Music
- Midnight Mood
- Little Waltz
- Stolen Moments
- Lucky Southern
- Autumn in New York
Singers, among many others, have had their livelihoods cancelled or postponed indefinitely due to COVID-19.
But it turns out you can still make beautiful music together virtually. Here’s my sister-in-law singing Mauricio Duruflé’s Ubi Cartas, as part of a virtual octet. 🎶
Learning to play the piano without a piano 🔗🎶
This is a remarkable story, though disappointingly brief.
I was in Fargo for a couple days for my mom’s birthday. While there, I enjoyed an all-too-rare gift: an hour of free time to play jazz with my dad.
Our set list:
🎶
Ethan Iverson's ECM Artist's Choice Playlist 🎶
I’ve been exploring the ECM Artist’s Choice playlist curated by pianist Ethan Iverson (available on Apple Music & Tidal).
It was cool enough to have these ECM tracks hand-picked by him. But then I discovered that he has also annotated each selection. Iverson’s notes illuminate the music—but they also provide a window into the listening biography and musical development of a great jazz pianists.
Silence & Music: two of my favorite things. Also the name of a beautiful album by the Gabrieli Consort. 🎶
If you use Apple Music and you like top jazz, give my ¡¡¡ Top Jazz !!! playlist a listen. (Shuffle mode recommended.)
With 690 tracks of great jazz music, there are few better ways to spend the next 72 hours. 🎶
I made an Apple Music playlist of Hans Castorp’s favorite music in the “Fullness of Harmony” chapter of The Magic Mountain. (Full disclosure: there’s lots of opera.)
Amazing that it’s so easy to enjoy the same music that a fictional character listened to 110 years ago! 📚 🎶
Today’s listening: on a recommendation from my father, Pat Methany’s Still Life (Talking), a Latin-jazz-fusion album. Like a lot of Methany’s music, it’s strange, beautiful, a bit surreal, heavily produced. 🎶
Brad Mehldau’s new album, Finding Gabriel, is apparently the fruit of an intense reading of the Bible. Its compositions are inspired by passages from the wisdom literature and the minor prophets. Unsurprisingly, then, it’s wild, wide-ranging, and beautiful. 🎹 🎶
I’d listen to Clifford Jordan’s Glass Bead Games just to have a chance to look at the gorgeous cover art again. But the music is even more exceptional than the typography! 🎶 🎷
Today’s listening: gotta be the new Vampire Weekend album, Father of the Bride. 🎶
I’ve been listening to a lot of Third Stream recently. So far, though, nothing I’ve found has come close to the depth & beauty of Sketches of Spain. 🎶 🇪🇸
I haven’t seen The Green Book, and don’t plan to, but still highly recommend reading Ethan Iverson on Don Shirley over at the New Yorker’s culture desk. 🎬 🎶
Happy 85th birthday to the great Wayne Shorter! We mere mortals can celebrate by reading Ethan Iverson on Shorter’s transcendental year, 1964.
While you read, listen to his albums from that year: Night Dreamer, Juju, & Speak No Evil. 🎂📚🎶
Friends in Europe: there is some excellent jazz coming your way this summer. The Billy Hart Quartet (Hart, Ben Street, Mark Turner, and Ethan Iverson) is touring Europe with Joshua Redmon this summer. Make time for this group! 🎶