I should take more vacations like this.

Ten days, post-season, in Montauk is both very restful and can be very productive. Having nothing vacation-y to do, just me, Linda and Nanook, with 8 1/2 gorgeous fall days out of ten, crisp and clear, I could spend plenty of time writing and reading outside, watching the odd movie or ballgame. If someone would kindly fund me for a while, I could churn out this bio in no time!

Montauk is an OK place, past the awful snottiness of the Hamptons, replacing the bluebloods and fashionistas with Long Islanders in jogging suits; I guess, push come to shove, I'll take the latter over the former. Having been essentially a fishing town, it never quite acquired the panache of its western neighbors, a good thing. otoh, this tends to make it, in season, something of a frat boy drinking town, hence our venturing there in late September. Don't understand why everyone doesn't do that. Oh, wait.

Nice beach (virtually no one on it), great lush vegetation, pretty good food places. We stayed in a cottage in an area about a mile west of town. There are no streetlights in the entire neighborhood and, as since virtually everyone had abandoned their homes for the summer, walking Nanook in the evening gets about as close as this city boy ever comes to experiencing total darkness, depending on the clouds and the phase of the moon. Very nice.

Took the ferry out to Block Island this past Monday, easily still my favorite place in the Northeast. Rented a bike and tootled around the island. It's always intensely nostalgic for me when I visit; I've been there so often since about 1962 (maybe 20 times?) that I still expect to see people I know walking down the street which, of course, no longer happens. Amazingly beautiful place.

Reading:

Finished Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" which I eagerly await being turned into a rollicking film, something it begs to be. (Just checking imdb, I see no such reference yet but did notice that Kavalier & Clay is scheduled for 2009...)

Read Simon Schama's "Landscape and Memory". I hadn't looked through the contents before beginning and assumed the entire book concerned woods, forests, etc. and their relationship to art in general and people's psyches. Only the first third or so is wood-oriented though and, I think, it's the part that succeeds brilliantly in achieving his goal, to show how notions of "woods" are deeply etched onto the subconscious of people (or at least Western people. One of my criticisms is that, with the odd exception, Schama concentrates entirely on Europe and America; I often found myself wondering if his generalizations would apply to Amazonian Indians, Bushmen, Inuit, Malaysians, etc.) I'm not crazy about the term "myth" as I think it carries too much unnecessary baggage, but he does a wonderful job of demonstrating how ideas about "forest" pervade Western thought, art and politics.

However, he then goes on to two subsequent sections on water (rivers, mostly) and Stone (mountains) and his argument weakens considerably, even though he continues to provide story after fascinating story. He simply overreaches. He grabs at too much: Certainly wood, water, and stone are going to be rather important components of pre-industrial man's life and associated lore is going to arise about them. But whereas he convinces the reader of the pervasiveness and huge influence with the wood, the other two are just strings of anecdotes, not able to bear all the weight he wants to assign them. Still, a very fine read.

Began Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thoughts" which, so far, is as thoughtful and intriguing as most of his other work.

One thing we forgot to bring was the portable CD player, so my only listening option was via the DVD/TV combo. I did give one listen to the first disc of the Atlas Eclipticalis set--still had misgivings, though I wouldn't base anything on that sonic set-up.

Releases awaiting me upon arrival home:

Marc Baron/Bertrand Denzler/Jean-Luc Guionnet/Stephane Rives - Propagations (Potlatch)

(Various) Airport Symphony (Room40)

Leaving tomorrow for ten days in Montauk, Long Island, probably without computer access unless I happen on an internet cafe.

Montauk's a relatively nice place, right on the eastern tip of Long Island. After Labor Day it's even nicer, sans kidlets and drunken frat boys. Ideally, they'd dredge a five mile stretch between it and the Hamptons, making it much more difficult to reach but as is, it's still OK. There's a ferry to Block Island, still my favorite place on the East Coast, so I'll be heading over there at least once for some biking.

See everyone back here around the 29th, take care.

