WKCR-FM | music clip of the day

Saturday, March 9th

Happy (83rd) Birthday, Ornette!

Ornette Coleman Quartet (OC, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums), live, Spain (Barcelona), 1987

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musical thoughts

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

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It’s not that I reject categories. It’s that I don’t really know what categories are.

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You take the alphabet of the English language. A to Z. A symbol attached to a sound. In music you have what are called notes and the key. In life you’ve got an idea and an emotion. We think of them as different concepts. To me, there is no difference.

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The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.

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I don’t try to please when I play. I try to cure.

—Ornette Coleman

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radio

All Ornette, all day: WKCR-FM (Columbia University).

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Wednesday, January 30th

Old?

New?

Both?

Neither?

Bobby Bradford (cornet), Glenn Ferris (trombone), Mark Dresser (bass), “Purge” (G. Ferris), Los Angeles, 2009

A mathematician could, I’m sure, estimate how many different instrumental combinations you could expect to hear in your lifetime. What that number would be I have no idea. What I do know is that this particular combination—cornet, trombone, bass—is one that, in over fifty years of listening, I’ve never heard before.

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radio

Today the folks at WKCR-FM (Columbia University) are remembering trumpeter Roy Eldridge, who was born on this date in 1911 and lived until 1987, in the best possible way—they’re playing his music all day.

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reading table

[W]hen, in a simple case, one sees the barrister step forward, raise a robed arm and begin declaiming in an ominous voice, nobody dares look at their neighbors. Because to begin with one thinks it is grotesque, but then it seems it might be wonderful, and one waits to make up one’s mind.

—Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again (translated from French by Ian Patterson)

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2013

Thursday, 1/10/13

basement jukebox

Robert Ward, “I Will Fear No Evil,” mid-1960s

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radio: Happy (89th) Birthday, Max!

WKCR-FM, celebrating the birthday of drummer Max Roach (1924-2007), is featuring his music all day.

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2012

Monday, 12/31/12

William Ferguson, “The Music They Made,” New York Times (12/27/12): Etta James, Dave Brubeck, Davy Jones, Levon Helm, Donna Summer, Chuck Brown, Ed Cassidy, Greg Ham, Jimmy Castor, Ravi Shankar, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Ronnie Montrose, Jon Lord, Michael Davis, Joe South, Chavela Vargas, Duck Dunn, Johnny Otis, Whitney Houston, Jimmy Ellis, Adam Yauch, Mickey Baker, Bill Doss, Ketty Wells, Bob Babbitt, Robin Gibb, Andy Williams, Terry Callier

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musical thoughts

To love anything—music, literature, comedy, sports, whatever—is to be perpetually saying goodbye.

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reading table

clamoring geese—
over there is the year
ending too?

—Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1827 (translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)

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found words

FASTEN SEATBELT WHILE SEATED
USE BOTTOM CUSHION FOR FLOTATION

—Saturday morning, on a flight from Chicago to a family gathering in Lincoln, Nebraska, this was on the back of the seat in front of me

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random thoughts

Some things are better left unexamined. Like, for instance, flying on a commercial airplane. If I thought much about it, I’d never do it.

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radio

WKCR-FM’s Bach Festival, mentioned the other day, concludes at midnight.

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2012

Saturday, 12/22/12

These pieces—Bach’s cello suites—I’ve been listening to for over 40 years. I never tire of them. Never.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Suite No. 5 in C minor for Unaccompanied Cello, excerpt (Sarabande); Mischa Maisky, cello

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radio

WKCR-FM’s Bach Festival—one of my favorite musical events of the year—begins tonight at 9 p.m. (EST). It runs, continuously, until midnight New Year’s Eve. That a world so full of so much junk has room in it for this, too, amazes me.

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2012

Saturday, 11/24/12

Happy 100th Birthday, Teddy!

Teddy Wilson, pianist, November 24, 1912-July 31, 1986

“Rosetta,” 1934

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“Body and Soul,” with the Benny Goodman Trio (BG, clarinet; TW, piano; Gene Krupa, drums), 1935

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“Foolin’ Myself,” Teddy Wilson Orchestra (TW, piano; Billie Holiday, vocals; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Freddie Green, guitar; Jo Jones, drums, et al.), 1937

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radio

WKCR-FM’s celebration of his centennial, which I mentioned the other day, runs through midnight Sunday.

