JSngry

Where are you seeing "live" on that cover...it's all a blur to me, so I'm asking as a guide, not as a doubt. Based on the Roulettes I know, though, I'd say that the odds of it being a back cover are pretty good.

Substitute "useful" for "good" and you got 100% agreement here.

Marvin Cabell Joseph Hansom Chubby Checker

Eddie Bo Hamilton Bohannon George Hamilton IV

That was rambunctious, I'm in.

Wynken, Blynken, & Nod Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego Hines, Hines & Dad

Edie Adams Dutch Mostert Muriel Box

Hey!

Shaky? It's a mess, really, but I'd like to hear the individual recordings that were - quite arbitrarily - piled on top of each other before blaming the players rather than the process...and I suspect that it's not really "every" recording...for one thing, I don't hear Blood, Sweat & Tears in there at all.

...so I'm out of town for a week and a half, go to the concert, and only afterwards learn that Jaap van Zweden is taking over the New York Philharmonic in Fall 2018...gonna need to catch the rest of this ride over the next 2.5 years, and hope against hope that a worthy replacement is found with no primary consideration of how "difficult" they might be to work with. Dude hurts players' feelings sometimes? Oh well, listen to the band and tell me that I should care about that as long as no felonies are committed in the hurting of said feelings. If they can get as good or better results without being an asshole, do that then.But otherwise, after years of the DSO being a "nice" orchestra, and after now getting to be a real one...turning back the clock would really, really suck. Now, as far as tonight...Poulenc, maybe. Labèque sisters, no. Oh hell no. Was not feeling that at all. And Mozart Magic Flute Overture...heard it, but didn't really feel it. But noticed it being far less "prissy" than how I've usually heard Mozart played over the years (if not the recent years, because, after while, I gave up). So, first half...not a night I really felt like I should have left the house for. Second half was a different story. The finisher, the Mozart symphony, I just decided to fuck it and watch van Zweden. Our seats allow for a pretty good view of his face, so unless he turned to his right, you can watch him as he goes in pretty good detail. Fascinating, and no matter how much some people talk about "micromanagement", again, results, results, results. This one I felt, perhaps the first time I've ever really felt this much Mozart this fully, and it was all about the timbre and the flow. The timbre, rich, not too bright, full emphasis on inner parts for a big fat sound, and flow, dynamics and tempo perfectly in sync, phrasing just gorgeous. It helps that this is a type of Mozart that is a little more harmonically "surprising" than so much of his work (that I know, anyway)...is it right to say that Late Mozart & Early Beethoven kinda tag-team one into the other? But it also helps to have a conductor who's playing the orchestra like an instrument. This guy's whole body was giving shape to the music (and some of those shapes related to the inner rhythms in a way that I found most illuminating), and if there's an element of theatricality/ego/whatever to having your body be in perfect sync to what your orchestra is playing, it's also true that if the orchestra is executing that deeply in sync with the conductor's body, and it's working this well, then the shit is probably going the way it's supposed to, and ain't that a good thing to be in the room with! But, best for last. The world premiere of what sounded to me to be a pretty substantive new work by Jeremy Gill played with feeling and precision and think about this - how often in "classical music" in all but the most intensive environments do you get to experience music being performed that has no traditional practices and/or recorded references behind it? Everybody - soloist, players, conductor, audience, even the composer (if they are present, and in this case, he was), is - has to be, really, about as "in the moment" as anybody can be in order to make it real, make it yours, justify it's being there, bring it right. And this was definitely brought right. We get that in jazz sometimes (but not nearly as often as we'd perhaps like to think), but in Dallas? At the DSO? And how are things in your town? The work itself alternated between what I perceived (probably inaccurately) to be melodies derived from some kind of synthetic whole-tone extrapolations (if that makes any sense, and it probably doesn't..all I mean to say is that things kept shifting harmonically in ways that would start off one way, then shift to another in an unexpected place and then go off again the same way until shifting again, on and on, definitely some tritone-derived cellular action going on..but too much math for R&B here...I very much like the fact that I could sense the math without at all hearing it as math, music stimulating the interest in the math rather than the other way around) and little 3-4 note wide-interval leap-y things. To say that I heard similarities to Interstellar Space is just to indicate my perceived/received general similarity, not to note any obvious or direct "influence". But it does go to the point that all of "that" continues to be in the air across "genres", continues to reveal itself as a very real and sustainable logic, so if for whatever reason you're looking for it to "go away"...hope you got more time than you do life, that's all I can say. The orchestration was brilliant, every sound, every texture (including percussion) serving to further the ideas generated out of the themes. No device-y effects writing here, thank god! Also, the interaction between soloist and orchestra was sublime, lines staring with one and being handed back and forth to/with the other effortlessly, and at times, almost stealthily. And about that soloist...not really being familiar with Jeremy gill and, especially, Erin Hannigan, I cringed when I read in the composer's notes that this piece was intended to reflect her warmth and passion for the whole rescue animal thing, and her commentary about how exciting it was that she was able to commission(!) a piece that would surely become a permanent fixture in the oboe repertoire and would outlast all our times here on Earth, I'm like, well, ok, cool, is it going to be any good, or is it going to end up being played on a 22nd Century PETA commercial? All I can say is that there was meat. Meat in the kitchen, meat on the plate, meat on the stage, meat...maybe not in the audience, there were fewer people who stood up at the conclusion than had coughed during the performance (and you know, fuck a motherfucker who can't restrain or at least muffle a cough, my patience with that has as of tonight ran out, get some discipline, bitches, you don't fart in church and you don't cough during a cadenza. Just deal with it, ok?), but definitely meat in the hall (portions of the 3+ minute cadenza were obviously designed for the player to play a note and wait for it to come back to them from the hall, and no, I don't think I'm imaging that at all, it was pretty obviously going on, and you can do that in the Meyerson if you should think to). Whatever "yuck" I was feeling during the intermission was fully eradicated by this piece, and maybe it was just me, but after the bullshit (ok, "bullshit") that the Labèque sisters perpetrated about one vision of "classical" music, such a genuinely real experience might well have gotten my head, hear, and ears in the mood to receive that delicious Mozart interpretation. So, good night to leave the house after all. You never know.