Somewhere around 1972, in Poughkeepsie, I discovered that the local library (Adriance Public Library) had LPs for loan. In the spring of that year, I'd discovered jazz via Ornette Coleman and, as my budget was reasonably limited around then, I tore through the jazz offerings there. I don't think they had many in stock, maybe 50 or so, but they included a number of relatively modern releases. I recall getting "The Amazing Bud Powell", "Out to Lunch" (I think "Iron Man" as well), "Mwandishi" and many others. I'd take them home for a week, go back and renew them, take 'em back home. Some good exposure to be had there.

They also had a classical section which included a decent amount of 20th century work. Between the cheap Nonesuch releases of the time and these offerings, much of my first experiences of contemporary "classical" music occurred in this period. I remember getting Varese, Stravinsky, Honegger (Pacific 231!), Prokofiev, Bartok.

I also recall borrowing a double LP recording of Cage's "Atlas Eclipticalis". My memory is of a dark blue sleeve, presumably a "night sky" kind of thing with little white dots. There might also have been a performance of "Cartridge Music" on the same album. (If anyone knows what release I'm talking about, please let me know). I didn't care for it at all. Somewhere shortly after this time, I heard Cage's "Three Dances" on the LP (Angel?) shared with Reich's "Four Organs" and loved those pieces but obviously they're much more approachable. But the "Atlas" was way too diffuse and arcane for me at 18. For a long while, I had this mental image of Cage as fluctuating between these two poles of rhythmic vitality and tedious obscurantism. Whether it was on that recording or not, I did hear "Cartridge Music" around then and liked it more but....

So I recently bought this new release of "Atlas" on Mode (the recording is from 1983) and still find it, or at least this performance, dry, academic and, in a word, boring. Whether that was also the case with my earlier encounter or I simply wasn't ready to hear the work, I don't know. Listening to the Mode release, I was trying to figure out why it wasn't working for me and I think it can be summed up as due to the phraseology of the musicians. Every tiny note or sequence just reeks of what we here around NY refer to as "uptown". The tweedy, blue-haired, old money avant garde, a "culture" that bores me to tears. Every sound bore that post-serial tincture, the total avoidance of anything to do with the world outside of academe. It strikes me as very un-Cagean. Truth be told, this tinge infects many Mode discs, though by no means all. It's frustrating, because I can easily imagine this being performed by creative improvisers and working exceedingly well.

I know Robert wrote about performances of the piece out Seattle or Vancouver way in recent months. Curious to know if he or anyone else could steer me toward renditions that contain more life than this dusty offering.

First Record Club in quite some time last night, first I've attended since May having missed June's. Special guest Chris Cochrane, a guitarist who some may know from bands like No Safety, Curlew and various Zorn projects was in the house and proved a pleasure both personally and musically. For a first timer, he leaped off the deep end by playing Side Two of Lennon/Ono's "Two Virgins", the 12-minute track that consists of the brutally rhythmic switching on/off of a radio over muted everyday background conversation. In the best tradition of Fluxus, it goes on and on, carrying you past intense aggravation into odd appreciation, though the (I think) humanly manipulated rhythms I could have done without. Chris' second selection, in a lovely about-face, was one of Satie's "Cold Pieces" played with extreme languor by Yves-Jean Thibaudet, a beautiful performance. I found out later on that Nayland had done the cover for the Zorn release, "Weird Little Boy", one I never picked up, which Chris is on. I've also, unfortunately, never heard his own release on Avant, "Bath" (I think Nayland did the cover for that one as well).













David Mitchum, the evening's other guest, played a track by Battles, a band I'd been wanting to hear (the one with Braxton's son Tyondai). Not quite the cold math-rock I'd been expecting, more an overtly goofy version of King Crimson, complete with munchkin vocals; sorta interesting. When his second piece began, I'm sitting there thinking, "I know this one. I heard it a long, long time ago...Weekend!" When my brother Drew stayed with us for a year or so in 1982, he had this album (Alison Statton's post-Young Marble Giants band) and I really enjoyed it. The cut was "Drumbeat for Baby", a memorable enough title, and I was pleased that at least my musical memory seemed to be fairly intact 25 years later.

