Tuesday, 8/28/12
Need a ticket to an enchanted forest?
John Luther Adams, songbirdsongs (1974-80)
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lagniappe
radio: day two of WKCR’s Pres-&-Bird Birthday Marathon
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Tag: Charlie Parker
2012
Monday, 8/27/12
Everybody knows the boat is leaking . . .
Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows,” live, London, 2008
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lagniappe
talking (Canadian TV, 1997)
(Yeah, the interviewer is often obnoxious; but, despite [because of?] that, this is one of the more intriguing “celebrity interviews” I’ve heard.)
*****
reading table
Returning To My Cottage
by Wang Wei (699-759 [trans. David Young])
A bell in the distance
the sound floats
down the valley
one by one
woodcutters and fishermen
stop work, start home
the mountains move off
into darkness
alone, I turn home
as great clouds beckon
from the horizon
the wind stirs delicate vines
and water chestnut shoots
catkin fluff sails past
in the marsh to the east
new growth
vibrates with color
it’s sad
to walk in the house
and shut the door.
*****
radio: 72 hours of Pres & Bird
Celebrating the birthdays of Lester Young (8/27) and Charlie Parker (8/29), WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) will be playing their music all day today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.
2011
Monday, 8/29/11
Happy Birthday, Bird!
Charlie Parker, alto saxophonist, August 29, 1920-March 12, 1955
According to Miles Davis, the history of jazz can be summarized in four words: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker.
Charlier Parker & Dizzy Gillespie, “Hot House,” live (TV broadcast), 1952
(Originally posted 10/17/09.)
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM’s Lester Young/Charlie Parker birthday marathon runs until midnight—today’s all Bird.
*****
musical thoughts
Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.
—Charlie Parker
2011
Sunday, 8/28/11
As Hurricane Irene hits New York, let’s head to Harlem.
Harold Robinson, Earl Washington, Paul Williams, “Two Wings,” live, Harlem Church of Christ (338 Lenox Ave.), 27th Northeastern Lectureship, 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
radio
Speaking of New York, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) continues its Lester Young/Charlie Parker birthday marathon today and tomorrow.
2011
Sunday, 8/21/11
Ever feel like, each day, you understand less and less?
Davis Sisters (with Jackie Verdell), “We’ll Understand It Better By and By,” live (TV broadcast), early 1960s
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.—Wislawa Szymborska, “Vermeer” (trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak, Here [2010])
***
Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (c. 1658)
*****
Speaking of Szymborska, a charter member, like Von Freeman, of the recently announced MCOTD Hall of Fame (coincidentally, they were both born in 1923), here’s something I just came across:
I am a big admirer of her [Szymborska’s] work. I have read everything she has written, and I keep coming back to it. She is a very witty poet and she has greatly helped me to enjoy life. She exactly fits my definition of an artist. Who shouldn’t only have profound insight and a sharp mind but also remember that his obligation is to entertain the reader. And this is exactly what she does.
—Woody Allen, in the documentary Sometimes Life Is Bearable (2010)
*****
listening room: (some of) what’s playing
• Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What (Hear Music)
• Shane MacGowan and the Popes, The Snake (ZTT [import])
• Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Trout Mask Replica (Reprise/Ada)
• The Best of Charlie Patton (Yazoo)
• Charley Patton, The Voice of the Delta (Indigo)
• The Detroiters/The Golden Echoes, Old Time Religion (Specialty)
• The Spiritualaires of Hurtsboro, Alabama, Singing Songs of Praise (CaseQuarter)
• Archie Shepp/Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio, Conversations (Delmark)
• Benny Goodman, The Complete Trios (Capitol)
• Charlie Parker, The Complete Royal Roost Live Recordings on Savoy, Vol. 3 (Savoy/Columbia [import])
• Charles Gayle, Repent (Knitting Factory)
• Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd Quartet, School Days (hat Art)
• Wadada Leo Smith & Jack DeJohnette, America (Tzadik)
• Kenny Werner, No Beginning, No End (Half Note)
• Bach, Suites for Unaccompanied Cello/Jean-Guihen Queyras (Harmonia Mundi [import])
• Alfred Schnittke, String Quartet No. 3, Piano Quintet, Piano Quartet/
Borodin String Quartet with Ludmilla Berlinsky (Virgin Classics)
• Morton Feldman, Piano and String Quartet/Kronos Quartet with Aki Takahashi (Nonesuch)
• Morton Feldman, For Bunita Marcus, Stephane Ginsburgh, piano (Sub Rosa) (available as a download from Amazon for 89¢)
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
—Raag Aur Taal (Various, Indian music)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
2011
Saturday, 6/25/11
nadir, n. the lowest point.
