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The Pew Fellows on film
I recently had the pleasure of writing four short sketches on King Britt, Gerald Levinson, Peter Paulsen and Jamey Robinson — the 2007 Pew Fellows for music composition. You can now view short film segments on each of these varied and remarkable artists at the Pew Fellowships site, here. If you cursor over “Description of Work” on the left sidebar,
The week on disc (17)
In case you missed the last one… Box, Studio 1 (Rune Grammofon) Dapp Theory, Layers of Chance (ObliqSound) Taylor Eigsti, Let It Come to You (Concord) Wayne Horvitz Gravitas Quartet, One Dance Alone (Songlines) Soren Kjaergaard/Ben Street/Andrew Cyrille, Optics (ILK) Pete Robbins, Do the Hate Laugh Shimmy (Playscape)
On William Parker
My review of William Parker’s Curtis Mayfield project at the Painted Bride, in today’s Inquirer.
Barack Obama, patriot
To quote Chuck D, don’t tell me that you understand, until you’ve heard the man.
The white party
Go Frank Rich: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. […] A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic
Six Picks: May 2008
My monthly list of recommended CDs, as published in All About Jazz-New York, May 2008: Jon Balke, Book of Velocities (ECM) Rob Brown Ensemble, Crown Trunk Root Funk (Aum Fidelity) John Ellis, Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow (Hyena) Fieldwork, Door (Pi Recordings) Shot x Shot, Let Nature Square (High Two) Will Vinson, Promises (19/8)
Farrakhan factor
I want this Jeremiah Wright thing to go away, I really do. But Don Wycliff at Commonweal touches a nerve with this qualified defense. I don’t have time to address all of it so I’ll limit my response to the passage on Farrakhan: Nobody at the press club took Wright up on his invitation to name another person, black or
Hillary on O’Reilly
I’ll say it again: Jeremiah Wright is a crackpot, spewing a toxic mix of racial essentialism, conspiracy theory and recycled far-left nonsense. As Barack Obama correctly said, Wright has “a distorted view of America.” But my god, so does Bill O’Reilly. Like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and other propagandists of the rabid right, O’Reilly believes America under Bush to be