Nayland played a rather hilarious piece by LA glam-rockers/would-be aliens Zolar X and a really nice one by Stew, a name new to me, from "The Naked Dutch Painter". A fine Brigette Fontaine song from Julia off "Kekeland", her disc with Sonic Youth, an excellent piece via Dan from his favorite unknown Swedish band, Komeda. Nina brought a humorous deconstruction of a Bach composition from the Goldberg Variations by the German bassist Sebastian Gramms but her final selection was a knockout, a recording from somewhere in the South Pacific of an acapella chorus some 125 strong that did the strangest pitch shifts; everyone thought there was some post-production but not so. It actually made you feel queasy, like you were out on choppy seas. Very odd but also very moving in a way.

A fine evening. Oh, I went fairly straight ahead last night, bringing the David Garland track, "Noise in You" and that amazing Shiina Ringo piece I raved about a while back.

On the way over, stopped by DMG and picked up Pita's LP, "A Bas la Culture Marchande" on the No Fun label; didn't have a chance to listen yet.

I don't normally do concert plugs here but there's this band Floriculture, who are playing in Brooklyn at the Center for Improvisational Music, 295 Douglass St. between 3rd and 4th Ave. on September 21 (site here), that's well worth checking out. The odd thing, for me, is that the inhabit a general area that I'm not really drawn to these days...but they do it so well, I become fascinated despite myself. That area (at least the two or three times I've seen them live and as represented on disc) could be said to lie somewhere in the Braxton-Lacy-Tristano neck of the woods but with a unique feel that springs from pianist Carl Maguire's complex, often jerkily propulsive compositions.

So even if you're as jaded as I am, take a chance at having your premises shaken.

[Received Lucio Capece's "bb", a DVD of two live, solo performances (a question of re_entry)]

Watched, and enjoyed, Lynch's "Inland Empire" today. Having recalled several analyses of it when it was first released last year, I adopted the well-advised strategy of viewing it as a dream-time sequence from the get-go. Good thing, I'm guessing, as although there are snatches of narrative cohesion here and there (and certainly abundant recurrence of subject matter, totems, themes) it's structured with dream-logic and as such far more beautifully achieved than anything else I've seen in a movie.

Almost all cinematic dream sequences leave me cold if not outright annoyed. I'll go out on a limb and guess that mine are pretty similar to most people's (aside, possibly, from more frequent appearances by Joan Chen). The Surrealist manqué nonsense that passes for dreams in your average flick have nothing to do with the ones I know, much less the overly cohesive, everything working the way it does in life examples. Here, the abrupt shifts feel right, the indistinctness and malleability of many of the environments is well thought out, the quasi-"logical" connections don't make sense but seem like they ought to.

Great soundtrack as well, including a lot of Penderecki which, given that about a quarter of the dialog is in Polish, makes its own sense.

(I was mildly pissed off when, watching the credits, I realized I entirely missed the (I think brief) appearance of Nastassia Kinksi!)

*******************

I've been alternating discs from the Shostakovich and Cage sets, a nice contrast. Atlas Eclipticalis seems like it might be an adoptive father of Sugifatti....

I know everyone's breathless awaiting more Braxtonia. I'm workin' on it! Just too much other stuff to do, listen to, watch. And, admittedly, my interest palls a bit in the early 80s period, but more on that later.

Incoming:

Miguel Prado - Mascara de Sangre (Ozonokids)
Tim Feeney/Vic Rawlings - In Six Parts (Sedimental)
Brendan Murray/Seth Nihil - Sillage (Sedimental)


bought:

John Cage - Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music (Mode)
Shostakovich - The String Quartets (Emerson) (Deutsche Grammophone)

I mentioned this album by David Garland a couple weeks back. Finally got around to giving it some more listening time and, while I still wouldn't recommend it overall, there are aspects that have ingratiated themselves into my brain. Given that he's doing "songs", the structures are eely and amorphous, not fixed enough on the one hand given their generally melodic nature, not free enough on the other. His lyrics are intensely personal and idiosyncratic which can work on occasion, on others seem coy or sentimental. But....when he nails it, he does so well. The title cut is a wonderful piece, concerned with the emotional importance of sound. Here's the lyrics:

Noise In You

I’ve heard that there’s a noise in you,
and I know that I’m noisy, too.

