Farewell, Dave Brubeck

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck has died at age 91.  More details here.

I started accumulating a jazz collection when I was in high school, and one of the first albums I rushed out to buy when it was first released in 1959 was Brubeck's Time Out, featuring the immortal Take Five.  Already this great tribute has appeared today on YouTube:

Gangnam Style

Continuing with the K-pop theme, here's South Korean rapper Psy commenting on Gangnam Style:

 

K-pop and Girls Generation

Friend Richard C. draws my attention to this fascinating piece in The New Yorker, describing the Korean pop music phenomenon.

Anne Akiko Meyers

A new album has been added to the collection: Air - The Bach Album by Anne Akiko Meyers. Unique to this album is Meyers' rendering of the D Minor Double Concerto in which she plays BOTH parts, using both (yes, she owns two of the things) of her Stradivariuses, one from 1697 and the other from 1730. Purportedly, the former was once owned by Napoleon and the latter by the King of Spain. I have several examples of the Bach violin concerti in my musical archives (my favorite up to now being the 1980s Academy of Ancient Music version, with the Double Concerto played by Jaap Schroder and Christopher Hirons), but this is my go-to recording now. I also downloaded from HDTracks a high-resolution 24-bit/96mHz edition -- you can get conventional 16-bit versions from Amazon and other sources -- and the sound quality is stunning.

For more of Meyers, visit her site and her blog. Now check out this pre-release performance of the Bach title piece on the album:



Also, you can read/hear NPR's interview of Meyers here, which has a video clip of her appearance on Johnny Carson's TV show at age eleven.

Finally, I will also share with you a violinist.com interview of a few years ago, where I first came upon this terrific artist, when I was actually trying to track another of my violin favorites, Hilary Hahn. And here is that site's latest on Meyers and her new album. Whew!

UPDATE: I see that tonight Billboard's Classical Chart shows the Meyers album at #2.

La Grande

Just picked up Laura Gibson’s new album, La Grande, and heard it last night. You might be interested in the backstory — yes, it does have to do with the very La Grande some of us know well — and watch this music video:

More here and here.

Etta James, R.I.P

Legendary blues singer Etta James has passed on. Read more

Etta is probably particularly remembered for her "At Last":

(will try to find a better video on this piece)

One of my personal favorites was her "I'd Rather Go Blind":

Stop SOPA/PIPA

In solidarity with Google, Wikipedia, Fark and many others, today I offer at least these links: http://www.stopthewall.us/?gclid=CP_9xvub2q0CFYUZQgod3xGInw

http://www.savetheinternet.com/pipa-whiplist