January 1975. The Cologne Opera Housewhere Keith Jarrett was about to perform for 1400 people—without rehearsing and without sheet music—had provided the wrong piano.
This one had this harsh, tinny upper register, because all the felt had worn away. The black notes were sticking, the white notes were out of tune, the pedals didn’t work and the piano itself was just too small. It wouldn’t create the volume that would fill a large space such as the Cologne Opera House.
Jarrett left the building.
The concert promoter was a 17-year-old named Vera Brandes. It was her first concert. She went outside into the rain and found Jarrett sitting in his car. Somehow she persuaded him to come back inside and play the unplayable piano.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The Köln Concert is the best-selling piano album in history and the best-selling solo jazz album in history.
There is no audio file of that concert available to link to. But you can listen on You Tube to the entire Bremen Concert, which was recorded the following month and is equally sublime.
Disruptions help us solve problems; they help us become more creative. But we don’t feel that they’re helping us. We feel that they’re getting in the way … and so we resist. But all of us, from time to time, need to sit down and try and play the unplayable piano.
Our comfort zones are not the best environments for creativity and innovation.
Note: Italicized portions are quotes from a TEDGlobal London talk by Tim Harford on how frustration can make us more creative.
Poetry and music often come together in unexpected ways. Poet Dorothea Lasky said:
The music of poetry is a delight for the mind.
When it’s read out loud—or set to music and sung—it’s can also be a great delight to the ear.
i carry your heart with me
Poem by e.e. cummings/performed by Michael Hedges (with David Crosby and Graham Nash singing harmony) from the album Taproot. Cummings is my favorite poet and Hedges is a wonderful musician.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
the song of wandering Aengus
Poem by William Butler Yeats/performed by The Waterboys from the 2011 album An Appointment with Mr. Yeats. A surprising find. According to Mike Scott’s track guide, “This lyric conjures in my mind’s eye a moonlit wood on a hallucinatory night in some old Celtic dream time, and the bard Aengus, silver-bearded, wandering out on his quest. This music is the soundtrack to that vision.” Flute solo by Sarah Allen.
.
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
adventures of Isabel
Poem by Ogden Nash/performed by Natalie Merchant from the album Leave Your Sleep. I love the energy, the arrangement, the words, Merchant’s voice…everything! It’s my favorite tune on the album.
Isabel met an enormous bear
Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t care
bear was hungry, bear was ravenous
bear’s big mouth was cruel and cavernous
bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you
How do, Isabel, now I’ll eat you
Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
Washed her hands straightened her hair up
Then Isabel ate the bear up
Once in a night black as pitch
Isabel met a wicked old witch
witch’s face was cross and wrinkled
witch’s gums with teeth were sprinkled
Ho, ho, Isabel! old witch crowed
I’ll turn you into an ugly toad
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
showed no rage, showed no rancor
turned the witch into milk and drank her
Oh yeah,
Isabel!!!
Isabel met a hideous giant
Isabel so self reliant
giant was hairy, giant horrid
One eye in the middle of his forehead
morning, Isabel, giant said
I’ll grind your bones and make my bread
Isabel, Isabel, she didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
nibbled on his zwieback that she fed off
When it was gone, she cut the giant’s head off
Isabel!!!
Isabel met a troublesome doctor
punched and poked till he really shocked her
doctor’s talk was of coughs and chills
doctor’s satchel bulged with pills
doctor said wow Isabel
Swallow this, it will make you well
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry
Isabel didn’t scream or scurry
Took those pills from the pill concocter
Then Isabel cured the doctor, yeah, oh yeah
ozymandias
And now for something completely different.
Poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley/performed by JJ Burnel (bass guitarist for the English group, the Stranglers) on the “b” side of his single, “Freddie Laker.” (Lyrics included in the video.) I confess to having once stolen a book from the public library–and it was the collected works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. I memorized this poem. I was in high school, but still, what was I thinking? What I’m thinking now is that this is actually pretty cool.