Composer John Cage, the sonic sage,
told of the time when silence rang.
Inside an anechoic chamber at Harvard,
as sound-proof a room as had ever been made,
a long, low drone, and another up high,
seemed to disprove the soundproof design.
But, he was told, the sound he heard was
himself.

Low note: blood flow; high note: nervous system.

I’ve heard there’s a noise in you,
and I know that I’m noisy, too.

Out in the woods, by the lake,
far from New York and the noise it makes,
things still aren’t quiet yet, sounds still abound.
They bang in my head and they ring in my ears.
A long, harsh note, and some shrill ones up high,
fill in the silence with noise from inside.
Blood and nerves — and something more.

Please don’t leave me, then I’d be alone.
Please don’t leave me, then I’d be alone.
Please don’t leave me, then I’d be alone.
Please don’t leave me, then I’d be alone.

I’ve heard that there’s a noise in you,
and I know that I’m noisy, too.
I’ve heard that there’s a noise in you,
and I know that I’m noisy, too.

(Incidentally, this is sung in a quasi-neo folk fashion, not "noisy" at all. Synchronistically, I was reading "Silence" this morning when the song came on)

In general, I'm frustrated because I get the sense he's capable of creating some very interesting music but for the time being and, I guess, the foreseeable future, it'll be oddball, once in a while brilliant, pop songs.

New listening:

Graham Stephenson/Dave Barnes - s/t (no label)
Jin Sangtae/Park Seungjun - 5 Modules IV (Manual)
Ferran Fages - Cançons per a un Lent Retard (Etude)

All three sound quite well on first blush.

Read McEwan's "On Chesil Beach". Interesting, short novel. Sort of taking a serious story about a relationship as it may have been generally described in a contemporary work (1961) but adding levels of honesty that have only become "possible" in years since. Makes for an intriguing disjunctive feel throughout.

Rereading Cage's "Silence". Also Shusaku Endo's collection, "Stained Glass Elegies" where he, as seems to be his wont, writes stories delicately balancing attitude and beliefs of Japanese Christians against "non-believers". Also finishing up "The Island at the Center of the World", by Russell Shorto, a history of Manhattan that seeks to restore the profound Dutch influence on the area (and subsequent republic) at the expense of the dastardly English.

So a little while back, an obscure gentleman going by the nom de web of Arbogast posted a comment here. Intrigued as I always am by a new presence, I followed his linkage to the very enjoyable blog, Arbogast on Film, which you can see listed there on the right. Check it out, it's quite good.

My immediate though was that it was actually the work of my friend, the noted playwright and all-around cuss Richard Harland Smith, who comments here occasionally. I mean, all the telltale signs were there: Mario Bava obsession, vampiric arcana, caustic, dismissive wit, absurdly detailed knowledge of cinematic ephemera. He claimed otherwise, insisting his blogging was confined to Movie Morlocks. I remain suspicious, however, though I'm told that everyone and his brother are posting about Lee Marvin today as have those "two". Then I see a link from Smith to Arbogast's site....Hmmm...

Advance 2nd birthday greetings to Richard's (and Barbara's) lovely daughter Vayda!

My lovely niece Tiana was down this weekend so I dutifully shepherded her around the city on Saturday, hitting several museums.

First up was the Frick which she'd never visited. Easily my favorite of the "classic" NYC museums, it's a small but incredibly strong collection housed in the former mansion of the Frick family. How strong? Well, there are 37 Vermeers in the world and the Frick has three. Plus, world-class works by Titian, Bellini, Holbein, Ingres, Velazquez, Rembrandt and Whistler. I've been there countless times but there are certain narrow hallways that tend to escape my perusal. I went down one yesterday and saw (I don't know if it's always been there or is a rotating piece) a fantastic little sculpture, I think you'd call it an haut-relief, by Houdon of a dead thrush:






















Then over to the Whitney, which I'd not visited in a bunch of years. Very impressive show of Rudolf Stingel, whose work I was unfamiliar with. Something of Gerhard Richter in his range, to be sure, though not quite of Richter's depth, imho, but still pretty cool. The top image is his but he'll also produce thing like:




or






















The Psychedelic Era show there had some fun stuff. First time I've ever seen a Mati Klarwein painting in the flesh, I'm pretty sure. Some good light show/videos. The La Monte Young piece, an illuminated box in a darkened room with complex sine-like tones occurring wasn't too engrossing.

