Movies We've Just Watched discussion
LISTS, LISTS, AND MORE LISTS
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Stuff We've Just Listened To
i had a great week of playing music last week, and as a perfect kind of culmination, i played on the radio (KPFA - our bay area NPR station) with my friends cheryl leonard (instrument builder) and thomas dimuzio (electronic music genius with negativland and many others) ...here is a link to the broadcast. the first hour features field recordings from cheryl (from her trips to antarctica, norway, etc) and then she does a live performance playing some of the instruments she has built (in tandem with some of the field recordings).
the second hour features thomas playing some of my recordings (for about 30 minutes) and then i did a live 30 minute improvisation on saxophone.
the closing segment is about 40 minutes of us all playing together (highly recommended for those of you that like REALLY different music) and then the segment closes out (again) with a piece from my CD RUSSIAN NOTEBOOKS.
https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=237213
enjoy
it's lester young's birthday! here's a little film called JAMMIN' THE BLUES - that should make your day.https://youtu.be/x1EYOdIr-HE
you're welcome
Phillip wrote: "i had a great week of playing music last week, and as a perfect kind of culmination, i played on the radio (KPFA - our bay area NPR station) with my friends cheryl leonard (instrument builder) and ..."Darn--when I had time this weekend to listen it says this episode no longer archived. Another way?
maybe not. but thomas and i are recording our duo project in september. i'm really looking forward to it - we've had some great live shows this year and if those are a glimpse of what's to come, then i think we will make a really fine record.
Dug on some Steve Reich at the gym. Lifting weights to MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS the other day, and ELECTRIC COUNTERPOINT followed by THE DESERT MUSIC yesterday.
nice! we bought tickets for some reich to be performed at cal performances in january. stoked to hear some new work by the man.
back to school, back to teaching, gathering masses of listening cuts for my jazz ensemble and orchestra students. it's impossible to sum up 1,000 years of music western art music history in 50 minutes (or 100 years of jazz history in the same amount of time), but that's exactly what i'm going to try to do today. yeeehaww!
A new John Adams recording SCHEHARAZADE.2 -- an extended piece for violin and orchestra. Interesting so far.
i played in three recording sessions in the past few weeks and this morning i am listening to the mixes (mixed last week) from the session that thomas dimuzio and i did two weeks ago at fantasy studios (unless you've been living in seclusion, you've heard countless albums that were recorded there). the other session was with percussion wizard tatsuya nakatani, and then there was the new lost trio session of all original material.well, dang, i rarely boast my own work, but this recording with dimuzio will hold a very special place in my discography. the rough mixes that thomas and i realized last week sound fantastic. it's me playing and mostly it's him sampling me in real time and processing it with electronics, with a few tracks where he is also playing a buchla (analog synthesizer conceived and developed by don buchla, who died a few days before our session) thom and don were close, so the first thing we did was to lay two takes of a requiem for mr buchla, a true american maverick.
anyway, damn, i'm super excited about this. more soon. thom and i will be doing the final mix and mastering before december. album will likely emerge next year.
went to amoeba on monday and found a 5-cd box set of blues pioneer charley patton - complete recordings from 1929 - 1934. so damn good!
Congratulations on your music venture, Phillip! I'm sure that it will go really well. Looking forward to hearing about its release.I'm listening my way through a compilation of all of Leonard Cohen's albums. Every now and then a song will surface that I have not come across. That is very exciting! What a poet! What a man!
I'm also listening to (while reading) 'The Brothers Karamazov' on Audio, read by Constantine Gregory. I shall certainly be drawn to any of his readings in the future. :)
Oh yes and radio drama. I listen to BBC Radio 4 pretty much every day. (I'm from Ireland). My older son reintroduced me to it. I listened to it as a student in London many years ago. It provided great company for this, rather lonely at times, Irish girl lost in a big city.My son graduated in 2015 from drama school in London. He won a 5-month contract with BBC Radio 4 as his first job. He got to act on radio drama with many great actors such as Richard Wilson and Bill Nighy. I don't know if these
translate to the US. He had an amazing time. I still listen, though not as frequently, and the quality of reading and acting is superb.
