clarinet, and piano. The music was often thorny. Occasionally whimsical. Frequently emphatic. Sometimes beautiful. And wholly absorbing.
Ralph Shapey (1921-2002), String Quartet No. 6 (1963)
The Lexington Quartet of the Contemporary Players of the University of Chicago
#1
#2
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
To me, [it’s] very important that [the audience] can recall it as an emotional experience; as though it were something they could hold in their hands.
—Ralph Shapey
Let’s end the week where we began—Europe, 1967, Sam & Dave.
“Hold On, I’m Comin'” (with Booker T. & the M.G.’s* and The Mar-Keys**), Norway
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lagniappe
random thoughts
The Internet, which reminds us, repeatedly, that there is here and then is now, may make Buddhists of us all.
*****
*Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Donald “Duck” Dunn, bass; Al Jackson, Jr., drums.
**Wayne Jackson, trumpet; Andrew Love & Joe Arnold, tenor saxophones.
serendipity
Something I just bumped into.
Trio WAZ (Ed Wilkerson, tenor saxophone; Tatsu Aoki, bass; Michael Zerang, drums), live, Michigan (Lakeside, concert presented by Portoluz), 2010
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Color.
Texture.
Density.
Sometimes they’re more important than melody, or harmony, or rhythm.
*****
reading table
“The Snow Man”
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
If you’d been in the back seat the other night, as my son Luke was zooming down the Kennedy Expressway—he was taking me home before heading back to school in Bloomington—here’s one of the things you would’ve heard jumping out of the radio.
J. Cole, “Power Trip” (feat. Miguel), 2013
keep on dancing
Moodymann (AKA Moody), “Anotha Black Sunday” (2009)
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lagniappe
random thoughts
One benefit of getting older, I’ve found, is that you develop a keener appreciation for just how much you have to be humble about.
two takes
“When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” (I. Hayes & D. Porter)
Sam & Dave, live, Germany (Offenbach), 1967
***
Isaac Hayes, TV Show (Top of the Pops), England, 1995
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lagniappe
reading table
“The World Contracted to a Recognizable Image”
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)at the small end of an illness
there was a picture
probably Japanese
which filled my eyean idiotic picture
except it was all I recognized
the wall lived for me in that picture
I clung to it as a fly
back to church
The Wings of Faith, of Waynesboro, Mississippi (pop. 5,197), live, 2012
This seems, somehow, to these ears, anyway, to fit a day when the ashes of my mother-in-law are being buried.
Revolutionary Ensemble (Leroy Jenkins, violin; Sirone, bass; Jerome Cooper, drums), “Chicago” (Live at Moosham Castle, 1977)
