“Mad Hot Cicada Spring”
Elaine wrote a short piece for piccolo and violin, “Mad Hot Cicada Spring.”
Sad songs
“Sad songs, that was life”: Rita Forrester, granddaughter of A.P. and Sara Carter of the Carter Family.
Opening night
Neil Diamond sings.
Coronation with Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin playing in the dentist’s office as my tooth gets a crown.
Cellar music
Vera Lytovchenko, violinist, plays for the dozen or so people in a bomb shelter in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Play Music on the Porch Day
“I got blisters on my fingers!”
“There’s no dying in art”
Sonny Rollins: “Humans and materialism die. But there’s no dying in art.”
130, 130
Driving on Illinois Route 130 yesterday, Elaine and I listened to Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 130.
A Sonny Rollins interview
“This world is not what it’s cracked up to be”: Sonny Rollins, interviewed for The New York Times.
Sanford Sylvan (1953–2019)
Elaine knew him when she was a teenager, and heard him sing many times. The two of us heard him in a Boston Shakespeare Company production of Mother Courage, directed by Peter Sellars. It was our third date, January 24, 1984. Linda Hunt played Mother Courage. I’ll never forget it.
A thought for these days
From Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
“We’re all here”
Tony Bennett remembers words of wisdom from Ella Fitzgerald.
[Your selection here.]
The one thing I have found helpful in times of tragedy is music.
Words of wisdom from Albert King
“Most important thing: the better you get, the harder you work.”
Glen Campbell’s last song
An existential statement.
Marshall Fine (1956–2014)
“He always seemed to me like a man who stepped into our world from the nineteenth century, a learned professor of some -ology or other. He was in truth a violist, violinist, pianist, conductor, and composer.”
Recently updated
New York Times obituary for Seymour Barab.
Seymour Barab (1921–2014)
Seymour was a man of surpassing intelligence and — much more importantly — surpassing kindness.
Kurt Vonnegut, advice for students
“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
A post for the day
“There are people, I said to my students, whose work is to perpetrate suffering, and there are people whose work is to create joy.”
For Valentine's Day
Four couples and their songs.
Rocking the home
Playing music at a nursing home on Christmas
Marcia Lebow (1919–2009)
From a beautifully written obituary for an extraordinary person
Orange Crate Art: Country, country, or country
Three choices of music
For R.L.
Music for a trip
LP, CD, DVD
Firsts
Why stop to think of weather?
A song lyric, misunderstood from childhood
Homemade music
Family performance of the Raconteurs' "Old Enough"
Streets and alleys of the Depression
Organ grinders and singers in alleys