The Online Photographer

A few musical finds found YouTubing:

1. My second favorite piano player (after Hank Jones). Watched this three times in a row. I like how he starts out by mopping his brow like he'd been digging ditches or something. Didn't know this piece, the Berceuse ("a musical composition usually in 6/8 time that resembles a lullaby" —Wikipedia). Lovely.

2. Speaking of lullabies, a nice new song—simple, but lyrically elegant and unspoiled by the usual cruditup electronica-y productioniness. And a sentiment to coincide with the Tao Te Ching discussion.

I've listened to "Let's Be Still" about ten times and for some reason my brain doesn't mind. I have a pretty serious problem with "earworm," i.e., pop songs getting stuck in my head. There's a radio song in rotation right now called "Royals" by a New Zealander singer-songwriter called Lorde that was like poison to my brain—I only heard it like twice in the car and I could not get that damned ditty out of my head. I thought I was going to have to submit to hypnosis. That one was so bad I'm scared to listen to the damned thing again.

3. Beautiful guitars, for those more or less of my generation. Nice live performance.

The older I get the more I like live performances better. This clip also seems like a demonstration of how much pop music has changed in my short adulthood...like that 'cello? Hello? 'Cello?

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Carsten W: "That Gilmour performance was just magnificent, exactly the opposite of the flamboyant, over-the-top, hundred-notes-per-second live performances that so many bands do, just quiet, beautiful, and true to the original. Gilmour has always been my guitar hero. Competent, unrushed, and with incredible feeling."

Cmans: "Chopin's Berceuse Op. 57 is my #1 go-to for defusing my negative mental energy. If I concentrate on the soothing tones and the interplay of the pianist's two hands, I'll have no room in my head for negativity.

"My favorite recording is from Maurizio Pollini's c. 1960 performance and is very similar to the Michelangeli you found, except that to my ear, Pollini's right hand plays a little softer and with slightly different coordination than Michelangeli's. Chopin's Berceuse seemed so complicated to me when i first heard it, that I had for a long time thought that it was played with four hands.

"If you search on YouTube for Chopin's Berceuse, you may find the post with ten different artist's renditions of this Bercuese. The portraits in the video that accompany these versions are as stunning as the various interpretations of this piece, and I think are worth the price of admission to view."