Wunderkind Cameron Carpenter plays Chopin's Revolutionary Etude with mostly feet and occasionally hands on the organ of Trinity Church on Wall Street (restored after9/11 damage). Decide for yourselves, is this for real or a kitschy amuse? Click on the posting title for more info.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Health Care- Red Pill or Blue Pill
Today I would like to direct attention back to where this blog started, Red/ Blue politics in America.
Significant Obama speech yesterday.
Today there will be a potentially historic vote on Health Care reform rallying the best and worst of our system. Freedom of speech can be an ugly thing, disinformation/manipulation media events obscure truth.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
On a Journey to St Sulpice (001)
This is the first of a couple of installments I promised to write for Steve. Ultimately it will lead us to the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the St Sulpice in Paris. But I want to put it in some historical context. Organs and organ music: then there is no way around the all important Johann Sebastian Bach. Without getting too carried away: Bach is the alpha and omega of Western music, he synthesized all musical knowledge and provided it and us with a firm foundation. It’s fair to argue – but I won’t go there now – that without Bach there wouldn’t be any postings on our blog about jazz, Clapton, etc.
Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach (31 March 1685), died in Leipzig (28 July 1750). Both places are located in former East Germany. But bear in mind that Germany as we now know it didn’t exist until 1870 and has a long, tragic history. Here’s a highly recommended book by J.R. Gaines: “Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment” (HarperCollins, 2005). Bach was a complex man. Embodied like possibly no other composer the “three musketeers” of religion, mysticism and secularism, all for one and one for all.
Like Tiger Woods, Bach had flaws. He was brilliant and therefore couldn’t cope with stupidity, laziness and authority. No, this is not my autobiography. Bach had little patience, to the point of occasionally treating his pupils to physical punishment - not uncommon in that time but still. Bach was also vain – he knew that he was darn good alright.
One of Bach's aspirations was to work as a freelance musician, but he was born 100 years too early for that to happen. Mozart was the first freelancer, and even he had to severely compromise. Lacking freelance opportunities Bach instead pursued recognition in the form of the title of “Court Composer” or similar. It wouldn’t happen, despite his “Musical Offering”, a phenomenal collection of canons and fugues based on a totally infantile theme by Frederic the Great. Any lesser composer wouldn't even have bothered; Bach turns it into something so brilliant that it almost became an insult to Frederic the Great.
Bach was all about counterpoint, the “relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent”. Little exciting things happens in any music (classical, jazz, pop) unless there is counterpoint. Bach mastered counterpoint and fugue like few if any before or after him. When at their best, the great ones like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven can satisfy the hungry ghosts to well beyond the point where their bellies are finally filled.
In his lifetime Bach was known but not well known, respected but not well respected. After he died some of his manuscripts were circulated in small circle (Mozart etc. certainly studied them) but it would take until the 19th century before the Bach revival would start and the world would finally realize what happened between 1685 and 1750. But during his life Bach was known above all as a “world” famous organist, organ composer and consultant of organ builders.
More about that in the next installment.
Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach (31 March 1685), died in Leipzig (28 July 1750). Both places are located in former East Germany. But bear in mind that Germany as we now know it didn’t exist until 1870 and has a long, tragic history. Here’s a highly recommended book by J.R. Gaines: “Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment” (HarperCollins, 2005). Bach was a complex man. Embodied like possibly no other composer the “three musketeers” of religion, mysticism and secularism, all for one and one for all.
Like Tiger Woods, Bach had flaws. He was brilliant and therefore couldn’t cope with stupidity, laziness and authority. No, this is not my autobiography. Bach had little patience, to the point of occasionally treating his pupils to physical punishment - not uncommon in that time but still. Bach was also vain – he knew that he was darn good alright.
One of Bach's aspirations was to work as a freelance musician, but he was born 100 years too early for that to happen. Mozart was the first freelancer, and even he had to severely compromise. Lacking freelance opportunities Bach instead pursued recognition in the form of the title of “Court Composer” or similar. It wouldn’t happen, despite his “Musical Offering”, a phenomenal collection of canons and fugues based on a totally infantile theme by Frederic the Great. Any lesser composer wouldn't even have bothered; Bach turns it into something so brilliant that it almost became an insult to Frederic the Great.
