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Bedtime music
Try it, it works… John Cage (1912-1992), Early Piano Music (Herbert Henck, piano) (ECM New Series) Antony Pitts (b. 1969), Seven Letters and Other Sacred Choral Music (Hyperion) Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585), Gaude Gloriosa (Hyperion) Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), The Sacred Music 3 (Hyperion) Trio Mediaeval, Stella Maris (ECM New Series) Guillaume de Machaut (c1300-1377), Messe de Notre Dame (Hyperion) Charles Koechlin
Last laugh: Lionel
In a 1986 essay titled “Jazz Criticism and Its Effect on the Art Form,” Stanley Crouch described Lionel Richie as “a horse-faced Negro from the South… [who] pulls down millions for songs that contain so little melodic, harmonic and rhythmic character that even the most imaginative jazz musicians haven’t tried to use them as bridges to a larger audience in
Jazz wanderings
My live jazz intake has been unsteady the last few weeks, but it’s picking up again. Where have I been? Oh yes: –Pianist Aaron Goldberg had a CD release gig at the Jazz Standard on May 17. Worlds, his new outing on Sunnyside, has yet to arrive in the mail, but the sounds at the show were most promising. Few
A guest appearance at Normblog
My essay at Norm Geras’s weblog is now online. My subject: Turkish politics as portrayed in Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow. Many thanks to Norm for the gracious invitation. For a complete list of Norm’s previous “Writer’s Choice” entries go here.
Allan Holdsworth
Behold one of the most innovative, technically gifted guitarists of the 20th century. I’ve been listening to him since I was a teenager. Last week he played at the Iridium in New York. I went there to worship, and I wasn’t surprised to run into some terrific musicians, including the guitarists Jonathan Kreisberg and David Gilmore and an Australian pianist
More on McCain
The other day I lamented John McCain’s between-the-lines apology to Jerry Falwell in the form of his commencement speech at Liberty University. People continue to fawn over McCain as a “uniter not a divider” and miss what seems to me to be the main point: McCain cloaked a naked electoral maneuver in some high-minded language about tolerance. One of the
Against Hayden for CIA
Yeah, like that sentiment matters. Apparently General Michael Hayden is cruising toward confirmation by the Senate. Spencer Ackerman lays out why it shouldn’t happen ($ required, I think). There’s been justified talk that it’s inappropriate for a military man to head the CIA. What really began to baffle me was why Hayden insisted on facing the Senate committee in uniform.
Trouble in Turkey
A fundamentalist lawyer has killed a judge and wounded four others in Ankara. His motive was to protest the banning of headscarves. The judge’s funeral procession turned into a Kemalist (secular republican) display of anger, with people holding aloft pictures of Ataturk and venting against the ruling AKP party, which has vaguely Islamist roots. It’s a scenario practically lifted from