music clip of the day

2012

Wednesday, 12/5/12

My favorite drummer?

There are days I’d say this is the guy.

Among the many things I love about his playing, which dances, always, is the balance of simplicity and complexity—it’s never more complex than it is simple, never simpler than it is complex.

Old and New Dreams (Don Cherry [1936-1995], pocket trumpet; Dewey Redman [1931-2006], tenor saxophone; Charlie Haden [1937-], bass; Ed Blackwell [1929-1992], drums), live

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lagniappe

reading table

Art is not in some far-off place.

—Lydia Davis, “Extracts from a Life” (The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2009)

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2012

Tuesday, 12/4/12

Few musicians get under my skin like he does.

Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000), piano
Frederic Chopin, Preludes, Op. 28, Nos. 7, 13, 21, 24

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

Play every note as if your life depended on it.

—Friedrich Gulda

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2012

Monday, 12/3/12

old stuff

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Jeni LeGon, Fats Waller, “Living in a Great Big Way” (Hooray for Love, 1935)

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2012

Sunday, 12/2/12

Marion Williams (1927-1994) and the Stars of Faith, “Packin’ Up,” live

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

I had gotten the inspiration for that ‘Wooo’ from gospel singer Marion Williams.

—Little Richard

Little Richard, “Tutti Frutti” (single, 1955; album, 1957)

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2012

Saturday, 12/1/12

Some sounds once they enter your brain they never leave.

Perfume, “Baby Cruising Love” (2008)

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lagniappe

reading table

How little we know,
and when we know it!

*****

We close in on ourselves,
then yelp that the world is awry.

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We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.

—John Ashbery, miscellaneous fragments (“Like A Sentence,” “Tahiti Trot,” “This Room”)

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2012

Friday, 11/30/12

only rock ’n’ roll

I’ve got another band for you . . .

—my (25-year-old) son Alex, earlier this week, before playing me a couple tracks off their new album (Lonerism)

Tame Impala, live (“Be Above It,” “Solitude Is Bliss,” “Endors Toi”), New York (Webster Hall), 11/10/12

Will the ’60s ever end?

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2012

Thursday, 11/29/12

riveting

Alexander Scriabin, Etude in D-sharp minor, Op. 8, No. 12 (1894)
Vladimir Horowitz, live, New York (Carnegie Hall), 1968

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2012

Wednesday, 11/28/12

enchanted forest

Bobo Stenson Trio (BS, piano; Anders Jormin, bass; Jon Fält, drums), “Olivia,” Sweden, 2009

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2012

Tuesday, 11/27/12

Some instruments seem made for certain seasons. Take the viola: it seems most at home when days are getting shorter, shadows longer, nights colder.

Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-), Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (1996)
Yuri Bashmet (viola), WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne (Semyon Bychkov, cond.)

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

I am a religious Russian Orthodox person and I understand religion in the literal meaning of the word, as re-ligio, that is to say the restoration of connections, the restoration of the legato of life. There is no more serious task for music than this.

—Sofia Gubaidulina