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December 31, 2007
Random 2007 Music notes
| Top 10 on my iTunes (#Play Count) | ||
| Adieu Mario (Extrait de Mon oncle) | Jazz | Trio Rousseau, Tortiller, Vignon |
| What a Difference a Day Made | Jazz | Sarah Vaughan |
| Life On Mars? | Pop | Seu Jorge |
| Habla Con Hella | Soundtrack | Alberto Iglesias Featuring Vicente Amigo & El Pele |
| Yumeji's Theme (In the Mood for Love) | Soundtrack | Umebayashi Shigeru |
| Cantaloupe Island | Jazz | Herbie Hancock |
| Koop Island Blues | Electronic | Koop |
| I Say A Little Prayer | R&B | Aretha Franklin |
| Linus & Lucy | Jazz | George Winston |
| Just Can't Get Enough | World (???) | Nouvelle Vague |
Recent and automatic favourite right after seeing them live at the San Francisco Jazz Festival: Tord Gustavsen Trio
Site.
In musicology, my main field of interest is the psychology and phenomenology of improvisation. Although recognizing the importance of established jazz analysis and jazz history, I try to develop this field of research in directions that are not covered very well in jazz theory as we know it. I draw heavily on the psychology of relationships developed by German psychoanalytic Helm Stierlin and Norwegian psychologist Anne-Lise Løvlie Schibbye, both of whom offer a very exciting approach to the ancient notion of dialectics. It's all about living the paradoxes of life and art dynamically and fruitfully. It's about coming to terms with contradictions recognizing both sides of polarities without getting stuck in the middle-of-the-road. It's about synthesizing – locally, non-monolithic and (if you like) "post modernist" – your dilemmas. It's about moving creatively in a neo-Hegelian "Aufheben" kind of way. I approach dilemmas like closeness vs. distance, moment vs. duration and gratification vs. frustration, and I try to explore them combining empirical jazz research (interviews and analysis) with contemporary "scenic" music theory, psychodynamic theory and dialectical philosophy. -- Tord Gustavsen on the themes of his Musicology Ph.d. Dissertation
*****
In love with Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition". The piano original version, not the silly Ravel orchestration.
"Pictures at an Exhibition was written as a group of pieces for piano in 1874. The pictures were mainly watercolours, painted by Victor Hartman, a friend of Mussorgsky, who had died the previous year.
The piece is a musical description of walking around an exhibition of Hartman's paintings. A recurring 'Promenade' movement represents the visitor. Each of the pieces has a movement conjuring up the mood invoked by the picture, or in some cases even painting the picture in music." -- from the BBC
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December 27, 2007
I don't want to discuss politics. This lady belongs to my private set of female figures for whom I'm grateful for comforting me at that defining moment in your childhood when you realize your possibilities are substantially narrower because you were born into the wrong gender.
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December 26, 2007
Francis Bacon, Oedipus and the Sphinx (after Ingres), 1983
This Bacon is, for some unknown reason to me, hanging on a far off corner in the new Modern Art Museum in Lisbon. And that's about the extent of my criticism of this fantastic new venue in my home city. It's a great painting - even despite the annoying powerpoint-like circles and arrow -, it's highly valued commercially these days and it's a great example of one of Bacon's greatest influences: Greek tragedies, fury waiting behind the door and all, as an impending doom over Oedipus' head as he answers the riddle. Commercial value shouldn't be a curator's main concern unless he works for the Sotheby's showroom but, please...
Unlike Ingres, Bacon chose to portray a submissive Oedipus, presenting his hurt foot as if it was an offerend. The name Oedipus can either mean "swollen feet" or "to be aware of one’s feet."
*****
OEDIPUS: You were a shepherd, just a hired servant
roaming here and there?
MESSENGER: Yes, my son, I was.
But at that time I was the one who saved you.
OEDIPUS: When you picked me up and took me off,
what sort of suffering was I going through?
MESSENGER: The ankles on your feet could tell you that.
OEDIPUS: Ah, my old misfortune. Why mention that?
MESSENGER: Your ankles had been pierced and tied together.
I set them free.
OEDIPUS: My dreadful mark of shame—
I’ve had that scar there since I was a child.
MESSENGER: That’s why fortune gave you your very name,
the one which you still carry.
--Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
****
Maybe because I just finished reading Nureyev: the Life, when I look at the muscled figure in the painting with the bandaged foot, I can't help thinking of the ballet dancer's feet, crippled from decades of obsessively intense training. Also:
"One of these snaps, showing a gaunt Rudolf with his head turbaned in a towel, was given by Joule to Francis Bacon, who was so taken by the image that he stuck it to the wall of his chaotic studio. ... As the old master painted from photographs, Joule thought 'Maybe, just maybe' but Bacon returned the snapshot a week before he died saying 'You have it back. I know I'll never paint him.'. In the artist's archive, however, there are early photographs of Rudolf that he 'Baconized' with daubs and swirls of paint." -- Julie Kavanagh, Nureyev: the Life.
****
Ingres, Oedipus and the sphinx
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December 20, 2007
Despite the flu and the rain, today is a very happy day and I just wanted to convert a blog post into a milestone. For personal future reference.
Chagall
2007 has been great. 2008 will be even better.
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