music

He died on Monday at a ripe old age and I’ve been listening to his catalog since.  He had some bangers, as the kids say–also I had no idea that the Animaniacs covered him:

I heard the tail end of this on the way home from the gym this morning on the community radio station here. Produced by George Harrison, from an album considered by Ravi Shankar “to be among the best works of his 60-year career,” it also, as the kids say, slaps:

I know I’ll be grooving to the whole album today.

Not the nervous kind (although this week is unsustainably busy for a solo writer at work, so stay tuned)–the sample kind (lol). I found this page via a Twitter dive about Daft Punk’s breakup and it’s fascinating to me. From the Track Lib site:

Our ‘Sample Breakdown’ video series dissects tracks to visualize the art of sampling. Get a glimpse behind the boards, discover original samples, and learn from the greats.

Even if you don’t know all the songs, it’s just neat to see how they’re put together. Now I want to be a DJ, like this guy (from that Twitter thread)

pic.twitter.com/KdMvBULMoV

— Be•sot•ted (@canonvera) February 22, 2021

I didn’t write about it here but I saw Akhnaten in the Met Opera simulcast back in November and it was incredible: A countertenor, a dozen jugglers, everyone moving in slow motion while singing “ah.” These things don’t sound like they would add up to anything other than “weird” but it was deeply moving and amazing to see.

I just found (via Kottke) this short video from Vox about how the production came together. I love behind-the-scenes/rehearsal footage so it’s right up my alley, but it also gives you a little peek at the costumes and some of the choreography.

I saw this doctoral project by Leah Branstetter linked on Twitter yesterday and it’s fantastic–a digital dissertation with biographies, playlists, and a whole bunch of info disproving the idea that the pioneers of rock and roll were all men.

All of Branstetter’s research is fascinating–I had no idea about answer songs or that there was a  “female Elvis Presley,” Alis Lesley:

Lesley usually performed barefoot, claiming shoes made her feel inhibited. An account of one of her shows reports that, clad in yellow satin pants, Lesley “stood on the piano, lay on the floor, wrestled with the microphone, embraced the string bass—and sang.” Another noted that “using guitar and movable anatomy … she makes ‘Elvis The Pelvis’ look like an elderly, arthritic Salvation Army drummer.”

The playlists are a fantastic addition, too, so you don’t have to click back and forth to YouTube as you read. Check it out: Women In Rock and Roll’s First Wave.

For your Thursday listening, here is a delightful thing I just learned about (via): Mort Garson’s Plantasia, an album made on the Moog synthesizer for your houseplants to enjoy.

From the site doing a re-issue of the album [on green vinyl!]:

Julliard-educated and active as a session player in the post-war era, Garson wrote lounge hits, scored plush arrangements for Doris Day, and garlanded weeping countrypolitan strings around Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” He could render the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel alike into easy listening and also dreamed up his own ditties.

…But as his daughter Day Darmet recalls: “When my dad found the synthesizer, he realized he didn’t want to do pop music anymore.” Garson encountered Robert Moog and his new device at the Audio Engineering Society’s West Coast convention in 1967 and immediately began tinkering with the device.

It’s pretty delightful, from the track names to the music itself. Put it on for your plants or yourself.

How did I get a B.Mus. in Music History but am only just learning about synth artist Jean-Michel Jarre? What do they teach them at these schools? Clearly, not enough about new music-pop crossover artists who were married to Charlotte Rampling and play the LASER HARP:

Laser harps aside, Jarre is a legit new music artist–classically trained, studied musique concrete, with Pierre Schaefer, worked with Stockhausen, and was the first Western artist to be invited to perform in China in 1981. (The documentary and concert is on YouTube and is gloriously 80s.)

He also staged the largest (at the time) outdoor concert in Houston in 1986, which was planned to celebrate Houston’s sesquicentennial and NASA’s 25th anniversary, but ended up being a memorial for the Challenger disaster. (Read more about it here.) That is a great one to watch to get into Jarre:

He hasn’t stopped performing and recording since the 80s and is currently at Coachella, where I hope everyone has their mind blown by the LASER HARP

I knew that Aaron Copland had written a single opera but I’d never heard any of it until I went to the Renee Fleming gala earlier this fall. The Utah Opera Chorus did an arrangement of “The Promise of Living” during one of Renee’s breaks and it was beautiful.

It’s also pretty perfect for Thanksgiving (it says “thanksgiving” and “harvest”!) so here it is to try for yourself.

The video is a little over the top but it has the lyrics (or you can read them here).

Remember back in 2014 when I found out about soul singer Jackie Shane, who didn’t even have a Wikipedia article and had disappeared to the point no one knew whether she was alive or dead?

Turns out she is alive and someone at a record label tracked her down and spent three years convincing her to release her work as a box set. It’s fantastic:

Her story is pretty fantastic, too: The NY Times has more of how the recording came to be (and her first interview in 46 years), and NPR has some more history and musical context.

A friend had an extra ticket to Renee Fleming’s opening with the Utah Symphony tonight, so I get to see her live for the first time! Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs are on the program, some of my absolute favorites. Here’s “September” from the cycle:

September (Hermann Hesse)

The garden mourns.
The flowers fill with cold rain.
Summer shivers
in the chill of its dying domain.

Yet summer smiles, enraptured
by the garden’s dreamy aphasia
as gold, drop by drop, falls
from the tall acacia.

With a final glance at the roses–
too weak to care, it longs for peace–
then, with darkness wherever it gazes,
summer slips into sleep.

(Translation via )

In college, the professor focused more on how these were Strauss’ swan song, finished when he was 85–but Strauss was 68 when Hitler came to power; he lived through the war and political maneuvering.  You can hear so much relief in the music that it’s all over.