I also listen to 'The Archers' on Radio 4. It is the oldest running soap in the UK. It began in the 1950s I think ...
Hilary wrote: "Congratulations on your music venture, Phillip! I'm sure that it will go really well. Looking forward to hearing about its release.I'm listening my way through a compilation of all of Leonard Coh..."
did someone actually release a complete compilation of all of leonard cohen's recordings???
love BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
Well, Phillip, it says on the box: LEONARD COHEN
The Complete Studio Albums Collection
BUT it doesn't include 'Old Ideas' or
'Popular Problems'
(I have 'Old Ideas' as a separate album)
All of us here (in our family) love Leonard Cohen. We have seen him in concert 3 times - once in Belfast and twice in Dublin. He is spell-bindingly magnificent. No other concert even remotely comes up to scratch.
'The Brothers KARAMAZOV' is delicious! It is long, but Dostoyevsky has paced it just right I think! I like it a lot more than I thought I would. :-}
i am a cohen fan, no need to convince me! great that you could see him. kenny wollesen, a drummer who i used to play a lot with in the bay area before he moved to new york did a tour or two with cohen in the last 10 years, you probably saw him on one of those shows. he also appears in that documentary kind of thing where lots of musicians play his music - not as good as the original in my opinion, but .. - kenny is in that film too.BK - i've read it three times - the first time with the old (useless) constance gardner translation, the other two times with the pevear and volkhonsky translation, which is far superior. it is the novel of a visionary, so many 20th century studies in philosophy, religion, psychology and social structures come out of that book.
Under the Christmas tree this year was a BluRay of Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson's EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, a video presentation of the production that toured the world a couple of years back and which I saw with my husband and we were both dazzled and confounded. The video was made at live performances in France, and based on the parts that I've watched it is very well done -- none of the distracting frantic editing that can make these things such an ordeal.What does it mean? Ya got me. Something about time, and space, and suspenders, and the end of the world.
nice - i wouldn't mind having a good stretch of time to dig into that.
my newest solo recording was released on LP, so we pulled out the phonograph and got it fixed up - bought a new, old-school receiver, and we are once again listening to vinyl around the house, which makes me so so so happy i could shout off the rooftops and hillsides.i have nearly 3,000 LPs that have been hanging in the storage closet waiting for this day ... recent activity includes listening to
billie holiday - THE FIRST VERVE RECORDINGS
brian eno - complete AMBIENT MUSIC (I - IV) recordings
dexter gordon - LONG TALL DEXTER (complete savoy recordings)
king sunny ade - JUJU MUSIC
glenn gould plays bach: THE PARTITAS
john coltrane - OLE
john adams - HARMONIELEHRE
dmitri shostakovich - CELLO CONCERTO (w rostropovich)
lester young - COMPLETE ALADDIN RECORDINGS
cecil taylor - NEFERTITI, THE BEAUTIFUL ONE HAS COME
steve lacy - CAPERS
laurie anderson - MISTER HEARTBREAK
louis armstrong - THE HOT SEVEN
john carter - A SUITE OF EARLY AMERICAN FOLK SONGS FOR SOLO CLARINET
paul desmond - LIVE IN TORONTO
.... it's been a good week
While watching season 7a of The Walking Dead I developed a curious love for the song "Easy Street", so I've been playing that a lot lately. O_o Also sat down and listened to all my 90s CDs from when I was a mopy teen. KoRn (s/t, Issues) , Sarah McLachlan (Surfacing) , Alanis Morrissette (Former Infatuation Junkie), Coal Chamber (s/t), Corrosion of Conformity... spent a great few nights singing along while flipping through old photos.
the walking dead and nostalgia ... makes sense to me!
steve reich turns 80 this year and his work is touring the country, being performed by a variety of ensembles in different cities.last night we went to cal performances to hear ensemble signal play several really fine works - my only complaint is that the instrumentation didn't change enough from piece to piece - but whatevs!
they played
CLAPPING MUSIC (1972) - and damn, steve reich and brad lubman (who conducted the majority of the works on the bill) performed it in duo. it was lovely to hear an intimate performance of it.