Note: Some of these poems-set-to-music were originally published in an October 2012 post.
This post is part of April’s 30 Days of Celebration. To read more, click on the Celebration category link.
If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it makes a sound? This has been a question debated by philosophers. Define sound…define hear…define tree. (I kid philosophers, but I once listened to a philosopher spend quite a long time trying to define is.) Now that scientists are weighing in on the tree question, the answer appears to be, as with many other questions, yes and no. And I’m OK with that.
Sounds are vibrations that travel through the air as waves. That puts me in mind of this song by Ray LaMontagne.
So let’s celebrate air, too, which not only gives us breath (and life) but also sound.
As I was thinking about identifying some of the sounds I like, I realized it would be easier to rattle off a list of sounds I don’t like than a list of sounds I do like. So the sound of silence definitely ranks near the top for me. (Having no sound coming from my computer processor is especially good.)
I also realized there are several sounds I like, but only in moderation. For example, I like the sound of rain now and then, but living in the Pacific Northwest would make me crazy. I like the sound of birds singing in the morning, but too much of it and it turns into birds making racket in the morning. I like the whisper of wind through the trees, but not the roar of the gale-force winds we get in New Mexico in the spring.
Other good sounds:
Laughter, which is a celebration all by itself
A fire burning in a fireplace
Popcorn popping
My cat purring; also the noise she makes at birds in the tree outside our window
All kinds of music
Music is definitely my favorite source of sound. I don’t know that I could pick a favorite (or desert-island album), but No Sun in Venice by The Modern Jazz Quartet comes close. Here’s Venice from that album.
I’ve noticed that sounds can wake me from my internal reverie and bring me back into the world faster than anything else. That’s something I appreciate, even if I may not always celebrate it when it happens.
What sounds do you enjoy most?
This post is part of April’s 30 Days of Celebration. To read more, click on the Celebration category link.
Jazz Appreciation Month was created 13 years ago at the Smithsonian, which considerately provides this list of 112 ways to celebrate jazz. My own appreciation for jazz developed late in life. Although my partner of 30 years was a professional jazz musician, I’m just a little bit resistant and considered jazz to be his music. I didn’t listen to much of it at all.
But a character in a story I was writing turned out to be a big jazz fan. I knew enough to make the guy’s interest in jazz believable, but somewhere along the re-write route—a few years after my partner died—I started along my own path to becoming an actual jazz fan.
If my partner were around to compare notes (sorry!) now, we would probably discover some shared interests, although he might be a bit surprised to learn that I named the cat I have now Naima, after the John Coltrane tune of the same name.
I’m sure we would also find that our preferences don’t completely overlap. For example, I’m a huge Sonny Rollins fan, and I can’t recall ever seeing a Sonny Rollins LP or CD among my partner’s music collection.
Jazz has all kinds of moods, high and low, fast and slow, sunny and blue. But this post is about celebration, so I give you the most celebratory Sonny Rollins tune of all, Don’t Stop the Carnival, performed live at the International Jazz Festival in Montreal in 1982. Simply joyous! So please enjoy it.
This post is part of April’s 30 Days of Celebration. To read more, click on the Celebration category link.
Last week a friend treated me to what turned out to be an outstanding performance by Mary Chapin Carpenterat the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe. I haven’t heard any live music since last summer and I’d never been to the Lensic before, even though it’s directly across the street from one of my favorite places to eat in Santa Fe, The San Francisco Street Bar and Grill.
The concert was a benefit for the Espanola Valley Humane Society, so we were treated to a revolving selection of adorable cat and dog photos on the screen at the back of the stage before the show started. It was great to learn afterward that the money raised far exceeded the evening’s goal. I’m always up for celebrating cats—and dogs are OK, too.
It’s been more than two decades since I owned a Mary Chapin Carpenter CD. And my musical tastes have taken a lot of twists and turns since then. I’ve gotten quite a bit older and so has she. But in comparing her live performance with some of the studio recordings from her younger days, I’ve decided I much prefer her more mature voice.
