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Category Archives: Music
GAGAKU: The Court Music Of Japan, documentary, 1989, 60 min.
Gagaku: The Court Music of Japan is an 1989 documentary exploring the history and forms of this hauntingly beautiful ancient Japanese music. Host for the program is Dr. William P. Malm, Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan, who introduces the instruments of gagaku and the musicians who play them. Also featured in the program is Suenobu Togi, Gagaku Master at UCLA and Dr. Sidney Brown, Professor of Asian Studies of the University of Oklahoma, who explains the historic roots of gagaku. Performances by the Imperial Court Orchestra in Tokyo illustrate the contrasting styles of gagaku.
PLAYLIST: THE GET DOWN MIXTAPE, by Sound Cool Records, via Mixcloud
A great, eclectic mix of get down, disco, soul, funk & early south bronx hip-hop from London’s Sound Cool Records.
KAIA KATER
The banjo’s recent return to favour has seen the likes of Otis Taylor and Rhiannon Giddens reclaim the instrument as part of African America’s musical roots. Twenty-three-year-old Kaia Kater from Québec studied mountain music in West Virginia and writes songs from the here and now. Her second album manages to triangulate bluegrass, Nina Simone and Toni Morrison, with numbers provoked by school shootings (Paradise Fell) and Black Lives Matter, next to fiddle-and-banjo folk standards and an opener, Saint Elizabeth, that details a woman being stalked. Recorded in a day, it’s an intense, mostly solo affair, with Kater’s banjo and rich voice supported by bass, muted trumpet and backing vocals. -Neil Spencer, The Guardian
CORNELIUS CARDEW :: TREATISE, performed by the Cardew Trio, maskfest, 1.12.2010
Treatise is a musical composition by British composer Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981). Treatise is a graphic musical score comprising 193 pages of lines, symbols, and various geometric or abstract shapes that eschew conventional musical notation. Implicit in the title is a reference to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, which was of particular inspiration to Cardew in composing the work. The score neither contains nor is accompanied by any explicit instruction to the performers in how to perform the work. Cardew worked on the composition from 1963 to 1967. Continue reading CORNELIUS CARDEW :: TREATISE, performed by the Cardew Trio, maskfest, 1.12.2010
CONOR OBERST :: TACHYCARDIA, from the new album, Ruminations
REVIEW
Ruminations is a record like none other in Conor Oberst’s catalog, stunning for how utterly alone he sounds.
Conor Oberst’s music has never sounded lonely. Yes, he’s done catatonically despondent, inconsolable, dejected, maniacal—it’s a lot to handle, and yet he’s always been surrounded by friends both local and legendary who believe in his vision, underscoring his status as one of the 21st century’s most mercurial and charismatic songwriters. Arriving almost a month after a comprehensive Bright Eyes boxed set that feels like a headstone for the band, Ruminations is a record like none other in Oberst’s catalog—stunning for how utterly alone he sounds. This is obvious in a technical sense, as there are no goddamn timpani rolls, no boys to keep strummin’ those guitars, just Oberst on harmonica, acoustic and piano with ten songs written during an Omaha winter and recorded in 48 hours. Plenty of folk artists make records like that. But there’s also a loneliness in Ruminations that’s far rare and disturbing—the loneliness one feels after taking stock and wondering if they have a friend left in the world.
Continue reading CONOR OBERST :: TACHYCARDIA, from the new album, Ruminations
MAURICE RAVEL & IGOR STRAVINSKY, 1910
Arvo Pärt :: Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, BBC Orchestra, Edward Gardner, conductor, 2010
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten is a short canon in A minor, written in 1977 by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, for string orchestra and bell. The work is an early example of Pärt’s tintinnabuli style, which he based on his reactions to early chant music. Its appeal is often ascribed to its relative simplicity; a single melodic motif dominates and it both begins and ends with scored silence. However, as the critic Ivan Hewett observes, while it “may be simple in concept…the concept produces a tangle of lines which is hard for the ear to unravel. And even where the music really is simple in its audible features, the expressive import of those features is anything but.” A typical performance lasts about six and a half minutes. Continue reading Arvo Pärt :: Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, BBC Orchestra, Edward Gardner, conductor, 2010
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST :: WE THE PEOPLE
From November 2016 album We Got It From Here…Thank You 4 Your Service , the sixth studio album from A Tribe Called Quest. The album features guest appearances from André 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Jack White, Elton John, Kanye West, Anderson Paak, Talib Kweli, and the group’s most frequent collaborators Consequence and Busta Rhymes. The album features contributions from member Phife Dawg, who died several months prior to the album’s release.
Happy 70th Birthday to Marianne Faithfull
The Incubator 