what’s new
D’Angelo and the Vanguard (Pino Palladino, bass; Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, drums, et al.), “Ain’t That Easy” (Black Messiah), 12/15/14
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Here’s another take.
Live, Paris, 2012
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), New York (Subway), 1980
old school
Dixie Hummingbirds, We Love You Like a Rock (excerpts), 1995
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lagniappe
reading table
You would think that living is a kind of scholarship in time, and that the longer we live the more expert we become at coping with it, in the way that, if you play tennis enough, you get used to coping with faster and faster serves. Instead I find that the longer I live the more bemused I become, and the more impenetrable the subject shows itself to be. I sit on a heap of days.
—Samantha Harvey, Dear Thief (James Wood, “Fly Away,” New Yorker, 12/8/14)
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taking a break
I’m taking some time off—back in a while.
Bach cello festival (final day)
Cello Suite No. 6 in D major; Matt Haimovitz (cello), live, Montreal, 2011
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Gavottes 1 and 2
Gigue
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Joy sometimes comes not in waves but droplets.
Bach cello festival (day five)
Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor; Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007), live, France (Vezelay), 1991
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lagniappe
art beat: Sunday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Oribe-Type Ewer (glazed stoneware), early 17th century, Japan
Bach cello festival (day four)
Cello Suite No. 4 in E-flat major; Pablo Casals (cello), recording, 1939
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lagniappe
art beat
Paul Strand (1890-1976), Toward the Sugar House, Vermont, 1944
Bach cello festival (day three)
Cello Suite No. 3 in C major; Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), live, Austria (Salzburg), 2007
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lagniappe
reading table
The life of a human being draws back, comes into view like an animal at the edge of the forest, and disappears again.
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The outside world is too small, too clear-cut, too truthful, to contain everything that a person has room for inside.
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The only essential thing for life is forgoing smugness, moving into the house instead of admiring it and hanging garlands around it.
—Franz Kafka (Rivka Galchen, “What kind of funny is he?,” London Review of Books, 12/4/14)
Bach cello festival (day two)
Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor; Wen-Sinn Yang (cello), live, Germany (Quedlinburg), 2005
Prelude, Allemande, Courante
Sarabande, Minuets 1 and 2
Gigue
Bach cello festival (day one)
Suppose you had twenty-four hours to live. What would you want to hear? These six cello suites, which I’ve been listening to for over forty years, are where I might turn. (Why not go out dancing?)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Cello Suite No. 1 in G major; Denise Djokic (cello), live, Canada (Winnipeg), 2012
Prelude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Minuets 1 and 2
Gigue
old school
Sensational Nightingales (feat. Julius Cheeks, lead vocals), “I Want To Go,” 1961
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), New York (Harlem), c. 1966
two takes
Need a lift?
Charles Ives (1874-1954), Ragtime Dance No. 4 (1904)
Alarm Will Sound, live, New York, 2013
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Orchestra New England, recording, 1990
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
As I remember some of the dances as a boy, and also from father’s description of some of the old dancing and fiddle playing, there was more variety of tempo than in the present-day dances. In some parts of the hall a group would be dancing in polka, while in another, a waltz. Some of the players in the band would, in an impromptu way, pick up with the polka, and some with the waltz, and some with a march. Often the piccolo or cornet would throw in asides. Sometimes a change in tempo, or a mixed rhythm would be caused by a fiddler who, after playing three or four hours steadily, was getting a little sleepy. Or maybe another player was seated too near the hard cider barrel. Whatever the reason for these changes and simultaneous playing of things, I remember distinctly catching a kind of music that was natural and interesting and which was decidedly missed when everybody came down ‘blimp’ on the same beat again.
—Charles Ives
music clip of the day 