Mozart

I've been ripping some burned CDs that have been laying around, some unlabeled, and discovering some great music I forgot I had. The Stevie from yesterday is an example.

Another I've just been listening to is a great 2-CD set of Mozart Solo Piano Music written during the "Vienna Years" 1782-1789 when he was 28-35.

The Sonata in Bb Maj K570 is really great. That last movement, the Allegretto is super cool. The music sounds like it was written by someone who was a master improvisor (which, of course, he was). There's an openness to it, freewheeling, variously brash and beautiful. His use of syncopation and chromaticism (separately) clearly point the way to 150 years later, on the continent of North America, where, in his time, a country that had just been born.

Man, I just noticed that the lick Mozart uses in measures 79/80 (3:09-3:12) is almost exactly like the lick in measure 2/3 of the BeBop classic Donna Lee, written in the 1940's.

Pno.

Love Walked In
Pensativa

Piano:

End of a Love Affair

Giblet Gravy

So, going on a search for What's New on iTunes, I found a WHOLE bunch!

One of them was on George Benson's Giblet Gravy, an album I hadn't heard yet! (It has a young Benson looking much like an early Eddie Murphy on the cover. Or I guess, techinically, it would be the other way around;-)

I continued on to the iTunes store where I bought it/downloaded it.

You know, we need a new word for that. You may download something, but you don't necessarily buy it. You may buy something, but you don't necessarily download it.
We need a new, single word which describes these new actions. How about Bownloaded it? Downbought it?
Somebody call Safire.

Wow. Part of this Benson record has Herbie Hancock/Ron Carter + Billie Cobham from Feb '68. The rest is imbued with more of that late 60's jazz/pop/west coast thing. That was a strange time for jazz. It was supplanted by rock as the youth's protest/challenge-the-status-quo music. It tried to morph into something else - "jazz-fusion" - but the dye was cast.

But that architecture, the sonic and momentary monuments created by those giants, are all still standing, thanks to the happy coincedence of the technological revolution enabling us (them) to preserve - hopefully for all time - the sounds and experiences for posterity.

That's a whole other topic...

The other thing I've been listening to today is Wes Montgomery's Boss Guitar. Badass! '63. Mel Rhyne organ, Jimmy Cobb drums. That version of Besame Mucho in 6/8 is great. This is also a record that recently came to me.

That got me to look at Besame Mucho on piano.

We play it almost every night on the Bateaux, but amazingly, I'm not sick of it. It is truly an international standard. As it happens, the composer, Consuelo Velazquez, just died in January in Mexico City at the age of 84.

I also ripped some Stevie Wonder into iTunes: Fulfillingness' First Finale and Talking Book.

Piano:
Besame Mucho

What's New

What's new indeed, peeps.

Much.

Lots.

But yes, what got me to ask the question was playing thru the tune. Great. I think I've assigned a certain negative connotation to the tune due to hearing alot of BAD versions of it over the years (and in some cases being a part of those, unfortunately). But it is actually a very cool tune, in the way that it plays around with Major and minor modalities. You're in C and then you're in c minor and back again. I think I just needed to sit down with it to really appreciate it. And there are definitely some great recorded versions of it out there.

Reading the bittersweet lyrics (ok, actually sweetbittersweetbittersweetbittersweetbitter: read them here) helps to make sense of the shifting clouds and shadows of an otherwise sunny day of a tune. I just learned that the guy that wrote them - Johnny Burke - wrote the lyrics to many standard tunes. Here's a list.

And the fact that the melody modulates up a fourth to comprise the bridge is also a cool and a relatively little used device. I can think of one other tune off the top of my head that uses that and that is Good Bait. Seems like there's another... I'll think about it.

Anyway:

Piano:

What's New
West Coast Blues

Piano:

Skylark
Nefertiti
Nature Boy

Metheny (live)

Ah Hallelujah!

Now the temperatures are catching up with the calendar! The last two nights on the Bateaux were 63/64 degrees respectively. This city is amazing. The tip of lower Manhattan - where it all started with the Dutch East India Co. almost 400 years ago. Hard to believe, but there it is.

Dense City. Density. Truly.

So it has been an active time. A mostly good time.

I saw Metheny at the Beacon Saturday night. The Way Up tour. Speaking of density...

I have to say that he's got balls to open a concert with an hour-long piece that noone really knows yet (ok, the few Metheny-geeks in the crowd may have toiled away at it). I find it variously both really uplifting and inspired, but then also having my attention wanderwanderwander...away. I guess that is his point - something about in this day and age of the sound bite, to really have to make a commitment of time and effort to stay with the piece is in itself a statement against the prevailing trends. The only problem is, it seemed to have the same effect on his band as it had on everyone else: glassy-eyed surrender (well, ok - in the case of the band, this was really only true toward the last half hour of the show).

But all this bespeaks more EFFORT than it really is. I stay with my original analysis from last month as I went up the Taconic Parkway listening to it: Metheny does great road music.

And the two hours of the concert that followed were mostly killin'. I could write much more on this(maybe I will).

Going to Brooklyn for my shakuhachi lesson.

Piano:
Up Jumed Spring

Shakuhachi:
Tsuru no Sugomori (lesson/final)

Piano:

All The Things You Are
Nightengale Sang In Berkely Square
The More I See You
Invitation

Piano:
(on Bateaux whilst car was fixed)
Spring Is Here
How Deep Is the Ocean
Easy Living
Emily
End of a Love Affair

Piano:
Skylark

Guitar:

Tenderly
(+ voice:)
Moonlight In Vermont
Samba da Minha Terra
Desafinado
Aquarela do Brasil

Piano:

Tenderly
'Round Midnight
Upper Manhattan Medical Group
Up Jumped Spring
Unforgettable
I've Never Been In Love Before

April

Recordame