I've been way too busy with the introduction to computer science I am teaching to have any time to write for pleasure. However, I've been hearing some interesting music while working out or preparing for class, some of it from Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight on WFUV. I became a member of WFUV to help support their webcast of this show. Check it out, and support it if you can. Anyway, on the music front:
- Le Pas du Chat Noir by Anouar Brahem. Can one blend North African oud music, jazz, and boulevard tunes with a sprinkle of Satie and get something more than a world-music pastiche? Anouar Brahem is more than able to.
- Emanual Ax and Yefim Bronfman play Rachmaninoff's pieces for two pianos. Liquid percussion like a mountain stream in flood. Speaking of two pianos, I have a sudden craving for Bartok's Sonata for two pianos and percussion. Any suggestions?
- My copy of the classic Conference of the Birds by one of the best Dave Holland groups (Holland, Sam Rivers, Anthony Braxton, Barry Altschul) had gone missing. Got another one. Thirty years old, as bright as ever.
Still on the music front, heard Jason Moran and Terry Blanchard groups in concert last week at the Perelman auditorium (too "cool" for jazz, but great sound overall) of the Kimmel Center. Blanchard was solid but a bit perfunctory at times. Moran was surprising, demanding, but also impossible to let go. Distant echoes of Miles Davis and Cecil Taylor, in a convincingly new setting. He played with Tarus Mateen (bass) and Eric Hartland (drums). Hartland, who also played with Blanchard, is simply amazing. In over two hours of performance, every move was fresh and to the point, and often humorous. He was the best in Blanchard's set, and his play with Moran was very high voltage. I want a Moran+Hartland recording.
3:10:31 PM 
|
|
