2018' best of

my personal hits of the year

* a splendid solo by Alvin Curran in Marseille

& his tribute to Cornelius Cardew

* the high groove of Princess Thailand  which reminds me the Gun Club's energy

 *the minimalism of Héctor Rey & Andrew Fedorovitch at Galery Zoème in Marseille

* Sudden Infant
who played an exciting live with the girls trio Massicot at CCS in Paris

* the Agata Zubel' works

* the discovery of the magical Czech duo Irena a Voltech Havlov

with a  New-York concert  & a portrait

* the voices of Alessandro Bosetti

* Ikuro Takahashi and his drum kit

* the talented guitar player  Derek Gripper

* Pascale Criton' pieces
with a excellent concert Atelier Tampon Nomade last april by Ensemble Dedalus

* the french trio Orgue Agnés

*  and the bands and musicians  Roomfull of Teeth, Miroslav Kabeláč, Normil Hawaiians,
IRèNE, bien sûr, Runaaway Trio
 

And we remember the french publisher  Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, Hugh Masekela, Johann Johannsson, the film-makers Hugo Santiago and André S. Labarthe, Cecil Taylor, Glenn Branca,
Kassé Mady Diabaté, the lettrist Maurice Lemaître, Philip Roth,
the unforgetable Aretha Franklin, Paul Virilio, the french singer Jacques Higelin
who, now,
all fly in new territories.

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you can rotate with my favorites circles

& don't miss the really nice and sensitive documentary about Giacomo Scelsi  
”Le premier mouvement de l'immobile”  directed by Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva
trailer

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A new direction to follow for 2019
with our best wishes!



&
a bonus track with the last shiny opus of  The Necks
"body" 


 

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4 men who converse, discuss, argue

Charles Ives (1874-1954) - pic by Halley Erskine - 1946

The second Charles Ives's string quartet, composed in between 1907 and 1913,

 has an argument which is:

"String Quartet N°2"  for 4 men who converse, discuss, argue (Politick'), 

fight, shake hands, shut up, then walk up the mountain side to view the firmament!

the 3 parts of the piece are:

• Discussion (Andante moderato – Andante con spirito – Adagio molto)
• Arguments (Allegro con spirito)
• The Call of the Mountains (Adagio – Andante – Adagio)

_____

"...I started a string quartet score, half mad, half in fun, and half to try out, practise, 
and have some fun making those men fiddlers get up and do something like men"
Charles Ives in "memos"
 _____


So, listen to these 4 women who converse, discuss and argue

with the american Ivani Quartet composed by

Abigail Hong, Sophia Szokolay, violins

Aria Cheregosha, viola 

Annette Jakovcic, cello

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Orgue Agnés

Orgue Agnés is a young french trio whose music is a groovy combination of an atypical mix of orthopedic funk and experimental new psyché-rock, exploded dub and spiral incantations, free of references,
with violin, drums, electronic, voices ... and throats

Èlg, aka Laurent Gérard, Kaumwald
Ernest Bergez aka Sourdure, Kaumwald
Clément Vercelletto

"This is electrified ping-pong music. This music pings and pongs.
Ping-pong balls are commonly used in experimental piano music.
They are chancey things. And they are cheap; you can buy a wack of them for next to nothin’. Orgue Agnès bounces in loose time and dances and reflects. It is reflective bouncing dance music.
With little effort - or little to no intention – ping-pong balls set off a derive of small detailed sounds. They are lit alive - light and lighthearted.
They jump for joy. I am talking about Orgue Agnès and ping-pong balls. 
A lot of A Une Gorge sounds like it was made with electrifc ping-pong balls bouncing inside of a throat or a mouth. A mouth-full of electricity.
A throat (like a mouth) is a filter.
« wah wah woah wow-wah. »
A mouth-throat is a wah. Une gorge is a dancehall.
Orgue Agnès "A Une Gorge" and this music sounds like it was made inside of one.
As strange and wonderful as it sounds. "  Eric Chenaux


they publish their first LP called "A une gorge" ("at a throat") on Three:Four Records
allready sold-out!

a live at Sonic Protest Festival in 2017

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Ways of hearing

"Ways of Hearing" is a interresting  serie of 6 episodes' podcast from Radiotopia's Showcase, hosted by the musician and writer Damon Krukowski, exploring the nature of listening in our digital world.

Damon Krukowski is a musician (Damon & Naomi, Galaxie 500), poet (Afterimage, The Memory Theater Burned), and publisher (Exact Change).
He teaches at Harvard University  and challenges urgent questions for both creators and consumers about what we have thrown away in the process: Are your devices leaving us lost in our own headspace even as they pinpoint our location? Does the long reach of digital communication come at the sacrifice of our ability to gauge social distance? ...
He has written about sound and art for Artforum, Bookforum, and The Wire, as well as Pitchfork. His blog is International Sad Hits.

