music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Tag: Igor Stravinsky

Tuesday, March 7th

can’t wait

Tonight he’s conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, John Adams’ Scheherazade.2, and this.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), The Rite of Spring (1913); Los Angeles Philharmonic (Esa-Pekka Salonen [1958-], cond.), live, Los Angeles

Saturday, 10/17/09

Charlie Parker & Igor Stravinsky

Walk into any record store and one would have been over here and the other over there. But that made no difference to the kinship they felt.

*****

Jazz musicians sat up in their seats when Stravinsky’s music started playing; he was speaking something close to their language. When Charlie Parker came to Paris in 1949, he marked the occasion by incorporating the first notes of the Rite into his solo on ‘Salt Peanuts’. Two years later, playing Birdland in New York, the bebop master spotted Stravinsky at one of the tables and immediately incorporated a motif from Firebird into ‘Koko’, causing the composer to spill his scotch in ecstasy.—Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007)

*****

Charlier Parker & Dizzy Gillespie, “Hot House,” live (TV broadcast), 1952

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), The Firebird (excerpt; 1910), Berlin Philharmonic (Simon Rattle conducting), live, 2005

*****

Want to try a little experiment?

Play the Parker clip for about, say, 10-20 seconds. Then go to the Stravinsky clip and do the same. Then back. And forth. And back. And forth.