music clip of the day

Tag: music clip of the day

Yesterday, in Chicago, at the Art Institute, I heard this woman play the violin. She played for well over an hour, by herself, without intermission. She performed seven pieces: the earliest, by Pierre Boulez (Anthèmes 1), was composed in 1992; the latest, by Steve Lehman (En Soi), this year. When a performer surrenders to the music wholeheartedly, she invites you, the listener, to do the same. And I did, gratefully.

Miranda Cuckson, violin

Ralph Shapey (1921-2002), Etchings (1945; excerpt), 2009

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Playing and talking, 2015

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2017

Monday, February 13th

passings

Al Jarreau (aka Alwin Lopez Jarreau), March 12, 1940-February 12, 2017, singer

“Take Five” (P. Desmond), live (TV performance), Germany, 1976

(Taking a break—back in a while.)

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2017

Sunday, February 12th

sounds of Lake City*

Doc McKenzie & The Hi-Lites, “Use Me,” live, 2016

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lagniappe

random sights

yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.

*****

*South Carolina.

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2017

Saturday, February 11th

If I knew I had a week to live, this is one of the recordings I would want to hear.

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), 24 Preludes
Alfred Cortot (1877-1962), piano, 1933/34

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langiappe

reading table

dizzying, adj. making you feel dizzy. E.g., reading a John Ashbery poem.

Listen to it the way everybody
here was naughty today,
of how broad it is.

Foreign man with an affluent cigar,
he used to live on top of this bed
on the local rails he was so proud of
among the recyclables, this morning,
spouting words that I thought were other.
Yes, and they became addictive. Oh,

make me a boy again! Do something!
But the little candle just stood there,
reflected in its lozenge-shaped mirror.
Maybe that was “something,”
a lithe sentence.

He’s only going to do it for the first time.
It’s snowing hard.

Hand me the orange.

—John Ashbery (1927-), “Just So You’ll Know,” New Yorker, 2/13 & 20/17

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2017

Friday, February 10th

Quiet, beauty—sometimes they seem to have all but disappeared.

Valentin Silvestrov (piano), live, Ukraine (Kiev), 2012

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lagniappe

random thoughts

I’ve been a criminal defense lawyer for over 30 years. Week in and week out, I’m in federal and state courts. I have deeply mixed feelings about our legal system. But last night, as I read the Ninth Circuit’s 29-page ruling, I felt enormous gratitude for the one branch of government that currently seems capable of—or even interested in—thoughtful analysis.

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2017

Thursday, February 9th

what’s new

Craig Taborn, Daylight Ghosts, 2017

The other day I bumped into this guy in New York, at The Guggenheim, where we were both seeing the Agnes Martin exhibit. We talked for a moment—I told him how much I like his music. Then our eyes went back to the paintings.

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lagniappe

art beat: other day, The Guggenheim (New York)

Agnes Martin (1912-2004), Happy Holiday, 1999

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2017

Wednesday, February 8th

not the same old stuff

Maja S. K. Ratkje, live (performance begins at 1:30), Norway (Kristiansand), 2013

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lagniappe

reading table

Happy (106th) Birthday, Elizabeth

From the few states I have seen I should now immediately select Florida as my favorite. I don’t know whether you have been here or not—it is so wild, and what there is of cultivation seems rather dilapidated and about to become wild again. On the way down we took a very slow train from Jacksonville here. All day long it went through swamps and turpentine camps and palm forests and in a beautiful pink evening it began stopping at several little stations. The stations were all off at a tangent from the main track and it necessitated first going by, then stopping, backing up, stopping, starting again—with many puffs of white smoke, blowing of the whistle, advice from the loiterers around the station—all to throw off one limp bag of mail.

—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), letter to Marianne Moore, January 5, 1937