Saturday night, in Chicago, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, I heard the Spektral Quartet. They performed a single piece, this one, which lasted not one, or two, or three, or four, but five hours. Awash in sounds and silences, I got up out of my metal chair, I looked at my watch, I checked my text messages, my email, not once.
Morton Feldman (1926-1987, MCOTD Hall of Fame*), String Quartet No. 2 (excerpt), Flux Quartet, live, 2013
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
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*With saxophonists Von Freeman and Henry Threadgill; trumpeter Lester Bowie; drummer Hamid Drake; gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates; poets John Berryman, William Bronk, and Wislawa Szymborska; and photographer Helen Levitt.
gospel longa, politics brevis*
These folks were singing long before Mitt, Newt, et al., hit town. And they’ll be singing long after they’re gone.
“If I Die Before I Wake,” Mt. Do-Well Baptist Church, McConnells, S.C.
Led by Brown’s Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church, Chester, S.C.
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*First posted January 15, 2012.
more
William Parker’s In Order To Survive (WP, bass; Hamid Drake, drums, MCOTD Hall of Fame; Cooper-Moore, piano, vocals; Lewis Barnes, trumpet; Rob Brown, alto saxophone), “Hymn,” live, New York, 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
He isn’t doing that right—that was a very important one. It was what Astaire claimed he was thinking whenever he watched himself onscreen, and I noted that third-person pronoun. This is what I understood by it: that for Astaire the person in the film was not especially connected with him. And I took this to heart, or rather, it echoed a feeling I already had, mainly that it was important to treat oneself as a kind of stranger, to remain unattached and unprejudiced in your own case. I thought you needed to think like that to achieve anything in this world. Yes, I thought that was a very elegant attitude.
—Zadie Smith, Swing Time
MCOTD Hall of Fame
William Parker’s In Order To Survive (WP, bass, composition; Hamid Drake, drums, MCOTD Hall of Fame;* Lewis Barnes, trumpet; Rob Brown, alto saxophone; Cooper-Moore, piano), “Criminals in the White House,” live, New York, 2013
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lagniappe
radio
Today—his birthday—it’s all Ornette Coleman all day on WKCR-FM (Columbia University).
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*With saxophonists Von Freeman and Henry Threadgill; trumpeter Lester Bowie; gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates; composer Morton Feldman; poets John Berryman, William Bronk, and Wislawa Szymborska; and photographer Helen Levitt.
sounds of Detroit
John Lee Hooker (1912-2001), “Boom Boom” (J.L. Hooker), live, 1960s
The world may be going to hell, faster than ever, but in the meantime, at YouTube, this has over 11 million views.
back to church
“Give Me Jesus,” Langrum Branch Baptist Church, York, S.C., 2000
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lagniappe
reading table
The authentic and pure values—truth, beauty, and goodness—in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object.
—Simone Weil (1909-1943), Gravity and Grace (translated from French by Emma Crawford)
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random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
never enough
This took my breath away—more than once.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Violin Concerto; Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (Philippe Herreweghe, cond.) with Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), live, 2014