On the first Sunday of each month the streets of Arezzo are lined with stalls filled with antiques and bric-a-brac for the Fiera Antiquaria, one of the best known antiques markets in Italy. Continue reading “In Arezzo”
In Arezzo
Category: Music
Ode To Joy
Thanks to a tweet from The Fife Psychogeographical Collective I found this video by Bill Drummond at the Birmingham Mail website. It feels like a small miracle. A band of outlawed Romanian buskers performing the anthem of the European Union under Spaghetti Junction – a perfect metaphor for the knot we’ve tied ourselves in. I’m offline now for a few weeks while I check if Europe will still have me.
TTB @ NPR
The Tedeschi Trucks Band recorded live last month at a Tiny Desk concert for NPR’s All Songs Considered. These intimate performances produce some great music and this is one of my favourites. We saw them last year at the O2 where they gave us the best music of 2015. They’d earlier celebrated Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen, and they performed some of those songs along with their own expansive blues/jazz/soul/gospel jams. They’re a great live band. This video gives a taste, but also try Tedeschi Trucks Band Live: Everybody’s Talkin’.
For Gato Barbieri
Gato Barbieri died last Saturday, 2nd April 2016, at the age of 83. He was a great and memorable saxophonist with a big-hearted sound (later celebrated as Zoot, the saxophone-playing puppet in The Muppet Show). I first knew him from recordings with Charlie Haden and Carla Bley, particularly Liberation Music Orchestra in 1969, an album that opened the door to so much influential music. This live recording of Brasil is from the 1971 Montreux Jazz Festival (released as El Pampero) with Lonnie Liston Smith on piano, Chuck Rainey on electric bass, Bernard Purdie on drums, Sonny Morgan on conga and Naná Vasconcelos on percussion and berimbau. It may not be completely representative of his best work, but it is wonderful and impassioned and a good way to remember him (I chose it for my daughter who is presently in Brazil, dancing capoeira and playing berimbau).
For a fuller tribute see Gato Barbieri 1932-2016 by Richard Williams.
For Naná Vasconcelos
Here’s a reminder of the great Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, who died too soon last week aged only 71. I was fortunate to see him once, performing with Don Cherry and I heard him many times on recordings by Codona, Talking Heads, Jan Garbarek, Egberto Gismonti, Pat Metheny, Caetano Veloso, Laurie Anderson and Penguin Café Orchestra, as well as many albums under his own name. He was a master of the berimbau, a single-string percussion instrument, the soul of Capoeira.
Juicy Lucy
A tune for Mother’s Day from Medeski, Scofield, Martin & Wood.
This sweet video was directed by Billy Martin; he’s the drummer in the band –
The video for ‘Juicy Lucy’ features my mom, who is a former Radio City Rockette. At 81 years old, she’s still a phenomenal dancer. I’ve wanted to feature my mom somehow for a long time. She put tap shoes on me at a very young age and got me into rhythm.
Lapis
Lapis: James Whitney (1966)
One of James Whitney’s several cinematic masterworks, Lapis develops a series of impossibly dense mandala patterns in increasing intensity, set to a Ravi Shankar track. Whitney spent several years developing the imagery for the film, using his brother John’s homemade and hand-me-down motion control camera rig to realize it. Although James never aligned his creative interests with contemporary psychedelia, his work nevertheless sought to create an audio-visual catalyst for a deep and spiritual contemplation that was not too far removed. – Mark Toscano
I’ve carried the memory of this short film for years. Now, having just found it again, it’s still pretty impressive but not quite so overwhelming as the first time. I was an 18 year old art student watching it on a big screen in a small lecture theatre, with the volume turned up and completely immersed in its kaleidoscopic intensity, I’d never seen anything like it before. The film was made six years earlier, and what I love most about it now is its handmade lo-fi pre-digital devoted dedication to beauty.
For Paul Bley
Vollmond
The Christmas full moon got me thinking lunatic thoughts and I remembered this wonderful piece by Pina Bausch for Tanztheater Wuppertal.
Vollmond, meaning full moon or high tide, is among Pina’s most revered works and has been making waves, literally, since its creation in 2006… The full moon highlights our humanity and how we get thrown into emotional highs and lows. Pina’s dancer-actors ride this roller coaster throughout Vollmond, showing vulnerability and strength, detachment and desire, collapse and vitality. It’s visceral. It’s deeply relatable. There is no one story to this show, it’s a glimpse into the lives of a handful of intertwined individuals. Vollmond is a work you can return to and always come out of with a new perspective. Continue reading “Vollmond”
Cucurrucucú Paloma
I first heard this song on the radio a dozen years ago and I was captivated by it. It’s been echoing in my head ever since. It sounded extraordinary and more beautiful than anything I’d ever heard before. I was sure they said it was by Tomás Méndez but I couldn’t find him on iTunes or anywhere. Then by chance I found this video a few days ago and I can’t stop playing it. I’ve now got the album too so I can sing along when I’m alone in the car, and I sound just like Caetano Veloso! Continue reading “Cucurrucucú Paloma”