music clip of the day

Old?

New?

Both?

Neither?

Bobby Bradford (cornet), Glenn Ferris (trombone), Mark Dresser (bass), “Purge” (G. Ferris), Los Angeles, 2009

A mathematician could, I’m sure, estimate how many different instrumental combinations you could expect to hear in your lifetime. What that number would be I have no idea. What I do know is that this particular combination—cornet, trombone, bass—is one that, in over fifty years of listening, I’ve never heard before.

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lagniappe

radio

Today the folks at WKCR-FM (Columbia University) are remembering trumpeter Roy Eldridge, who was born on this date in 1911 and lived until 1987, in the best possible way—they’re playing his music all day.

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reading table

[W]hen, in a simple case, one sees the barrister step forward, raise a robed arm and begin declaiming in an ominous voice, nobody dares look at their neighbors. Because to begin with one thinks it is grotesque, but then it seems it might be wonderful, and one waits to make up one’s mind.

—Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again (translated from French by Ian Patterson)