Thursday, January 13, 2011
Sonata
a musical composition of 3 or 4 movements of contrasting forms. Beethovern wrote many. Andras Schiff has recorded them.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Searching new music for Keepers
“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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Where a Bird Played Sax,
There are two signs in front of 151 Avenue B, a row house in the East Village facing Tompkins Square Park. One is a bronze plaque identifying the building as a former home of the jazz legend Charlie Parker, who lived in the ground-floor apartment from 1950 to 1954.cThe other is a handwritten slip of paper taped to the window of that same apartment, warning, “Please Don’t Knock Before 2 P.M.” Both signs were put up by the building’s owner, Judy Rhodes, who worked hard to get the building declared a city landmark in 1999.
Bravo to her.
As for the “Don’t Knock” sign, Ms. Rhodes said she still favored the “jazz hours” she kept when she was a jazz producer, photographer and hard-core fan. “Nighttime is still the only time I can settle in and take care of my projects,” said Ms. Rhodes, 74, who since 1979 has lived in the apartment Parker inhabited with Chan Richardson and their children. In the life of the saxophonist nicknamed Bird, it was an atypically stable period. Here in this cozy apartment, Parker became a family man. He ate regular meals with the children, pushed them in swings out back and walked them to school. It was Bird’s sanctuary — he once practiced in the large walk-in closet. There is still plenty of bird song in the apartment. Ms. Rhodes has two pet parrots and she takes in injured pigeons she finds nearby and nurses them back to health. She releases the recuperated ones in Central Park or at a bird sanctuary upstate.
She took an interest in the jazz loft scene, befriending avant-garde musicians like Butch Morris, Mal Waldron and Bill Dixon, and producing concerts and booking musicians for jazz festivals and gigs at clubs like the Village Vanguard and Sweet Basil’s. At one point, she brought a Steinway piano into her front room and opened it as a rehearsal space, attracting artists like Art Blakey, Dewey Redman and Don Cherry. “They all thought it was hip to be in Bird’s house. Dewey used to stand in the closet, praying or something. Once when Don was here, he said he had a vision of Bird heading out in a tuxedo.”
There are constant visits from fans of Parker, a pioneer of the bebop style who died in 1955, his body ravaged by drug abuse and alcoholism. “One time,” she said, “a group of Japanese people came in and one of them fell to his knees, crying and kissing the floor.”
Bird lives.
She recalled learning in 1979 that the building was on the market, and the real estate agent who showed her the place pointed out Parker’s 'practice closet.' “I went into the closet and closed the door and I said to myself, ‘I have to have this house,’ ” she said. “I just really liked the idea of living in the place where Bird lived.” She paid $90,000 for the four-story row house, she said, and over the years invested much more in improvements to the Gothic Revival building, which is between Ninth and 10th Streets and was built in 1849.
The place has a Bohemian, jazzy feel, with plenty of African art, and walls covered with jazz photographs taken by Ms. Rhodes. There is still the faded birdcage-themed wallpaper Parker selected as a humorous nod to his nickname, and the same heavy cast-iron tub where Parker — and then Ms. Rhodes — bathed their children.
Jazz greats on the stoop in Harlem!
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