sounds of India
day three
Shivkumar [AKA Shiv Kumar] Sharma (1938-), santoor
Raag Hamsadhwani, live
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Indian music calls for surrender. Of what? Busyness. Distractability. Impatience.
*****
reading table
[S]ince we do float on an unknown sea, I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way carefully; who knows what might depend on it?
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), letter to Robert Lowell
sounds of India
day two
Feel like floating?
Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938-), bansuri (bamboo flute), Raag Durga, live
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lagniappe
random thoughts
What would it be like to live there—a world with no sky?
sounds of India
day one
Nikhil Banerjee (1931-1986), sitar, Raag Jaijaiwanti, live recording
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lagniappe
reading table
Everything only connected by “and” and “and.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), “Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance”
Happy 4th of July!
This country has gotten a lot of things wrong—music it got right.
The Blasters, “American Music,” live, Champaign, Ill., 1985
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), Chicago (south side blues bar), 1962
*****
radio: WKCR (Columbia University)
What better way to celebrate Louis Armstrong’s adopted birthday than to play his music around the clock?
string festival
day four
Alfred Schnittke (1934-98), Piano Quintet (1972-76), live (Katya Apekisheva, piano; Boris Brovtsyn, Julia-Maria Kretz, violins; Amihai Grosz, viola; Torleif Thedéen, cello), Netherlands, 2010
string festival
day three
Wolfgang Rihm (1952-), String Quartet No. 13
Arditti Quartet, live, London, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
One peers down into regions where one’s feet would never, never have trod, because in certain regions, indeed in most, one has no purpose whatever.
—Robert Walser (1878-1956), “Balloon Journey,” 1914 (translated from German by Christopher Middleton)
string festival
day two
Leroy Jenkins (1932-2007), violin and viola, live, Atlanta, 1999
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lagniappe
random thoughts
What will the world be like the first day you are no longer in it? The second? The third?