If you’re away from home, how good it is to find a musical sanctuary, as I have the last two Fridays at Harvard’s Paine Concert Hall; last night I heard this string quartet play, wonderfully, music by Brahms and two contemporary composers (Adam Roberts, James Yannatos).
Chiara Quartet, Jefferson Friedman: String Quartet No. 2 (excerpt)
Live, New York (Le Poisson Rouge), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Are we ever better—more focused, more receptive, more supple—than when we’re listening to live music?
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lagniappe
art beat
Edward Hopper, Room in Brooklyn (1932), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
We’ve always believed in singing, in expressing ourselves.
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Sometimes a song . . . is just as great as a sermon.
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A hurricane starts off slowly . . . and when she gets a certain speed, that’s when she’s dangerous. Most preachers . . . get their power going up . . . . [M]ost of my power is given by coming down, down, after I’ve gone up.
—Rev. Johnny L. Jones
Rev. Johnny L. Jones, live, Atlanta The Hurricane That Hit Atlanta (Dust-To-Digital 2010)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
. . . music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
Here—with a shout-out to my brother Don, with whom (at the age of 15) I saw the MC5 in Chicago’s Lincoln Park during the 1968 Democratic Convention (when nobody outside the Detroit/Ann Arbor area [including us] knew who they were)—is an awfully good cover, from what might seem an unlikely source, of one of their “greatest hits.”
Jeff Buckley, “Kick Out The Jams,” live, Chicago, 1995
And here, courtesy, apparently, of the Department of Defense, is (silent) footage of the scene in Lincoln Park on August 25, 1968—the day the MC5 (who appear here fleetingly) played.
(Originally posted 9/7/09.)
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lagniappe
on the road
Last night, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I’ve been since Sunday, I heard a concert, on the Harvard campus, of contemporary music featuring two different groups (Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble and Ensemble SurPlus) and works by six different composers, including Morton Feldman and John Luther Adams (who was present). Virtually every time I hear live music—last night was no exception—I leave thinking that I really need to do this more often. I love recordings, but live music breathes.
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Tonight, in Boston, I’ll be in the front row for this production of Merchant of Venice. Tomorrow I’m seeing a series of short works by Samuel Beckett, directed by the legendary Peter Brook. So that’s three straight days of live music. (What’s theater, after all, if not musical speech?)
I could listen to this—just the drum track, even—all day.
Booker T. Jones with The Roots, “Everything Is Everything”
Live (recording studio), The Road From Memphis (5/11 release)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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lagniappe
reading table
spring peace—
after rain a gang war
garden sparrows
—Kobayashi Issa, 1795 (trans. David G. Lanoue)
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Alcove
Is it possible that spring could be
once more approaching? We forget each time
what a mindless business it is, porous like sleep,
adrift on the horizon, refusing to take sides, “mugwump
of the final hour,” lest an agenda—horrors!—be imputed to it,
and the whole point of its being spring collapse
like a hole dug in sand. It’s breathy, though,
you have to say that for it.
And should further seasons coagulate
into years, like spilled, dried paint, why,
who’s to say we weren’t provident? We indeed
looked out for others as though they mattered, and they,
catching the spirit, came home with us, spent the night
in an alcove from which their breathing could be heard clearly.
But it’s not over yet. Terrible incidents happen
daily. That’s how we get around obstacles.
*When I was a little boy, a big bright shiny jukebox lit up our basement. Daily it granted our wishes, communicated with just the touch of a finger, for “Wake Up, Little Susie” (Everly Brothers) and “The Battle of New Orleans” (Johnny Horton) and “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” (Gene Pitney). It taught me something I’ve never forgotten—music is magic.