QUARTET (2013) - for two pianos and two vibraphones - excellent performance of a clean, lean composition
RUNNER (2016 - premiere, commissioned by cal performances) for what is basically a double-octet of two flutes, two clarinets, two oboes, two pianos, two vibraphones, two violins, two violas, two cellos and a single contrabass. the groups seemed not to exhibit the same precision and control in this one as the others - which i kind of liked!
after an intermission we were treated to
RADIO REWRITE (2013) for octet (with electric, rather than double bass) ... this was my favorite of all the pieces - classic reichian motivs but more colors and the orchestration changed up more throughout the windy road.
DOUBLE SEXTET (2007) ... i was ready to leave at this point and the work didn't offer much that hadn't already gone down in the preceding two pieces ... i was also disappointed that all of the instruments were mic-ed, the hall we were in didn't warrant it, in my opinion, and the winds were turned up a little too loud for my tastes. would have been so much better if the performance had been strictly acoustic.
but other than that it was great to see the packed house celebrating reich and his wizardry. no one can throw the trail of the downbeat more playfully than steve reich. good times.
listening to the new juana molina record and it's GREAT ... i've been a fan since TRES COSAS ... this one has a bit more electronics in the mix. here's a link to the full album on you tube, but by all means, BUY IT
https://youtu.be/2lInfc2zv5M
Thanks Phillip, I listened to your link on FB, and will look for it and pass it on!
the great american writer bill berkson died last fall and the sicilian girl and i were friends with bill and are still friends with his wife, the art historian connie lewallyn, and connie invited me over to go through bill's music collection and get rid of it ... which means i will take most of it to amoeba and sell it for her .. but she invited me to "take anything you might like" ... and dang, i had to fight myself from taking EVERYTHING, because i want connie to get as much $ as possible, but still i came home monday night with a few bags of gems .. won't list them all, but here are some highlightscomplete billie holiday recordings on decca (this now pretty much completes my billie collection - i think i have everything she recorded, notwithstanding some live bootlegs, etc.)
complete library of congress recordings of jelly roll morton (!!!)
sidney bechet mosaic box set
gerry mulligan mosaic box set
complete debussy piano music
complete xenakis piano music
beach boys - pet sounds
steve lacy - CAPERS and FIVE FACINGS
morton feldman - FOR PHILIP GUSTON (and a few others - bill had literally every feldman recording in his collection
complete works of edgar varese
bix beiderbeck and frankie trumbauer - proper box set
hadyn complete piano sonatas - andras schiff
hadyn complete string quartets
mozart - le nozze di figaro
monteverdi - madrigals
josquin - mass
ockeghem - masses
brahms - complete string quartets
shostakovich - complete string quartets
mal waldron trio - rise up
charlie parker - complete verve recordings
stravinsky - the rake's progress (opera)
stravinsky - symphony of psalms
stravinsky - complete ballet music
stravinsky - complete minatures
and lots more that i don't have time to list.
come by and listen some time!
found some early lester young with the count basie band from the 30's i had never heard before .... mmmmmm, GOOD! columbia released these sides on a "two-fer" (what they used to call double LPs back in the day). delicious music - includes a rare surviving track that features a young singer named billie holiday ....
Ah, MASON & DIXON -- it has been too long. Fresh delights in every sentence.
are you listening or reading????????is there a CD?
inquiring minds want to know.
meanwhile, i'm listening to bartok's second violin concerto, the mother of all violin concertos. my god, this is some glorious madness. i'm not as fond of this recording (with itzhak perlmann and london philharmonic with previn conducting) - for me, the killer diller is anne-sophie mutter with seiji ozawa conducting boston ... while the perlman-previn recording has some finer moments of clarity, the mutter-ozawa pulls more expressiveness from the score and the tempos can really get the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up.