On July 29, 1946, Charlie Parker was arrested in Los Angeles, after starting a fire in his hotel room. Earlier that day, unable to score heroin, scratchy, drunk on whiskey, he recorded this track, which, depending on your point of view, is either one of the worst records he ever made (Parker’s view) or, despite (because of?) its raggedyness, among the greatest (Charles Mingus’s opinion). After his arrest he was confined, for six months, at Camarillo State Mental Hospital.
Charlie Parker, “Lover Man” (CP, alto saxophone; Howard McGhee, trumpet; Jimmy Bunn, piano; Bob Kesterson, bass; Roy Porter, drums), rec. 7/29/46
More? Here.
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lagniappe
rewarding the deserving
So often, it seems, when arts awards are announced, my initial reaction is: “Huh?” Not this time. The National Endowment of the Arts just announced their 2012 Jazz Masters Awards, which recognize, with Lifetime Honors, “living musicians for career-long achievement.” And the winners are Jack DeJohnette, Jimmy Owens, Charlie Haden, Sheila Jordan, and Von Freeman.
*****
reading table
The cafeteria in the hospital’s basement was the saddest place in the world, with its grim neon lights and gray tabletops and the diffuse forboding of those who had stepped away from suffering children to have a grilled cheese sandwich.
***
The next day, I set up an iPod dock and played music, not only in the willfully delusional belief that music would be good for a painful, recovering brain but also to counter the soul-crushing hospital noise: the beeping of monitors, the wheezing of respirators, the indifferent chatter of nurses in the hallway, the alarm that went off whenever a patient’s condition abruptly worsened.
***
One early morning, driving to the hospital, I saw a number of able-bodied, energetic runners progressing along Fullerton Avenue toward the sunny lakefront, and I had a strong physical sensation of being in an aquarium: I could see out, the people outside could see me (if they chose to pay attention), but we were living and breathing in entirely different environments.
—Aleksandar Hemon, “The Aquarium: A Child’s Isolating Illness” (behind a paywall), New Yorker, 6/13 & 20/2011
2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Who else (besides, of course, Bob Dylan) has played so many different roles so brilliantly?
Miles Davis (with Robben Ford & guest Carlos Santana, guitars), “Burn”
Live, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey, 6/15/86
Listen to stuff long enough and it changes—or you do, anyway. Once I might have faulted this for being repetitive. But that’s a bit like faulting roast beef for being meat. Of course it’s repetitive. That’s part of what makes it soar.
More? Here.
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lagniappe
listening room: what’s playing
• Rashied Ali Quintet, Live In Europe (Survival Records)
• Paul Motian (with Chris Potter, Jason Moran), Lost In A Dream (ECM)
• Charlie Parker, The Complete Royal Roost Live Recordings on Savoy, Vol. 3 (Columbia Japan)
• Eric Dolphy At The Five Spot, Vol. 2 (with Booker Little, Mal Waldron, Richard Davis, Ed Blackwell; Prestige)
• Various Artists, Fire In My Bones: Raw + Rare + Other-Worldly African-American Gospel (1944-2007) (Tompkins Square)
• Reverend Charlie Jackson, God’s Got It: The Legendary Booker and Jackson Singles (CaseQuarter)
• Group Doueh, Guitar Music from the Western Sahara (Sublime Frequencies)
• Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 8 in A Minor, Helene Grimaud, Resonances (Deutsche Grammophon)
• Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 23 (“Appasionata”) and No. 29 (“Hammerklavier”), Solomon, The Master Pianist (EMI Classics)
• Anton Webern: String Quartet, Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, String Quartet Op. 28, LaSalle Quartet (Brilliant Classics)
• Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet in D major, LaSalle Quartet (Brilliant Classics)
• Roger Sessions: String Quartet No. 2, Julliard String Quartet (Composers Recordings)
• Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus, John Tilbury, Morton Feldman, All Piano (London HALL)
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Morning Classical (Various)
—Amazing Grace (Various)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Give The Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis)
—Fool’s Paradise (Rex, sui generis)
—Transpacific Sound Paradise (Rob Weisberg, “popular and unpopular music from around the world”)
music clip of the day 