Minnesota folk warrior Spider John Koerner
Vintage Minnesota hippy footage party haiku good time riffin’nonsense beer sex wanker senseless wonder what they thinkin empty businessless portable madness stew we had hangin around if you can come over!
Mr. Koerner’s seamless and indispensible 1969 folk pop lp. A must listen start to finish.
Tuba pioneer Howard Johnson
“The Unending Hep Hats of Monk”
San Francisco soul singer Darondo
“Kinan Azmeh – Brandeis University October 31st, 2015
Home Within: A Musical Prayer for Syria
Born in Damascus, Syria in 1976, Azmeh has trained at Julliard and is currently touring with the Silkroad Ensemble. Home Within was originally created as a duo collaboration over a decade ago; now, the work is taking on new life as a large-scale collaboration with Silkroad. Their description of Home Within:
“Home Within is an emotional accounting of home in a time of conflict. An audio-visual performance conceived by Syrian composer and clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and Syrian Armenian visual artist Kevork Mourad, the result is an impressionistic reflection on the unity of loss, longing, and the impact of tragedy on our sense of ‘home’. Rather than follow a narrative, the artists document ‘home’ within specific moments in Syria’s recent history, using the counterpoint between image and sound to establish a sense of sustained urgency and continued hope for both their homeland and communities around the world. ” https://www.silkroad.org/hwabout
I saw this haunting performance, with the duo of Azmeh and Mourad, as part of Azmeh’s residency at Brandeis. The second half of the evening consisted of a work for string quartet, clarinet, electronics and film created for the Lydian String Quartet, Brandeis’s in-residence quartet. The video below will give you a taste of what the performance was like.
Azmeh is a true clarinet virtuoso, able to coax an immense variety of sounds from the instrument. He has his own group, Hewar, but has also found a home with the many fabulous musicians that are part of Yo Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble. An example of which is featured below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmWA1_U6jMQ”
“I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon
Hmm, you were there in the turnstiles, with the wind at your heels
You stretched for the stars and you know how it feels to reach too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon
I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truth
You cut through lies
I saw the rain dirty valley
You saw Brigadoon
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
But you swooned, I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon
with a torch in your pocket and the wind at your heels
You climbed on the ladder and you know how it feels to get too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon, hey yeah!
Unicorns and cannonballs, palaces and piers
Trumpets, towers and tenements
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags ferryboats
Scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars, yes, you climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon”