Silent Night

My friend John sent me email to remind me of one of the best Christmas songs I know of ...

[......................] of 2009

The lists are starting to appear now. Here are LIFE.com's Photos of the Year.

Part 1

Part 2

Quatuor Ebène

Kronos is NOT the only game in town. Here is the Ebene Quartet, a French group, doing their take on the theme music from Pulp Fiction (remember that mind-bending film?):

Some background, in their own words:

You can bet I will be chasing down as much of their music as I can hear in the near future ... !

In Mulieribus

Credit this discovery to Kim. Today she was looking for some new music more or less in keeping with this season to fill the house. (This comes on the heels of the annual Christmas program at EOU last night, where the highlight for me was the Chamber Choir doing Pavel Chesnokov's Salvation Is Created (but the EOU Faculty Klezmer Ensemble was a big hit, too).) But, anyway ...

In Mulieribus is a Portland-based female vocal ensemble whose specialty is early music. If you like Anonymous 4, you will should love this group. Hear some of their work on their MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/inmulieribus

Sultans of Swing

Knopfler AND Clapton! A discovery by jamesa ...

Captured

Photograher David Guttenfelder has been photographing the war in Afghanistan for the past seven years. Here, the Denver Post publishes a portfolio of his outstanding work on its Captured photoblog:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/10/30/photographer-collection-david-guttenfelder-in-afghanistan/

Black and White America

Roy DeCarava, the first black photographer to be awarded a Guggenheim grant, died recently. I remember him mostly from his photographs of Harlem neighborhoods and jazz scenes, which I encountered during my early years in photography. NPR offers up this tribute and story on DeCarava and his work.