Onto the subway and out to Queens to PS 1 to see the Organizing Chaos show. I think this might be the same one Richard caught a while back. In any case, it includes the Scratch Orchestra documentary as a featured event. Very funky place and surprisingly crowded. There was electronic music going on in the courtyard, eventually eliciting a pang of early 80s nostalgia in this listener as electro-percussionist David Linton took the stage. His stuff hasn't changed too much--less "primitive" sounding than it used to be, probably to its detriment--but it was nice seeing it get such relatively large exposure. As to the show itself, eh, it was ok. Nice video by Christian Marclay, Guitar Drag, providing ghostly echoes of the James Byrd murder case.

The book store there could have seriously dented my wallet if I had any surplus cash. As it was, Tiana bought me the score for 4'33" as a belated birthday present!

**********


Watched "Wild Strawberries" this afternoon which, inexcusably, I'd never seen. Very beautiful, moving film.

An outgrowth of the Galas event, this afternoon I picked up this 4-disc set on the British JSP label, "Rembetika; Greek Music from the Underground". Recorded from 1925 to 1947. Most of the way through the first disc and it sounds wonderful so far. Not dissimilar from what little I'd heard before or generally expected, but beautiful nonetheless. Also picked up a Juliette Greco album for Linda...we'll see about that 'un.

I've had hit and miss luck when purchasing Booker Prize winners or nominees. Chalk up another miss with Kate Grenville's "The Secret River", a 2005 runner-up. I'd read great things about it for a while and always kept it in mind before finally seeing it last week. Essentially a historical novel about the earliest days of the Australian colony, it reads like a bland TV miniseries, a network one at that. I at least expect the writer's ability to be of some interest and I suppose Grenville could be called "competent"; I'd prefer "pedestrian". You could have come up with the entirety of the plot line in about two minutes: poor, rough man doing his best for his growing family in London falls afoul of the law (well-intentioned!), is sentenced to hanging, gets a last minute reprieve to a lifetime banishment on England's newest penal colony, takes family, tries to begin a new life, is the most decent of a slimy bunch, has grudging respect for the natives unlike his fellow countrymen, works to establish a homestead, conflicts with said natives, conflagration ensues, he and family survive to preside over the new colony but with misgivings as to how they attained it. Snore.

On to "On Chesil Beach" from which I expect far more.

Cleared up another small matter at the Galas show that had been bugging me for a little while. I was seated at a table with composer/writer Mark Grant who was covering the concert for New Music Blog (not sure how reviews are posted there; maybe just added atop). He described his work in some general terms that prompted me to guess a comparison to William Bolcom might not be out of line; apparently it was at least minimally accurate. I mentioned being very fond of his "Graceful Ghost", a piece I wrote about here a month or two ago. Mark asked which version. Inveterate readers will recall that I was somewhat bemused by the violin/piano version on the recording in question. In my head I was positive I was hearing a solo piano rendition and I was reasonably sure I wasn't fabricating it out of thin air. Mark mentioned the other two sections of the "Ghost Rags" suite, "Poltergeist" and "Dream Shadows", both titles striking memory chords. I knew I must have it somewhere, presumably as part of a multi-composer album and filed elsewhere.

A bit of brain-racking on the way home gave me the answer: a wonderful 1980 release on Nonesuch, "Paul Jacobs plays Blues, Ballads & Rags" on which the pianist (who died of AIDS in 1983) performs the Bolcom suite in addition to Copland's "Four Piano Blues" and (my initial reason for purchase) Rzewski's great "Four North American Ballads". Well, that solved that!

