yesterday in Chicago
I heard these folks in Millennium Park, at the thirty-first annual Gospel Fest. Rain had been falling, but it stopped. Slowly, dark skies gave way to sunshine.
Brian Courtney Wilson, “Just Love,” live, Windsor Village United Methodist Church, Houston, Tx.
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William Murphy, “It’s Working,” live, Newbirth Missionary Baptist Church, Lithonia, Ga.
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Shirley Caesar, “No Charge,” live
what’s new
Beck, “Wow,” 6/2/16
Mozart one day, another day this—how lucky to live in a world so various.
Konono No. 1, “Yaya Mikolo,” live, France (Saint-Nazaire), 2009
sounds of Chicago and Oslo
Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone), Paal Nilssen-Love (percussion), “Song for Terrie,” live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 5/26/16
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
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A big birthday shout-out to my brother Don, my first listening companion. All these years later, the basement jukebox still plays: “Wake Up Little Susie” (Everly Brothers) . . .”North to Alaska” (Johnny Horton) . . .”(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” (Gene Pitney) . . . Hear it?
sounds of New York
Sandbox Percussion, live (excerpts from S. Reich, “Drumming”; A. Weiser, “Anatomy of a Drum Roll”; S. Reich, “Music for Pieces of Wood”), New York (Washington Square Park), 2014
Vancouver folkie + iconic Memphis rhythm section.
This should never have worked.
But it does, wonderfully.
Frazey Ford, “September Fields” (Indian Ocean), 2014
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lagniappe
reading table
The climate is pretty.
I wrote everything on it.
That’s the activity where it
gets relatively inauspicious.***
And you were sitting there
in the night of life. It sure was good.
My favorite desserts were there.
And when they invite you, it’s like an important document
goes missing. I’ll give you an example:
a twelve-year struggle upstate, in
the slick atmosphere of the breakfast room.
It might have gotten stuck in her farthingale.Otherwise no reply.
—John Ashbery (1927-), “As Someone Who Likes Travel,” fragments (New Yorker, 5/30/16)
To read Ashbery is to read English as a foreign language—which I mean as a compliment.
sounds of Chicago
Windy City Spiritualaires with Willie Clayton, “Prove It,” live, Birmingham, Ala., 2000
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lagniappe
art beat: other day, Art Institute of Chicago
Aaron Siskind (1903-1991), Glouchester 1H 1944 (Abstractions, through 8/14/16)
three takes
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), live
#1
#2
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Artur Schnabel (1882-1951), 1939
#1
#2
#3
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Dinu Lipatti (1917-1950), live, France (Besancon), 1950
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The A minor sonata is the first of only two Mozart piano sonatas in a minor key . . . It was written in one of the most tragic times of his life: his mother had just died.
what’s new
Filastine, “The Cleaner,” released yesterday
sounds of Sweden
Klara Lewis, live, England (Gateshead), 2015
music clip of the day 