Saturday, February 6th
This I could listen to all day.
John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948)
Michael Compitello (marimba), live, c. 2013
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Chicago (Columbus Park)
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Tag: John Cage
2016
2016
Thursday, January 14th
sounds of Chicago
Still fresh after seventy years.
John Cage (1912-1992), Credo in Us (1942)
Third Coast Percussion, live, Chicago, 2011
2015
Saturday, March 21st
alone
John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948)
Anton Batagov (1965-, piano), live, Moscow, 2014
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Paul Cezanne, The Bay of Marseilles, Seen From L’Estaque, c. 1885
This, too, I never tire of.
2014
Monday, November 24th
Why not begin the week with something beautiful?
John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948); Shira Legmann (piano), live, Boston
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lagniappe
reading table
Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694; translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
2014
Tuesday, September 9th
What to make of this?
Why make anything of it?
Why not let it make something of you?
John Cage (1912-1992), Music for Amplified Toy Pianos (1960); Pestova/Meyer Piano Duo, live (recording session), Luxembourg, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
Falling blossoms.
Blossoms in bloom are also
falling blossoms.—Ryokan (1758-1831; translated from Japanese by Kazuaki Tanahashi)
2013
Monday, December 2nd
Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Second Hand (1970),* New York (Brooklyn Academy of Music), 2011
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lagniappe
random thoughts
What if your entire life—every thought, every movement, every word—were actually a work of art, only pretending to be something ordinary?
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*Merce Cunningham, choreography; John Cage, music; Jasper Johns, costumes.
2013
Tuesday, November 26th
alone
John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948); Keiko Shichijo (piano), live, Amsterdam, c. 2009
This I could listen to all day, all week, all month.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I find that music is humans’ most advanced achievement, more so than painting and writing, because it’s more mysterious, more magical, and it acts in such a direct way.
2013
Wednesday, October 9th
homage to John Cage
2013
Saturday, August 3rd
alone
John Cage (1912-1992), Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-1948); Louis Goldstein, piano, live, Winston-Salem, N.C. (Reynolda House Museum of American Art), 1982
What I love about this performance is its directness. He doesn’t treat these pieces as arty exotica. He plays them as simply and naturally, as musically, as one might play Bach, or Mozart, or Chopin.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.
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A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration–it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.
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They say, “you mean it’s just sounds?” thinking that for something to just be a sound is to be useless, whereas I love sounds just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are. I don’t want them to be psychological. I don’t want a sound to pretend that it’s a bucket or that it’s president or that it’s in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound.
2013
Tuesday, April 30th
one thing after
another after another
after another after another after . . .
John Cage (1912-1992), Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958); Variable Geometry (Jean-Phillippe Calvin, director), live, London, 2011
A performance like this can go wrong in so many ways. This one, to these ears, works wonderfully. Momentum, tautness, immediacy—it has them all.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Everything we do is music.
music clip of the day 