It's spinning at the moment and sounding fantastic, the solo Bolcom especially far, far outpacing the version with violin. I'd always meant to hear more Jacobs, a beautiful player, who premiered works by Stockhausen, Messiaen, Berio, etc. Any recs would be appreciated (the above pic is from a recording of Bach Cantatas and other pieces). I'm pretty sure this recording (the Rzewski/Bolcom/Copland one) has never been discafied, a shame.

[Just remembered: I do have another Nonesuch LP featuring Jacobs: Debussy's Etudes, Books I & II]

Saw Diamanda Galas last night (a review will appear at Bagatellen within a few days). Hadn't seen her live since attending the Plague Mass concert at St. John the Divine which eventually made it to disc. Enjoyed it more than I thought I would; it's obviously not an area I listen to much these days but what she does, she continues to do quite well. She's been doing songs for a while now and last night's show varied between older blues-based pieces, French chanteuse songs and Greek lamentations. Her second encore, "Gloomy Sunday", was especially moving. But more later, in the write-up.

This was at the Highline Ballroom, a relatively new club on West 16th St. that David Bowie has something to do with (at least curating some shows) Though nice enough on its own, it's the kind of venue I rarely venture into. Essentially a dinner theater seating maybe 200-300, but determinedly upscale and...well, I'll delineate Galas' issues with it in the review. But I think she'd have been better served performing in a more modest, scroungier place. You choose to live the rock star's life and you make your accommodations, I guess. But I was imagining her doing her show at the 155th St. corner, even in the little Italian restaurant there. Happening to walk by and hearing Galas emanating from inside there or from the parking lot below, now that would've been cool....

(I looked around for a non-made up pic of her. Tough to find...)

Drove up to Poughkeepsie yesterday to see the folks and my brother Glen and his wife Arlo. Blasting Ligeti in both directions (very wide range of music in that set, requiring much more digestion). Conveniently for me, the annual Sean Meehan/Tamio Shiraishi outdoor event was taking place in upper Manhattan, at the intersection of 155th St. and Macombs Place at 8PM, which was near enough to my return route to make stopping by a no-brainer.

The site is on the east side of the island, looking out on the Macombs Dam Bridge, a frilly structure painted off-white and lit at night, and across the Harlem River, Yankee Stadium. It's pretty close to the site of the old Polo Grounds as well. There had been a late afternoon game and, as I pulled in, numerous fans in Yankee t-shirts were streaming by, elated by a Clemens-driven win. I serendipitously located a parking space, got out and surveyed the surroundings. It was about 7:45 but I didn't immediately see anyone who resembled a likely audience member for the event. A few minutes later a car service vehicle pulled up and disgorged a couple peering intently at a white sheet of paper and looking around quizzically. I ventured to ask if they were trying to find Sean's show and they were. Turned out to be Geoff Dugan and his companion (whose name I've stupidly forgotten). Geoff most recently was in the news for the release of his recording of orchestral tune-ups, "Favorite Intermissions". Shortly, others arrived, maybe 25 in all, including Shiraishi, but no Sean.

There was an Italian restaurant and attached bar near the corner, an odd place for such an establishment, and I met Chris Wolf there, had a drink. Meanwhile, Shiraishi had set up at the base of an old, stone staircase that led from the bridge level down to the street and which served as seating for the audience and had begun playing. His style has remained the same since I last saw him at Tonic, all ultra-high, keening tones on alto, something guaranteed to draw the interest and scorn of passing motorists and pedestrians. Every so often, I thought I detected other non-traffic sounds being emitted from somewhere above and then, about ten minutes into the performance, caught sight of Sean walking barefoot around the upper level, about 40 feet above Shiraishi, snare in hand, occasionally sitting down and exciting it. Soon he ambled down the staircase to sit and play at various points about 10 to 100 feet distant from his cohort.

Around this time, I got antsy myself at sitting in one place. It just doesn't seem appropriate to me to do so for one of Sean's concerts if one has the possibility of moving around. So I went back up the staircase and walked in the area Sean had occupied previously, sometimes paying close attention to the music, sometimes turning my back on it and listening to the traffic, watching the bridge and Stadium. Shiraishi's alto doesn't lend itself to environmental integration nearly as easily as Meehan's snare (which does so effortlessly); in fact, I think the duo combo is a little odd in that regard. But I walked west on 155th St (you can see the railing over the space on the left in the photo above) several hundred feet until I could no longer hear the saxophone, then slowly walked back, enjoying its emergence among the general noise.