HA! Excellent!

That's getting into Perry Mason territory...

Wasn't sure if we were going to be available for tonight's DSO offering, but it looks like we are, and this is what we got/are getting/will be getting: I'm on record as having a short-to-zero tolerance for Mozart in general, but hey, right time, right place, right band, it could work. It is my problem, after all, not Mozart's. Everything else looks like at least potential fun, and Jaap Is Back, let the taffy pulling begin, come early, stay late!

I only really know Satie's piano works (and btw - Mike's rec towards the Barbier is sollid, it's a jaw-dropper, proceed with total confidence, I say), so this 10 CD set at a low painer/no brainer price point just got one-clicked with gusto!

¿How many fingers did Bird have?

How's you hit on doing it in 7? And going to 4 (or are you counting it as 8?) for the bridge, nice contrast!

It's on Roulette, I can tell you that much.

That would be exslippificant.

No, thatI can't type for shit on a cell phone error. Should have been exemplified.

Ben was more than interested in it, he explified it. But Ben is dead, and so is the world that created him.

My point is simply that Washington's scene seems to be more about enjoying music as part of an overall social energy than about writing/reading/discussing all these angsty/emo Why Don't More People LIKE Me bullshit. Too busy enjoying the people in the room to fret over how many people aren't in it. I like THAT, that's what I like.

Well, Ralph Burns ain't no Quincy Jones...is he?!?!?!%=&

Whatever happened to Anthony Davis? But seriosly, Iyler is OK with me. He's not really "loose", but ok, he gets a slice of pie, not the whole thing. As with the Steve Coleman thing from recently ago, kudos to anybody whose peeps is getting them this level of push. If it's the Pi Records folks, then ok, that will be that, and what of it then?

Will Kamasi Washington's fans be reading this article? And if not, why?