Both nights of Diana Ross’s Central Park performances were impressive, but in different ways: the first night was triumphant from the beginning, a confirmation of a singular woman’s great success; and as the storm approached and spread, her response—calm, informative, soothing, sensuous, dancing—was a demonstration of her assurance and strength as a woman and performer.
Tag: music
The Invented Beauty of Wise Elders: composers and musicians Cecil Taylor and Pauline Oliveros featured in Solo – Duo – Poetry
When Taylor and composer and teacher Pauline Oliveros perform together it does seem as if he has met his match in this white-haired, stout, tough-looking lady (she has a black belt in karate), as Pauline Oliveros plays an elegant and expensive large black accordion (usually her instrument is specially prepared).
A review of Adventures Of A Waterboy by Mike Scott
The ups and downs of Scott’s career have been honestly explored in this book, and the first person narrative is cozy and accessible. For Waterboys fans, Adventures of a Waterboy is a bracing, utterly enjoyable read that will illuminate the many turns and twists of Mike Scott’s life and music. But you don’t need to be a Waterboys fan to enjoy this book.
A review of a wind has blown the rain away by Ellen Mandel and Todd Almond
Though I imagine it would be easy for Mandel to grandstand or write flashy piano, in every piece, the music is delicate and subservient to the words – it’s all about Cummings and enhancing, and drawing out the meaning of each piece such that they become fresh and new. Lovers of Cummings’ poetry won’t be disappointed with this CD, which is deeply engaged with the original poetry.
We Study Everything: Branford Marsalis Quartet, Four MFs Playin’ Tunes
Branford Marsalis Quartet’s music is charming, full of pleasing technique, light and playful, so much so that it can be difficult to distinguish between melody and rhythm. The pace is often quick, with bristling energy, and yet the music is quite pretty. The sound is intimate and the bass notes create something almost meditative; and with sound that light and piercing, it is easy to think that the root is freedom, or joy.
Love amid Innovation: Violinist Tai Murray’s interpretation of Eugene Ysaye’s Six Sonatas for Solo Violin op. 27
Eugene Ysaye, himself a prodigy, was a composer, conductor, teacher, and advocate for new music; and Eugene Ysaye, according to the doctoral research of violinist Erin Aldridge (a student of Vartan Manoogian), combined the innovations of Nicolo Paganini—the use of fingered octaves and tenths and double harmonies—with Ysaye’s own preference for quarter-tones, double stops of whole tones, and lengthy arpeggios.
Modern, Dynamic, Intense, a Unity of Sensibility: George Walker’s Great American Concert Music
Mastering and being creative in the classical music tradition demanded courage, dedication, and discipline, as well as imagination. The music of George Walker has great dramatic force, and sometimes surprises—which seems a mark of its modernism. What can be the relation to a classical art that began in another culture, in another era?
Alexei Lubimov performs Claude Debussy and John Cage: Lubimov’s interpretation of Debussy’s Preludes and John Cage’s As It is
An admirer of Henry Cowell, Erik Satie, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern, John Cage experimented with prepared piano, allowing new sounds. He encouraged appreciation of everyday noises, and unusual instruments, and chance, including the I Ching, as part of music; and Cage—who once declared that everything we do is music—could be said to be as much a philosopher of sound as a composer.
Dinner for Two or More: David Byrne and St. Vincent (Annie Clark)’s collaboration Love This Giant
“When collaboration works, you get this third thing. A third person appears, and it’s kind of their music, not yours,” surmised David Byrne, the author of the book How Music Works, to Jesse Dorris writing for Time (Sept. 17, 2012). Byrne is a man of whose vivid surfaces are inspired by depth; and true shallowness is a mystery to him.
Kill Your Limitations: Tomorrow Sunny/The Revelry, Spp by Henry Threadgill with his band Zooid
Threadgill, interested in many of the arts, had a comprehensive bohemian sensibility; and, with a strong sense of musical conception, he is considered an eloquent and original composer in the field of creative, improvised music. He has spoken of not being confined by the European classical tradition, or the focus on the major/minor system of notation.