Very nice evening. Hung around for the post-show watermelon and picked up the LP of Sean and Tamio recorded by Dugan, "Summer Concerts", consisting of similar events from 2002-06. (excellent stuff)

I came to Roach's music indirectly and still probably don't have a really good grasp of it. I think I first became familiar with his work, on record, through the recordings he did with Mingus around '57, some of which were issued on a Prestige twofer that I bought early on in my jazz listening years. Then, of course, there was the great, great "Money Jungle". I never acquired much classic bop, it being readily available and often played on KCR, but his drumming in those contexts always stood out for me. I remember Mingus saying that he could walk into a club and if Roach was in the middle of a solo, he could tell what the piece was; his playing was that melodically precise.

I was fortunate enough to see him six or seven times. The first was in duo with Abdullah Ibrahim at Environ in, iirc, 1977. Annoyingly, I can't really recall details of the show (except that Richie Havens was in the audience!). Sometime in the early 80s, I made my one and only call-in for a ticket giveaway on KCR. The DJ said to name the drummer and played "The Hard Blues". Ah the late, great Philip Wilson. The prize was tix to see Roach perform with the World Saxophone Quartet at St. John the Divine in upper Manhattan, a cavernous, amazing space. There was an oversized bass drum positioned front and center of the playing area, horizontally. To begin the show, Roach appeared, grasping a thick, wooden club. He raised it over his head and brought it down on the drum with significant force, then just stood there for about 15 seconds listening to the reverberations die away. He did this a few times as members of M'Boom! filed in behind him to begin their set. The collaboration with WSQ was wonderful; don't know if it was ever recorded.

Saw him several times in the 90s with his quartet, his double quartet and otherwise. For a while, we were friends with a close friend of Roach's daughter, Maxine, and would go to see them when they played in town. My condolences to Maxine, who was lovely and charming the one time we met.

My strongest memory, though, is of a brilliant concert that took place on a sunny afternoon behind the Brooklyn Museum, a duo with Randy Weston. The duo itself was as supremely musical as you would expect from these two but what sticks in my mind is the brief solo set Roach did to open the show. Playing only snare drum, he performed three or four "songs" with as much musicality as you'd normally hear from a saxophone or piano. Just a jaw-dropping event.

Obviously the end of an era, but also the passing of one of the supreme musicians of the last century.

Thanks for all the beautiful music, Mr. Roach.

Birthday pelf:

Simon Schama - Landscape and Memory
Jim Harrison - Returning to Earth
Shisaku Endo - Stained Glass Elegies
Manuel de Landa - A New Philosophy of Society
Kate Grenville - The Secret River
Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union

Waddled over to Other Music, which I hadn't entered in quite a while, and just picked up the first four items that attracted my attention:

Drumm/Menche - Gauntlet (Mego)
David Garland - Noise in You (Family Vineyard)
Ligeti - Clear or Cloudy (complete Deutsche Grammophon recordings)
IMJ 2006 issue (Berlin)

also on hand, the two new Formed discs,

Nakamura/Capece - Ij
Mersault - Raymond & Marie

Of these, I've only listened to Ij so far...

Off to the beach for the day...

I'm not the biggest Monet fan in the world. Maybe an early prejudice against certain painters I was "supposed to" like early on in my education is responsible, but I've never really clicked with his work. When I was taking Art 101 at Vassar, he was one of those whose works looked much better via color-saturated slide in a dark room than in the original. So I was a little surprised how taken I was with the above painting, seen at the McNay Museum in San Antonio a couple days ago. In this instance, the only image I could locate on-line, the reproduction is substantially off from the original, to the latter's detriment. It's too dark and the contrasts in the background between the various greens and browns are overstated. The red lilies, though looking ok here, explode out much more deliriously in the original. In fact, inevitably I suppose, I couldn't help but make analogies to certain strains of eai. In any case, a lovely painting.