She and the two musicians in her band are extremely talented musicians and performers who had the audience from the first number and kept it all the way through the show. I stayed out past my bedtime (it was the middle of the week, and I had work-related appointments the next morning), but it was well worth it. After all, I had another opportunity to sleep the very next night but not to hear this great music again.
Thank you, John!
This post is part of April’s 30 Days of Celebration. To read more, click on the Celebration category link.
I have to buy shoes online (narrow feet), so to avoid the hassle of returning the ones that don’t fit, I’ve settled on a couple tried-and-true brands. Back in the day, I had a pair of Enzo Angiolini Liberty flats in two-toned purple that I loved, as much as one can love a shoe, and finally wore out.
This style still comes in an amazing variety of colors—and in my size—but, alas, no more purple.
However, they do have this fantastic chili pepper red. As soon as I saw them, I had to admit that I really, really wanted a pair of red shoes. But red shoes seemed like an indulgence. They were definitely something I could do without, so I kept doing without them.
This spring, when I found them at half price, I went for it and indulged my desire for red shoes. They have turned out to be a celebration not only when I wear them but whenever I see them in my closet.
I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
The red shoes definitely help!
Is there something, shoe or other-wise, that you’re happy you indulged in—or that you want to?
This post is part of April’s 30 Days of Celebration. To read more, click on the Celebration category link.
At least that’s how I’ve decided to look at it. Recently I noticed that celebration hasn’t been present in my life as much as I want it to be—or as much as it has been many different times in the past. I could identify a few reasons for that, but the reasons don’t matter. What matters is that I want it back!
So I’ve decided to create 30 Days of Celebration to help me get back into the celebration habit. That means I will post something about celebration every day from now through April 30th.
In thinking about what represents celebration for me, I quickly came up with a list of at least a dozen things. One of them is music. To kick off this 30 Days of Celebration, I created a celebration playlist of 20 songs and put it on a CD.
Levels (Avicii)
Shut Up and Dance (Talking Is Hard)
It’s Time (Imagine Dragons)
Wings (Jimmy Buffett)
Wonder What You’re Doing for the Rest of Your Life (Train)
Bright (Echosmith)
Hands in the Air (Timbaland feat. Ne-Yo)
Wonder (Emili Sande & Naughty Boy)
Good Life (OneRepublic)
Leaving Winslow (Jackson Browne)
Glad Tidings (Van Morrison)
Earthquake Driver (Counting Crows)
The Moment (Toad the Wet Sprocket)
Avalanche (Talking Is Hard)
Terra Nova (James Taylor)
Downtown Train (Patty Smyth)
Good Feeling (Big Idol)
Wake Me Up (Aloe Blacc)
I Lived (OneRepublic)
The songs that represent celebration for me may not feel celebratory to you. I invite you to consider which songs do feel like celebration to you—and to play them today.
If you, too, would like to amp up celebration in your life, please visit throughout the month and share the things—and the ways—you like to celebrate.
Here are some recent stories about what goes on in the brain when we’re writing, making music, and appreciating art. (Originally posted on Farther to Go!)
Click on the titles to read the complete articles.
Analysis suggests art appreciation is a natural biological process.
“Viewing paintings engages a number of different regions of the brain, suggesting art appreciation is a natural biological process, according to the report in the June issue of the journal Brain and Cognition. The study found that paintings activated areas of the brain involved in vision, pleasure, memory, recognition and emotions, in addition to systems that underlie the conscious processing of new information to give it meaning.”
Becoming skilled at writing may activate the same areas of the brain that are activated in people who are skilled at other things, such as sports or music. This study showed that the areas of the brain activated in novice writers were not the same as those activated in the skilled, “professionally trained,” writers.
“During brainstorming, the novice writers activated their visual centers. By contrast, the brains of expert writers showed more activity in regions involved in speech.”