Tom wrote: "Ah, MASON & DIXON -- it has been too long. Fresh delights in every sentence."along with an allegiance to caffeine that, i'm sure, pynchon has depended on all these years to keep him up late into the night scrawling his glorious prose.
Queen's NEWS OF THE WORLD, followed by Coltrane's ASCENSION at the gym. Variety, man, that's what it's all about.
Reading MASON & DIXON, which is apparently so mind-altering that I post about it in a music thread...
Tom wrote: "Queen's NEWS OF THE WORLD, followed by Coltrane's ASCENSION at the gym. Variety, man, that's what it's all about."that's some nice non-transition shit, baby.
i went to a show last night and was talking to some guys that had radio shows at rice (houston) in the 90's - they were talking about how they insisted that incoming DJs played at least one track per show that they HATED and had at least one non-smooth transition per show ... i think you would have fit right in. :)
Tom wrote: "Reading MASON & DIXON, which is apparently so mind-altering that I post about it in a music thread..."that's some musical prose, is all ...
xo
still so happy to have a turntable in my life, and while i am digging back through my LP collection i am thoroughly enjoying charles mingus' NOSTALGIA IN TIMES SQUARE - THE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS featuring booker ervin playing so much tenor saxophone and several other stars of mingus' 50's ensembles.
John Bischoff: AUDIO COMBINEThis man makes some of the most gorgeous, space-loving, stop-you-in-your-tracks electronic music you'll ever hear.
A master.
i gotta get my hands on that. we recorded the BARBEDWIRE scores last summer - his sound production is indeed exquisite.
ordered some music from squidco - a great distribution service for creative and contemporary music:http://www.squidco.com/miva/merchant.mvc
and really enjoying the listening!
i picked up these four releases from the hat label, which has been producing compelling creative music since the late 1970's - while other big euro labels like ECM have calcified and got lost in manfred eicher's ego-centric curation, hat art has spread its branches into contemporary classical music, american free improvisation, euro improv, including the lower-case movement of the early 2000's, and did a great job of tracking the late 20th century jazz masters who came out of the free jazz movement and took the music in new places.
the selection of four releases gives a glimpse of the range they present:
albert ayler quartet (w don cherry, gary peacock, sunny murray) live at club monmarte, copenhagen 1964
joe mc phee - as serious as your life - joe mc phee goes solo and presents a stunning program on multiple instruments: pocket trumpet, piano, electronics. this is a re-release of a classic LP that received a lot of critical acclaim upon its release in 1996
carlos zingaro (violin) and peggy lee (cello) live improvisations at the western front, vancouver b.c. 1996
michel wintasch (piano, synthesizer) christian weber (bass) christian wolfarth (drums) - live at willisau (switzerland) 2012 - astonishing improvisations from not your typical piano trio. top drawer european free improvisation
Remastered OK COMPUTER -- my oh my. Well worth the triple (at least) dip. It sounds great.My musical attention span has dwindled a good deal, due largely I guess to my habit of creating assorted playlists and hitting shuffle. The fun of hearing Radiohead followed by The Who followed by Cab Calloway is undeniable, but I'm feeling the need for some longer form listening. So my project for now is listening to complete albums only. We'll see how long it lasts...
Was listening to a bit of Artemeyev's score for STALKER the other day... as a kind of a warmup to seeing the film again. I had no idea of the elaborate preparations and procedures used to make that score. In fact I never paid much attention to it, in previous viewings (the last of which was with the esteemed Messrs. Greenlief and Perkis at the Castro, on that gigantic screen)
Tom wrote: "Remastered OK COMPUTER -- my oh my. Well worth the triple (at least) dip. It sounds great.My musical attention span has dwindled a good deal, due largely I guess to my habit of creating assorted ..."
I know what you mean--still, I suppose I need some sort of playlist to highlight albums only when i have that much time. Ok Computer's a good'un. Been working on some of those on piano lately.
Tom wrote: "Remastered OK COMPUTER -- my oh my. Well worth the triple (at least) dip. It sounds great.My musical attention span has dwindled a good deal, due largely I guess to my habit of creating assorted ..."
couple things ...
