This guy takes me places no one else does.
Tim Berne’s Snakeoil (TB, alto saxophone; Oscar Noriega, clarinet; Matt Mitchell, piano; Ches Smith, drums, vibraphone), “Small World in a Small Town” (T. Berne), live, Brazil (Sao Paulo), 2015
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lagniappe
art beat: other day, Art Institute of Chicago
Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), City Landscape, 1955
Close your eyes . . .
John Luther Adams (1953-), . . . and bells remembered . . . (2005)
Callithumpian Consort, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
aware of the sun
setting, the butterfly
flits away—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue
more
Mighty Clouds of Joy (feat. Joe Ligon, lead vocals), “I Know I’ve Been Changed,” live, South Carolina (Charleston), mid-1990s
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lagniappe
reading table
most end up
stuck in mud . . .
cherry blossoms—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue
sounds of Kinshasa*
Mbongwana Star, “Kala,” 2015
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Birds, plants, music—one of the most astonishing things about this most astonishing world is its variousness.
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*Democratic Republic of Congo.
Merry Christmas
Blind Lemon Jefferson, “Christmas Eve Blues,” 1928
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Victoria Spivey (with Lonnie Johnson, guitar), “Christmas Morning Blues,” 1928
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Bessie Smith (with Joe Smith, cornet; Charlie Green, trombone; Fletcher Henderson, piano), “At the Christmas Ball,” 1925
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Leroy Carr, “Christmas In Jail—Ain’t That A Pain,” 1929
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Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers (feat. Charles Brown, vocals, keyboards), “Merry Christmas, Baby,” 1947
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Lowell Fulson, “Lonesome Christmas (I & II),” 1950
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Sonny Boy Williamson II, “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues,” 1951
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John Lee Hooker, “Blues For Christmas,” 1959
Feel like floating?
Steve Reich (1936-), Six Marimbas (1986); Undergraduate Recital (Colin Van de Reep, Noam Bierstone, Sandro Valiante, Mark Morton, Ben Reimer, Ben Duinker), McGill University, Montreal, 2011
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lagniappe
reading table
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
—Simone Weil (1909-1943; quoted at Orange Crate Art)
sounds of Chicago
Hamid Drake (drums, percussion, voice), live, Sardinia, 2013
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lagniappe
radio
One of the year’s great musical events has begun: the annual Bach Festival on WKCR (Columbia University)—all Bach, all the time, through New Year’s Eve.
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musical thoughts
How lucky to be alive in a world of sound.
Why start the new week with the same old stuff?
Julia Wolfe (1958-), Believing (2001); Bang on a Can All-Stars, live, South Korea (Tongyeong International Music Festival), 2014
lagniappe
art beat
Regular readers may recognize this drawing, which was posted last year. The artist is a client of mine, Walter Unbehaun, a seventy-something bank robber whose story is told in the January issue of GQ magazine (Kathy Dobie, “The Curious Case of the Homesick Bank Robber”). This drawing makes an appearance:
[H]e’d created a strong bond with his lawyer. He considered ‘Rich’ a friend, giving him two finely wrought pencil sketchings. One was of an ancient and deeply wrinkled Peruvian woman, the other of a plump African woman wearing glasses.
Walter Unbehaun, African Preacher (Kankakee County Jail, 2014)
old school
Mighty Clouds of Joy, “I’m Glad About It,” live, Houston, 1967
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Sometimes I have good nights, and sometimes I have bad nights. One never knows.
—tenor saxophonist, and MCOTD Hall of Famer, Von Freeman (1923-2012)
music clip of the day 