Manhatta

"Manhatta" is a short documentary directed in 1921 by the famous photographer Paul Strand and the painter Charles Sheeler, including excerpts from the writings of Walt Whitman. 

The movie consists of 65 shots sequenced in a loose non-narrative structure around the city of Manhattan. Completely restored in January 2009 by archivist Bruce Posner, a musical score was added with a music by Donald Sosin, one of today’s leading silent film composers. 

Elisabeth Chojnacka

RIP Elisabeth Chojnacka, one of the best harpsichord player in the last decennies, 

so famous for contemporary music...

She loved to play Maurice Ohana (Wamba et Conga - 1983), Henryk Górecki (Concerto pour clavecin - 1980), Toshi Ichiyanagi, Franco Donatoni, Marius Constant, Francis Poulenc, Luc Ferrari, André Boucourechliev, Francis Miroglio, Aldo Clementi, Roberto Carnevale, Betsy Jolas, Manuel de Falla, Jean Wiener, Krzysztof Meyer 

as well lot of contemporary legends just composed for her harpsichord' pieces: György Ligeti, François-Bernard Mâche, Iannis Xenakis, Zygmunt Krauze and Michael Nyman.

"Wamba et Conga" - Maurice Ohana - played by Elisabeth Chojnacka,

Recorded in October 1987 in Studio 107, Maison de Radio France, Paris

"Hungarian Rock" (Chaconne) - György Ligeti by Elisabeth Chojnacka

"Insertions" (de Francis Miroglio) fait aussi appel à la forme ouverte comme Archipel Vb (1970) et Anarchipel (1971) d’André Boucourechliev, ainsi que Musical Box (1970) de Georges Aperghis. ... "Insertions" se compose de huit séquences dont l’enchaînement est libre, et dont la dernière fait appel à l’imagination et à la créativité de l’interprète qui la construit à l’aide de motifs désignés par le compositeur dans les séquences précédentes..." 
Emmanuelle Tat - Le Clavecin en France

"Insertions" composed by Francis Miroglio

Why are we sleeping?

"Why are we sleeping?"
the well known song from the debut album of Soft Machine (1968), when Kevin Ayers was its bass player.
Here, later in 1970, live at the Tavern with the young Mike Oldfield and the great Lol Coxhill on saxophone...

Bi-Neumes

"Neumes Rythmiques" is a piece composed by Olivier Messiaen in 1966.
The third part of the studies titled "Quatre études de rythme" for piano.

By chance, two parts of this Olivier Messiaen's composition played together in my computer. The result is amazing. The piece is reduced by half time. And the composition persist to be great. Just need two piano players!

Poetry of the telephone

Our friend, the english artist Graeme Miller captures the poetry of the landline. In this half hour, we follow the arc of a single call from dialling to hanging up, taking in the sweep across the global landscape of the 20th century. He draws out the private habits and distinctive speech as well as the collective dreams and nightmares of the landlines art and culture.

"Brighstone 428" is a wonderfull radio-show on BBC Radio 3, a sound-drama treating of the poetry of this emotive way to communicate with people (in the 70s: at home, or standing inside a cabin, or out in the traffic' tumult) and the nostalgia of theses old fashioned rings.

"While collaging the mores and cadences of telephone behaviour and speech the piece also lands in the physical space of the landline - the actual line and the real land. The world of the telephone engineer atop a telegraph pole; the village operator, the maintenance or laying of underwater cables, the middle-of-nowhere phonebox which exists oblique to the density of traffic of information and chat.

The plot lines of death and murder stalking the crossed lines of the city, to the call of the worried voice "Are you still there?". All these spaces are opened up with the reassurances and communities of landline use."

extract of the presentation on the BBC3 post

just click here  

and enjoy!

Also highly recommended: this Radio Nova's jingle from the early 80, using some famous "human voice"...

Grooves (3) - Scott Macleod

Scott Macleod is living in Oakland (California).
Writer and artist, he has made live, time-based, media, conceptual and/or static work 
in the USA and internationally since 1979. 
His installations and paintings have exhibited in the USA
 and in the Czech Republic, Belgium, England, Italy and Germany. 

Beside of a large-scale production, he produced a serie of targets 
which are wall-mounted sculptures made by unwinding rolled-paper dartboards 
& then rewinding them in various configurations. 

more Macleod' targets

an exhibition "Cibles - Targets",

with some Macleod' pieces,

is now located for this summer in Barjols (France)

curated by Christiane Ainsley & Thierry Azam  &  "Artmandat"

Mariachi inouïe

 

pic credit: Benjamin Viot

Mariachi is the Nina Garcia's solo project: a radical process around her solid body guitar.
Using the entirety of the instrument as a large palette of sounds as squeaks, roars, rustlings, scrapings, harmonics, metallic impacts, feedbacks, with sometime one or two emerging simple notes and tuned chords, Mariachi make us do an amazing acid-electric-noisy trip.

On the Parisian non-label "No Lagos", her CD compiles different pieces recorded during live performances.

"… un long et tranchant morceau montagneux qui s’enfonce dans le crâne comme l’écho du mauvais temps qui se répercute en montagne. Je ne sais pas à quoi ça tient, peut être la simplicité de l’agencement des sons, la simplicité brutale et décidée des manipulations sur scène, mais il y a quelque chose de très physique dans ce son, quelque chose de tout en muscles et en tension... " - no lagos musique zine, n°1, mars 2015

She sometimes uses to play in duo with the trombone player Maria Bertel: >>>here<<<
and also in trio and quartet with other people.

live at Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival in Lausanne 20.10.2016

Grooves (2)

Jean-Pierre Bourquin - "sans titre" tiré de la série "emballages"

Jean Pierre Bourquin - sans titre

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unknown sources

 

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"Etude geste", a work by Marie Reinert