That museum visit was pretty much the cultural highlight of the past week. I don;t get out much (at all) to middle American cities and perhaps it's typical, but downtown San Antonio was a weird experience for a New Yorker. First of all, it's much smaller than I would have suspected for such a large city (some 1.3 million), not significantly larger than Jersey City's. Second, aside from the River Walk, the place becomes virtually vacant after 5PM or so. We'd go out to find a place to eat and there'd be only handfuls of people walking around and almost no traffic to speak of. More bats flitting about than humans. Strange. That River Walk is a park/esplanade affair, sunken about 20 feet below street level, meandering along the San Antonio River, a waterway hardly worthy of the name as it's only about 50 feet wide. We call these things "streams". The central stretch is line with restaurants, bars and trees--nice enough though overly populated and semi-Disneyfied. The oldest architecture seemed to date from the mid to late 19th century, again fairly interesting in a Spanish/Texan way but not too striking. For a place founded in 1691, there didn't seem to be much from the earlier period. We (I went down with a geriatrician from Mt. Sinai) did happen upon a small house once occupied by O. Henry which was a little cool.

Some good eats including the obligatory BBQ and Tex/Mex but our favorite place was a small Japanese joint called, erm, Sushi Zushi.

Anyway, the McNay Museum of Modern Art was open late on Thursday so I cabbed out there. It's a former mansion, turn of the century or so I think, in Spanish style with an interior courtyard. About the size of the Frick all told, though the collection isn't up to that standard by a long shot. There are a number of fine pieces, though, including the Monet, a lovely Cezanne landscape sketch, and solid works by Picasso, Hopper, Larry Rivers and others. Special exhibitions included one by Keith's disreputable cousin, Reginald Rowe, a local artist who turned out 4th rate Rothkos and an odd series of drawings by David Hockney inspired by Picasso's "Blue Guitar". Rather surprisingly, the museum also house a couple of rooms devoted to Medieval and Early Renaissance Northern European works with a few beauties therein.

But the most fascinating find for me was in a space showing works in stage design and in particular, three watercolor and ink paintings by one Leslie Hurry done for a 1958 production of Tristan und Isolde. Small, intense whirlpools, dark but luminous with amazingly variegated bands of color. Really impressive stuff. Of course, I can find nothing on the web of these things and the only Hurry images I can locate aren't at all like these paintings (though whether or not the ones I saw were representative, I've no idea). Hurry was British, dies in 1978. Seems to have had a bit of a rep, wondering if Richard might know of him.

Listened to no music at all during the week if one discounts mariachi bands. Went to a small park one evening, though, found a bench equidistant between two man-made waterfalls (of differing sonic character) and enjoyed a soundscape that included train whistles, the water, kids playing and traffic hum.

Came home to a package from Tim Albro (thanks, Tim!) consisting of four items (a solo 3" disc, another 3" by a quartet calling itself Benito Cereno, an EP by Sympathizers and a collection of work by various folk under the title, Technicolor Hell, all of which are sounding pretty good to these music-starved ears this morning.

Light posting around here recently due to general busyness (and consequent lack of opportunity to delve further into Braxtonia) and paucity of interesting new releases finding their way into my grubbies. Didn't get a lot out of the new solo Dorner on Absinth and haven't a clue what, if anything, to write about it. The third release on Manual out of Korea, "5 Modules III", a quartet with Ryu Hankil, Jin Sangtae, Taku Unami and Mattin is intriguing enough but requires many more listens. I'm kind of hearing it in relation to "sight" though its means of generation is entirely different.

Picked up the older "Futatsu" release as well (Sugimoto & Malfatti) which also requires much digestion.

Off to San Antonio for a week on Sunday (work-related), back Friday. Carry on.

Reading or have read:

Amos Tutuola - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts/The Palm Wine Drinkard
Jonathan Rosenbaum - Essential Cinema
Russell Shorto - The Island at the Center of the World
Kobo Abe - The Face of Another
Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim

Thank you, gentlemen.