Bach was all about counterpoint, the “relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent”. Little exciting things happens in any music (classical, jazz, pop) unless there is counterpoint. Bach mastered counterpoint and fugue like few if any before or after him. When at their best, the great ones like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven can satisfy the hungry ghosts to well beyond the point where their bellies are finally filled.
In his lifetime Bach was known but not well known, respected but not well respected. After he died some of his manuscripts were circulated in small circle (Mozart etc. certainly studied them) but it would take until the 19th century before the Bach revival would start and the world would finally realize what happened between 1685 and 1750. But during his life Bach was known above all as a “world” famous organist, organ composer and consultant of organ builders.
More about that in the next installment.
La Primavera
Milan - San Remo
298 km - longest of the Spring Classics
1 Oscar Freire (Spa) Rabobank
2 Tom Boonen (Bel) Quick Step
3 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) Lampre-Farnese Vini
Third win for Freire - 2004, 2007, 2010
In modern times the peloton just doesn't seem to be able to drop all of the sprinters going over the Cipressa and the Poggio, although last year's winner, super fast sprinter Mark Cavendish, did get dropped on the Cipressa climb today.
298 km - longest of the Spring Classics
1 Oscar Freire (Spa) Rabobank
2 Tom Boonen (Bel) Quick Step
3 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) Lampre-Farnese Vini
Third win for Freire - 2004, 2007, 2010
In modern times the peloton just doesn't seem to be able to drop all of the sprinters going over the Cipressa and the Poggio, although last year's winner, super fast sprinter Mark Cavendish, did get dropped on the Cipressa climb today.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Miles Davis and Friends
Shorter, Zawinul... Connections, structured improvisation, Fusion
Paris is the scene man. 1991
Friday Night Jazz!
Weather Report - Birdland
Stadthalle Offenbach Concert 1978.
Joseph Zawinul - Electric Piano
Wayne Shorter - Saxophones
Jaco Pastorius - Bass
Pat Metheny - Guitar
Jaco Pastorius - Bass
Donna Lee
How did you learn to do that?
Stadthalle Offenbach Concert 1978.
Joseph Zawinul - Electric Piano
Wayne Shorter - Saxophones
Jaco Pastorius - Bass
Pat Metheny - Guitar
Jaco Pastorius - Bass
Donna Lee
How did you learn to do that?
Jaco Pastorius, Jazz Bassist, Dies of Injuries in a Beating
AP
Published: September 23, 1987
John Francis (Jaco) Pastorius, an electric bassist whose brief career influenced jazz musicians worldwide, died Monday night at the Broward General Medical Center. He was 35 years old.
Mr. Pastorius had been comatose since being beaten during a fight at a local nightclub, according to Gary Cuccia, a nursing coordinator at the medical center.
Mr. Pastorius's rapid-fire fingering techniques and composing talent earned him a reputation in the late 1970's and early 80's as one of the top electric bass players. At the peak of his career he toured with Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock and Blood, Sweat and Tears.
The police said the beating occurred before dawn on Sept. 12 after Mr. Pastorius tried to enter a nightclub from which he had been barred. The manager of the club, Luc Havan, was arrested Friday on a charge of aggravated battery and released on $5,000 bond, the police said.
Early in his career, Mr. Pastorius had disdained drugs and alcohol, saying they impaired his playing. But colleagues said he later began to drink heavily and for months before his death was penniless and unemployed, often sleeping in a local park.
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content is sorely lacking, that virtuosity is of little consequence, as in
Wooten's case and all of his brothers. It's all a race to the Wooten's
without regard to content. They're playing is 100% patterns, riffs,
sequences, and lie easily within the hand for their respective
instrument. The Wooten's are all nothing more than typists,
typing the same thing over and over in a sad effort to increase their
letter count