"Ways of hearing"
Episode 1: TIME
Digital audio – in music recording, and in radio and television broadcast – employs a different sense of time than we use in our offline life, time that is more regular and yet less communal. Guests include: Ali Shaheed Muhammed of A Tribe Called Quest; and Joe Castiglione, the radio voice of the Boston Red Sox.
Episode 2: SPACE
In Tokyo, people on crowded trains pretend they’re asleep, to avoid eye contact. But in modern-day New York, count the headphones: it’s like we’re avoiding ear contact. In this episode, Damon examines how digital technology is privatizing public space. Guests include writer/activist Jeremiah Moss, and historian Emily Thompson.
Episode 3: LOVE
You don’t have to be the son of a jazz singer to recognize the voice of a loved one as music, made up of sounds so basic to our understanding that they precede language. And yet our digital devices strip much of that away, trading intimacy for efficiency. But what is the essential part of our voices, and what isn’t? Guests include: jazz singer (and Damon’s mom) Nancy Harrow, Roman Mars of 99% Invisible, and musicologist Gary Tomlinson. 
Episode 4: MONEY
In the 20th century, music seemed like an object — bought and sold like any other product. But digital technology has dematerialized music, separating it from money and revealing its real terms of exchange. Guests include: artist and writer Jace Clayton (aka DJ Rupture), Victoria Ruiz and Joey DeFrancesco of the Providence punk band Downtown Boys.
Episode 5: POWER
When you go into a bookstore, or record store, or library, you enter another world that you have to learn to navigate. You adapt to it. But today’s digital corporations have created a musical universe that adapts, predictably, to you. Guests include: Jimmy Johnson, owner/founder of music distributor Forced Exposure; Paul Lamere, director of developer platform for Spotify; and Elaine Katzenberger, executive director of City Lights Books. 
Episode 6: NOISE
Ways Of Hearing has looked at how digital technology has changed our world: our sense of time, of space, of intimacy and exchange. In the final episode, Damon lays out an essential choice: between a world enriched by noise, and a world that strives toward signal only. Guests include: Dr. Alicia Quesnel of Harvard Medical School and Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary, and audio engineers/musicians Steve Albini and Bob Weston (Electrical Audio, Shellac).

This six-part podcast was produced for Showcase from Radiotopia.
Written and hosted by musician Damon Krukowski. 
Produced by Damon Krukowski, Max Larkin and Ian Coss. 
The complete transcript available as an illustrated book from MIT Press to be published in april 2019.

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about "The new analog" Listening and reconnecting in a digital world
“Musician and poet Damon Krukowski offers a thoughtful and thought-provoking examination of what has been lost as well as gained in the shift from analog to digital sound. Written for anyone who listens and thinks about what they hear, The New Analog eloquently argues for the significance of noise in a world perhaps too attuned to tuning it out." Emily Thompson, professor of history, Princeton University 



and about the challenge stereo/mono: <<>>

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Dilek

Les trois virtuoses Vincent Segal, Derya Türkan & Savaş Özkök 

se rencontrent pour un voyage mental aux confins de l'Anatolie. 

Entre chants mystiques soufis ou alévis 
et leurs propres compositions revisitées pour l’occasion.
------

The three virtuosos Vincent Segal, Derya Türkan & Savaş Özkök meet 
for a mental journey to the Anatolian bondaries.
Between Sufi mystic and Alevi' songs, as well their own compositions revisited.

 
*-*

Vincent Segal : cello

Derya Türkan : kemençe

Savaş Özkök : kanun

“Indim Yarin Bahçesine” – composition Derya Türkan

live concert in Geneva - November 2018 

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Profession chef d'orchestre

Guennadi Rojdestvensky conducting

Le Français Bruno Monsaingeon, né en 1953, aura consacré sa vie à la musique, en réalisant plus de 90 films documentaires autour de grandes figures de la musique classique.
Il produit et réalise notament pour l'ORTF des portraits d’interprètes légendaires tels que Yehudi Menuhin, Glenn Gould, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, David Oïstrakh, Zoltan Kocsis, Nadia Boulanger, le Quatuor Alban Berg, Sviatoslav Richter, et bien d'autres.

Bruno Monsaingeon & Yehudi Menuhin - Paris - 1977

Monsaingeon est aussi violoniste, élève de Menuhin, et musicologue.
En 2004, il fait ses débuts de chef d'orchestre en Russie en dirigeant notament deux  concertos de Beethoven et de Mozart pour le pianiste russe Boris Berezovsky.
En complément de certains de ses films, il est aussi l'auteur de plusieurs livres dont "Mademoiselle" (éditions Van de Velde - 1980), une série d'entretiens avec Nadia Boulanger et trois ouvrages autour de Glenn Gould.
 

Son opus 70 est un film de 56' autour du fameux chef d'orchestre  Guennadi Rojdestvensky, grand ami de Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Dmitri Chostakovitch, Alfred Schnittke ou Mstislav Rostropovitch, et interprète de référence des compositeurs de son temps, qui a marqué de son empreinte la musique de l'ex-URSS en lui dédiant sa vie.

Rozhdestvensky &  Chostakovitch - Moscou

"Opus 70": une formidable leçon de direction d'orchestre!



et aussi, à ne pas manquer, une formidable leçon de musique de Nadia Boulanger

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