Random notes -- or not so random. Some people can let down their defenses and preconceptions and just start spinning out musical notes with abandon. Stream of consciousness, first thought best thought, let it all out. I have tried all that, and maybe I'm just too square. Or it just sounds like a baby crying. Maybe some primal scream would be good. Maybe I'm too complacent...
Anyway, what's new? Work -- actually play, since it feel like play, although some work is involved -- continues on the next "album." Forget the scare-quotes. It will be an album. For this I am grateful to the powers that be for enabling me to do this. And my thanks to the people who are helping me. You know who you are.
What else? Last Saturday night, Amy and I went to see John Cale perform his "Paris 1919" album at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, along with a rock band and chamber orchestra. Mellifluous violin and cello sounds spiked with abrasive rock. And Cale the Welshman singing out in fine form.
Other listening: Laurie Spiegel, "The Expanding Universe," electronic music from the early 1970s, created at Bell Labs, using mainframe computers and punch-card technology. But forget for the moment how it was made. Spiegel is a composer who knows counterpoint and how to write for three or four distinct musical voices in a surprising and positive way. These warm, satisfying tones fill the room while I'm making rice and beans or cleaning the apartment, and I just like the way she plays.
Mitra Sumara, the eight-piece band that plays music of pre-revolutionary Iran, of which I am honored to be a part, will return to action in March, for the Persian New Year. Save the date: Mitra Sumara, Saturday, March 30, at Le Poisson Rouge, Bleecker Street, Manhattan.
Thank you for listening.
Jim