“Most of the music we play,” a musician who specializes in contemporary works told me recently, “is not great. Some of it is very good, but it lacks something. It falls short. But we need to play it — not only because something great may turn up, and if we don’t play it, we won’t know it, but also because this is the music being composed now, and it ought to be heard.”
Many of their colleagues seem content to keep grinding out Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Brahms concertos, with little concern for new works. But it is becoming clear to more and more musicians, especially younger ones, that if they are going to have careers — or even a field to have careers in — they cannot keep playing the pillars of the standard canon over and over, spectacular though those works may be.
Absolutely. There are simply so many times I can listen to Take the A train before yearning for something different. Then again, when I hear Mood Indigo ... still, innovation is important.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Tall Guy With Smile Melts a Town’s Cold Heart
“I think I’ve sort of been grandfathered in,” Mr. O’Neal, known here as the Big Shamrock, said at a news conference before his conducting debut on Monday. “I think, you know, people kind of appreciate my humor, and they appreciate my hard work.”
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
John Lennon
30 years ago today (not "It was twenty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play") John was shot and killed.
Ray Davies writes: It had just turned December on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I was on my customary morning jog, heading out of Central Park toward 72nd Street. The sun was out but it was treacherous underfoot. I’d slipped on some ice and gone tumbling, to be rescued by a group of college boys.
“Are you all right, sir?” they asked, sounding concerned in a way that indicated that I might have looked frail, fragile and quite possibly old. I felt like saying, “Of course I’m all right, man, can’t you see that I am a globe-trotting rock star?” But I saw the genuine concern in the boys’ faces and thanked them, cautiously continuing my run.
Poignant seems too much of a cliché, but so it is.
Yoko Ono writes: The most important gift we received from him was not words, but deeds. He believed in Truth, and had dared to speak up. We all knew that he upset certain powerful people with it. But that was John. He couldn’t have been any other way. If he were here now, I think he would still be shouting the truth. Without the truth, there would be no way to achieve world peace.
On this day, the day he was assassinated, what I remember is the night we both cracked up drinking tea.
They say teenagers laugh at the drop of a hat. Nowadays I see many teenagers sad and angry with each other. John and I were hardly teenagers. But my memory of us is that we were a couple who laughed.
Another appreciation: We remember what we remember of Lennon, and of that night. When I was young, he was the only adult that mattered outside my family — the Beatle of Beatles. I loved his wit; his irony; his “Help!”; his urgent, reedy voice; his unceasing transformations. Like everyone else who loved him, I can’t help grieving, even now, for all the transformations we lost 30 years ago when John Lennon was only 40.
A nice picture gallery at the Washington Post. And another tribute. And a gallery of pictures from 1980: curious to see an NYPD officer wearing a tie.
Took out and watched The U.S. vs John Lennon.Very enjoyable, touched a nostalgic nerve.
His books include Skywriting by word of mouth, and other writings, including The ballad of John and Yoko, and In his own write & A Spaniard in the works.
Ray Davies writes: It had just turned December on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I was on my customary morning jog, heading out of Central Park toward 72nd Street. The sun was out but it was treacherous underfoot. I’d slipped on some ice and gone tumbling, to be rescued by a group of college boys.
“Are you all right, sir?” they asked, sounding concerned in a way that indicated that I might have looked frail, fragile and quite possibly old. I felt like saying, “Of course I’m all right, man, can’t you see that I am a globe-trotting rock star?” But I saw the genuine concern in the boys’ faces and thanked them, cautiously continuing my run.
Poignant seems too much of a cliché, but so it is.
Yoko Ono writes: The most important gift we received from him was not words, but deeds. He believed in Truth, and had dared to speak up. We all knew that he upset certain powerful people with it. But that was John. He couldn’t have been any other way. If he were here now, I think he would still be shouting the truth. Without the truth, there would be no way to achieve world peace.
On this day, the day he was assassinated, what I remember is the night we both cracked up drinking tea.
They say teenagers laugh at the drop of a hat. Nowadays I see many teenagers sad and angry with each other. John and I were hardly teenagers. But my memory of us is that we were a couple who laughed.
Another appreciation: We remember what we remember of Lennon, and of that night. When I was young, he was the only adult that mattered outside my family — the Beatle of Beatles. I loved his wit; his irony; his “Help!”; his urgent, reedy voice; his unceasing transformations. Like everyone else who loved him, I can’t help grieving, even now, for all the transformations we lost 30 years ago when John Lennon was only 40.
A nice picture gallery at the Washington Post. And another tribute. And a gallery of pictures from 1980: curious to see an NYPD officer wearing a tie.
His books include Skywriting by word of mouth, and other writings, including The ballad of John and Yoko, and In his own write & A Spaniard in the works.
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