serendipity
Just now, walking to the Art Institute of Chicago after lunch, I heard a man singing on the sidewalk. The voice seemed familiar. And the more I listened, the more confident I became that I’d heard this voice before.
Willie Barbee, today
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clips posted the other day (May 29th)
Anna Clyne (1980-), A Wonderful Day (2013)
Bang on a Can All-Stars, Willie Barbee (pre-recorded voice)
Live, New York, 2015
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Recording (Field Recordings), 2015
Feel like floating?
Music for Airports, “1/1” (B. Eno, R. Davies, R. Wyatt), 1978; Bang on a Can All-Stars, live (arr. Michael Gordon), San Diego Airport, 2015
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lagniappe
reading table
To a Snail
By Marianne Moore (1887-1972)If “compression is the first grace of style,”
you have it. Contractility is a virtue
as modesty is a virtue.
It is not the acquisition of any one thing
that is able to adorn,
or the incidental quality that occurs
as a concomitant of something well said,
that we value in style,
but the principle that is hid:
in the absence of feet, “a method of conclusions”;
“a knowledge of principles,”
in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.
Why start the new week with the same old stuff?
Julia Wolfe (1958-), Believing (2001); Bang on a Can All-Stars, live, South Korea (Tongyeong International Music Festival), 2014
lagniappe
art beat
Regular readers may recognize this drawing, which was posted last year. The artist is a client of mine, Walter Unbehaun, a seventy-something bank robber whose story is told in the January issue of GQ magazine (Kathy Dobie, “The Curious Case of the Homesick Bank Robber”). This drawing makes an appearance:
[H]e’d created a strong bond with his lawyer. He considered ‘Rich’ a friend, giving him two finely wrought pencil sketchings. One was of an ancient and deeply wrinkled Peruvian woman, the other of a plump African woman wearing glasses.
Walter Unbehaun, African Preacher (Kankakee County Jail, 2014)
two takes
Music for Airports, “1/1” (B. Eno, R. Davies, R. Wyatt)
Bang on a Can All-Stars, live, Düsseldorf Airport (Germany), 2011
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Brian Eno, recording, 1978
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (while waiting for the jury in my federal bribery-conspiracy trial to return a verdict, which, alas, they did)
Bowl, 150/50 B.C.
Greek, Hellenistic, Eastern Mediterranean
Glass, mosaic technique
The Heart asks Pleasure – first –
—Emily Dickinson (588, excerpt)
Steve Reich, Bang on a Can All-Stars (Robert Black, bass; David Cossin, drums; Evan Ziporyn, piano; Bryce Dessner & Derek Johnson, guitars)
Rehearsal, 2×5 (S. Reich), 2009
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lagniappe
art beat: Art Institute of Chicago
A sea of Cezanne’s blues surrounds The Bay of Marselleilles, Seen From L’Estaque (4/18/11).
Here’s what’s on its left.
Paul Cezanne, Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair, 1888-90
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Here’s what’s on its right.
Paul Cezanne, The Basket of Apples, c. 1893
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And here’s what’s on the adjacent wall.
Paul Cezanne, Harlequin, 1888-90
(on loan from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
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I still work with difficulty, but I seem to get along. That is the important thing to me. Sensations form the foundation of my work, and they are imperishable, I think. Moreover, I am getting rid of that devil who, as you know, used to stand behind me and forced me at will to “imitate”; he’s not even dangerous any more.
—Paul Cezanne (last letter to his son Paul, dated October 15, 1906, a week before his death; quoted in Ambroise Vollard, Cezanne)
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Art ______ of Chicago
In the department of duh, after decades of going there and decades of listening to them, I’ve just noticed the verbal similarity between the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
music clip of the day 