While I’m on a roll with the live performance theme, here’s my favorite botched lyrics performance ever:
What I didn’t realize until just now is that she actually won two Grammy awards as a result of her amazing recovery, thanks again Google!
Live music + visual art = yes please
I just caught a fascinating performance on KALW, a live interpretation of an essay written by an inmate comparing and contrasting two photographs of movie screens with eerie music in the background… was hoping I’d be able to Google up the photographs described and was thrilled to find a video of the entire performance:
I was quite moved by the live music / commentary + film performed during Brent Green and Sam Green: Live Cinema at the Exploratorium a month ago
https://www.instagram.com/p/BFYHMKjEY9l/?taken-by=aelizabethu
and so if I weren’t going to be out of town that weekend, I would definitely be checking out Paul Dresher Ensemble’s They Will Have Been So Beautiful: The Electro-Acoustic Band In Concert with Guest Artist Amy X Neuburg at Z Space:
Continue reading “Live music + visual art = yes please”
4+1 ways to boggle your brain!
[Meta Method 1, Part 1] First, fall in love with this exact version of Andrew Bird’s Tables and Chairs, and listen to it at least once per week for a decade (give or take one year):
[Method 2] All the while, contemplate its lyrics, wondering in particular whether he is painting a picture of a utopian or dystopian future*… and in either case,
[Method 3] ask yourself both what this perspective might reveal about your professional calling’s current overlap with the FinTech industry, and finally,
[Method 4] debate whether either of the above matter in the short term, if at all.
[Meta Method 1, Part 2] Then, watch this video of him playing the same song (while marveling again at both his incredible talent AND how privileged we are to witness live performances):
Appreciating the wizards behind the musical curtains
Last night I drove up to Sonoma to see, among other bands that I like, Sandy’s play in a barn at the Huichica Music Festival.
One of the things I really appreciate about live performances, and especially intimate ones like last night’s, is that we get to experience all the work that we hear the results of but never get to see on the records: the load-in, the sound checks, the broken strings and forgotten lyrics, the moments of accidental ear-piercing feedback, and the communication between the musicians and people like Jeremy Harris behind the soundboard supporting Sandy’s.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BGiw0akkY3e/?taken-by=aelizabethu
Jeremy ripped it up onstage during Vetiver‘s set later in the night. A lovely human being in general, Continue reading “Appreciating the wizards behind the musical curtains”
Interconnected journeys / imagined realities
1
Sometime back in 2012 or so, Geoff played this record for me:
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About a month ago I listened to Scott’s Ethereal Drifting mix again for the first time in a while and I cracked right open starting at about 13:30 (start from 7:06 for a good entry point for the connection I’m making here, but please listen to the whole thing at some point!):
Continue reading “Interconnected journeys / imagined realities”
Are you seeing these trees?!
They’re blooming like crazy this year and they show up everywhere; not only all over Marin but there’s also one just beyond Mike & Penny’s backyard fence in the Richmond, SF. This is the same group of buckeyes trees whose about-to-bust-out blossoms I noted earlier. I love them.
The point your love song misses
I’m going to see Andrew Bird tomorrow night, so I’m trying to catch up on his latest… but since discovering this duet I’ve barely been able to focus on anything else. What a spot-on depiction of That sort of conversation, gah!
The whole album (what I’ve made it through so far, at least) is stabbing me between the ribs in that Andrew-Bird-is-a-fucking-genius, “how does he KNOW this is perfect?!” kind of way Continue reading “The point your love song misses”
Spring upwelling: as within, so without
Big changes in the physical landscape never fail to put “big” changes in my life into perspective; this week, it’s been calming to think about seasonal shifts that affect West Marin.
In case a diagram like this didn’t appear in your high school and college textbooks, here you go:
On my way to work yesterday there were so many egrets hunting I pulled over to watch for a bit – there’s clearly more life in the lagoon these days. The Spring Winds have started, and Sito was telling me that the water temperature dropped dramatically over the last week. Then Sam posted this amazing piece… it’s all connected.
Continue reading “Spring upwelling: as within, so without”California buckeye bloom
Aesculus californica. They’re my favorite local tree and they have tons of spikes this year and they’re about to go off…
Águas de Março
I love Elis Regina’s version of this Antonio Carlos Jobim song, and as is perhaps fitting for a song whose title translates to “Waters of March,” on this rainy first day of Spring, it’s been running through my head.
More than anything else, this song makes me wish I could speak Portuguese so I might be able to sing along with a better sense of the meaning behind the beautiful sounds. In the meantime, I’ll just watch Elis sing it, and laugh, and improvise… over and over.
Elizabeth Ü 