OK COMPUTER - wow, remastered??? i've always felt that record was just flawless. i don't want to get into what album is best or anything, but my feeling has always been that they just sound like such a BAND on it - like they had been playing that material for a long while and built it slowly over time. every little part seems perfectly conceived and placed. i think that's one of my favorite records from the 90's.
on "whole albums" - do it. just do it. when i got my turntable hooked up again i really enjoyed playing both sides of a record, like in the old days! i have several two-LP sets, mostly jazz and classical, in some cases, like WOZZECK or LULU, three-album sets. of course you have to find the time to be able to listen to these works, but that's part of the joy. i've been able to do more things like this since i left fussbook.
Djll wrote: "Was listening to a bit of Artemeyev's score for STALKER the other day... as a kind of a warmup to seeing the film again. I had no idea of the elaborate preparations and procedures used to make that..."that scene where they are on the little motor-cart on the train tracks heading in to the zone ... the click clack of the tracks starts to get processed ... i just love that scene and that music. music is used so sparingly in STALKER - and it's uber tasty. looking forward to checking this new remastered criterion blu-ray - probably sunday night - which seems appropriate, because it's the night before i leave for my 9 day tour of the southwest - always a voyage into the red landscapes and the self.
where did you find the STALKER soundtrack anyway?
i was guest DJ last night on barbara golden's show - THE CRACK OF DAWN - from midnight to 3 am ... played the following gems by these amazing gals:pauline oliveros - STRIATIONS
stereolab - FUSES
mary halvorson - LAKESIDE, 1937
wanda jackson - TUNNEL OF LOVE
kristin miltner - GRAINS NEED WATER AND SUNLIGHT
pj harvey - KAMIKAZE
elsa marie pade - ILLUSTRATIONER
le tigre - WHAT'S YOUR TAKE ON CASSAVETTES?
cheryl leonard - SPARRING ELEPHANT SEALS
las soucias - TETAS/I CHIQUITO, BENDITO
bjork - LUCY
joelle leandre - 1st VARIATION FOR CONTRABASS & VOICE
barbara golden - MY PLEASURE
loretta lynn - YOU AIN'T WOMAN ENOUGH TO TAKE MY MAN
juana molina - RIO SECO
lisa mezzacappa and nightshade - DELPHINUS
tara jane o'neil - FLUTTER
angelica sanchez - ALONG THE EDGE
memphis minnie - MY GIRLISH WAYS
cat power - LIVING PROOF
juana molina - RIO SECO
salamat sadikova - KECKI ESKERUU
jeanne lee - LOVER MAN
erase errata - TONGUE TIED - BILLY MUMMY
lucinda williams - WRAP MY HEAD AROUND THAT
the archive is up for two weeks, if you feel like giving a listen
https://kpfa.org/episode/crack-o-dawn...
cheers
Phillip--that was a great playlist. Good Hurricane Weather music for me...
Look after yourself, Tracy -- best wishes!
Tom wrote: "Look after yourself, Tracy -- best wishes!"Thanks. Woke up this morning to the possibility of my West coast getting the direct hit. Before it was South Florida/Miami. But, slower winds.
i listened to:
lightnin' hopkins - the FANTASY RECORDINGS
beck - GUERO
john lee hooker - THE REAL FOLK BLUES
duke ellington - INDIGOS (essential duke!)
miles davis - SORCERER
flying lotus - COSMOGRAMMA
coleman hawkins - KEYTNOTE COLLECTION disc 4
django reinhardt - the PROPER BOX SET disc 3 (finesse)
beethoven - SYMPHONY 9 (picked up claudio abaddo box set - all symphonies and piano concertos .. so good .. essential beethoven recordings)
duke ellington & johnny hodges - BACK TO BACK
deerhoof - REVEILLE
giacinto scelsi - COMPLETE WORKS FOR CLARINET (my god!)
david bowie - LOW
lester young trio (with buddy rich and nat king cole) - LESTER YOUNG TRIO ON VERVE
northern california is doing well