Michael Zapruder ~

This is from 2009. A lovely, long interview with Leonard Cohen in his house in Montreal. The whole thing is really good, and the very end is pretty great. After the official interview ends, Jian Ghomeshi confesses that he has an incredible fear of death. Leonard says that if the preliminaries aren’t too unpleasant, he looks forward to it.

Recent musical discoveries and things

Lately I’ve been listening to three records:

Orchestre “Kanaga” de Mopti

An album by Rokia Traore:

and I found a box with every melodie composed by Francis Poulenc!

Here’s a performance of his song cycle Le Bestiaire, from poems by Apollinaire. The Carp is my favorite. It starts at 3:47:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkuvTbaglG0

poisson de la melancolie!

Now we’re recording Hiding in Plain Sight:

We are recording in San Francisco this week.

Yesterday we worked on one called Oh Well, Sun, which is kind of like:

Today we’re starting with one called Latecomers:

The images are from the book Maske by Phyllis Galembo, published by Chris Boot.

I am just discovering Hector Zazou. He did some recordings combining poetry and music which is why someone told me about him.

I lived in Nepal for a year, and this video really makes me miss it (even though Mumbai is pretty far from Kathmandu). The fact that the footage from Mumbai is interspersed with footage from the recording studio makes it even better, since the recording studio, with its long hours and all-consuming process, is a lot like its own country, too.

As one of the commenters noted, they play it at a faster tempo than the original.

I’m grateful that I make music. Even after many years, I still love it more than anything that isn’t certain people.

I’m very lucky, and I should be more thankful. I’m thankful that people listen to my music sometimes. It means something to me to know that some people do that. It might sound strange, but it actually means a lot to me that people are listening to music, any music, in general.

I trust music.

It’s a bit of a fuzzy recording, but here’s Julius Katchen playing Brahms’ Intermezzo Op. 117 in Eb Major. It’s a good antidote to whatever ails you.

Listen up, technicians, and Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

All day today writing music and preparing for recording in January. It rained.

This is where I write. I built it in our back yard a few years ago. It doesn

I’m writing lots of arrangements that have cross rhythms in them. A friend of mine says that demos have to “get out of Folkytown.” And he’s right.

Here’s a little sample of the kind of stuff I’m talking about:

I think Daytrotter does great stuff, and not just because they had me come do a session.

This is an archive of some really interesting performances by lots and lots of active artists from the last handful of years. It’s an x-ray of indie rock.

Does that mean that indie rock has broken something? Maybe… but that wouldn’t be Daytrotter’s fault.

Take a look for yourself.

Listen, don’t look. The music is Hildegard of Bingen’s O Jerusalem, from the early 1100s. Yes, the video shows fractals. The association of psychedelic visuals with spiritual stuff is kind of silly, but in this case there is at least a passing resemblance to Hildegard’s own artworks, like:

and

I love this piece of music, especially this performance, which is by the ensemble Sequentia.