It would appear that training is training is training—no matter what the training is for.
“Both the brains and behaviour of adult and child musicians were compared with non-musicians in the study by researchers at the Boston Children’s Hospital. They found that adult musicians compared to non-musicians showed enhanced performance on measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory, and verbal fluency. And musically trained children showed enhanced performance on measures of verbal fluency and processing speed.”
Daniel A. Yudkin and Yaacov Trope (Scientific American)
Different music encourages different frames of mind.
“Tiny, almost immeasurable features in a piece of music have the power to elicit deeply personal and specific patterns of thought and emotion in human listeners….Ponderous, resonant, unfamiliar tonalities—the proverbial “auditory forest”—cause people to construe things abstractly. By contrast, the rapid, consonant, familiar chords of the perfect fifth—the “auditory trees”—bring out the concrete mindset….That music can move us is no surprise; it’s the point of the art form, after all. What’s new here is the manner in which the researchers have quantified in fine-grained detail the cognitive ramifications of unpacked melodic compounds.”
The Last Waltz played four times at a local theater this past Sunday and Monday. A friend agreed to meet me there for the last showing on Monday evening. After a crazy day, I still left in plenty of time, then ran into some of the worst traffic I’ve ever encountered in Albuquerque. Because I knew I’d be late, I turned on my seldom-used cell phone. Almost immediately, I was notified of a voicemail message, which I assumed was from my friend.
The traffic was too insane for me to try to listen to it, so I continued on to my destination, preoccupied by traffic, being late, and the waiting voicemail message. When I arrived, I found a parking place and listened to the voicemail message, no easy task in complete darkness (my car’s inside light recently stopped working). It was from a friend who is traveling and decided, for unknown reasons, to wish me a Merry Christmas on my cell phone. It’s a fluke that I got it.
By then I was definitely late and also preoccupied with wondering why she had called my cell phone. I got out of the car and started crossing the street. The lighting for the side streets in Nob Hill leaves something to be desired. As I was about to step up onto the curb on the other side of the street, some commotion to my right caught my attention–and the much-higher-than-usual curb caught the toe of my right shoe. Splat! Down I went onto both knees.
[Expletive deleted.] I got up, dusted myself off, and continued to the theater, now preoccupied with visions of being sidelined from walking, dancing around my apartment, and my twice-a-week strength training workouts.
awake; conscious.
As it turned out, we had more than enough time to chat, get tickets, and find seats in the theater. Once the movie started, I was fully engrossed. I’ve seen The Last Waltz half a dozen times, but never in a theater. It was definitely worth the time, the traffic, and even the banged up knees to see it that way!
I wrote about The Band a while ago, but didn’t come across this video of Van Morrison doing Caravan until recently. It’s still my favorite performance, but there are no duds anywhere in this star-studded film. I tried to contain the bouncing around in my seat. I guess the benefit of watching it at home is that no one cares if I get up and dance.
When I got home afterward and was walking from my garage to my front door, I happened to glance up into the sky. There was Orion rising directly overhead with bright stars and planets studding the sky around it.
I stepped out into the street and just watched it for several minutes, awake and conscious.
A counter-intuitive choice for the time of year, perhaps. And perhaps it sprang to mind because of this amazingly, awesomely invigorating song that I’ve been addicted to for some time that just forces me to get up and dance whenever I hear it. (There are witnesses.) Turn up the volume to listen.
It’s always such a joy that you wake up in the morning
and there’s work to do. –Jerome Lawrence, author and playwright
January 1975. The Cologne Opera House where Keith Jarrett was about to perform for 1400 people—without rehearsing and without sheet music—had provided the wrong piano.
If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it,
It’s been more than two decades since I owned a Mary Chapin Carpenter CD. And my musical tastes have taken a lot of twists and turns since then. I’ve gotten quite a bit older and so has she. But in comparing her live performance with some of the studio recordings from her younger days, I’ve decided I much prefer her more mature voice.
give me a daisy 