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musical thoughts

John Cage (whose centennial we recently celebrated), Conlon Nancarrow (ditto), Teddy Wilson—they’d make a helluva band.

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2012

Thursday, 11/22/12

otherworldly

Maurice Ravel, Jeux d’eau (1901)

Martha Argerich, live (1977)

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Alfred Cortot, recording (1920)

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radio

After finishing, at midnight, their 24-hour Coleman Hawkins birthday celebration, the indefatigable folks at WKCR-FM didn’t rest for even a minute. Instead they embarked on a 4-day, 96-hour celebration of pianist Teddy Wilson’s centennial.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

MCOTD gives thanks for

Lester Bowie and

Blossom Dearie and

The Dirtbombs;

for Mingus, Miles, Monk,

Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Bartok;

for WKCR-FM and WFMU-FM;

for Morton Feldman and

Elliott Carter and

Alfred Schnittke and

Tristan Murail;

for Hound Dog Taylor, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Magic Sam;

for The Ex, The Heptones, The Swan Silvertones, The Impressions, The Art Ensemble of Chicago;

for Von Freeman and Art Pepper and Vernard Johnson;

for Friedrich Gulda and Martha Argerich, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Ursula Oppens;

for Ed Blackwell and

for Phillip Wilson;

for Julius Hemphill and

Henry Threadgill and

D’Angelo and

Dorothy Love Coates;

and for all the others—singers, musicians, composers, painters, photographers, printmakers, novelists, poets—who have graced this site;

and for you, who have found your way here, somehow, from Mongolia and Slovenia and Jamaica and Saudi Arabia; from Myanmar and Syria; from Angola, India, Ethiopia; from Finland, Thailand, Ireland, Iceland, and over 100 other countries.

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2012

Wednesday, 11/21/12

Happy (108th) Birthday, Hawk!

Coleman Hawkins, tenor saxophonist, November 21, 1904-May 16, 1969

“Prisoner of Love,” 1958 (Art Ford’s Jazz Party, music starts at 1:15)

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“Lover Man,” 1961

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“Body and Soul,” London, 1967

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radio

WKCR-FM, broadcasting from Columbia University, is playing his music—and nothing but—until midnight. (Thank God for college radio.)

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reading table

We’re all in this apart.

—David Ferry, “Found Single-Line Poems,” excerpt (Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations [2012])

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something to get you in the holiday mood

William Burroughs, “Thanksgiving Prayer” (Gus Van Sant, dir.)

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2012

Wednesday, 9/5/12

Happy (100th) Birthday, John!

John Cage, composer, September 5, 1912-August 12, 1992

Today, celebrating his centennial, we revisit past clips.

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10/9/09

No matter where you are, this landscape is just around the corner.

John Cage (1912-1992), In a Landscape (1948); Stephen Drury, piano

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musical thoughts

Music is a means of rapid transportation.

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What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude—that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.

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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

—John Cage

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5/22/10

Here’s a piece that sounds different every time you hear it.

John Cage, 4’ 33” (1952); David Tudor, piano

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musical thoughts

I didn’t wish it [4′ 33″] to appear, even to me, as something easy to do or as a joke. I wanted to mean it utterly and be able to live with it.

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Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.

—John Cage

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3/8/12

John Cage, Two (1987)

Live, Netherlands (Amsterdam), 2009
Dante Boon (piano), Rutger van Otterloo (soprano saxophone)

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Recording, 1991 (hat Art)
Marianne Schroeder (piano), Eberhard Blum (flute)

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musical thoughts

Every something is an echo of nothing.

—John Cage, Silence (1961)

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7/23/12

Monday, n. the day the weekly tide of confusion rolls in.

How about something simple?

John Cage (1912-1992), Six Melodies (for violin and keyboard; dedicated to Josef & Anni Albers), 1950; Annelie Gahl (violin) & Klaus Lang (electric piano), 2010