Louis Arm­strong’s beloved trum­pet sits in the Smith­son­ian–a rel­ic of a grand tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can music. When it first became a muse­um piece, the brass-and-gold instru­ment, made in Paris after World War II, was­n’t in work­ing con­di­tion. Dwan­da­lyn Reece, the cul­ture cura­tor at The Smith­son­ian, notes:  “It wasn’t playable when it got here… There was a lac­quer coat­ing on it to help pre­vent tar­nish. We looked to see if there were any spots where the lac­quer impact­ed the valves. There were areas where the valves were a lit­tle sticky so we want­ed to make sure they would flow freely.” Once restored, they put the instru­ment in the right hands. Above, watch Wyn­ton Marsalis, the nine-time Gram­my win­ner, play­ing Satch­mo’s Selmer trum­pet last fall.

Marsalis lat­er com­ment­ed, “It sound­ed bet­ter than I thought it would sound.” Appar­ent­ly, it’s the first time an his­toric instru­ment from the Smith­so­ni­an’s col­lec­tion has been put back into real ser­vice.

via The Smith­son­ian/@TedGioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clean­est Record­ings of 1920s Louis Arm­strong Songs You’ll Ever Hear

1,000 Hours of Ear­ly Jazz Record­ings Now Online: Archive Fea­tures Louis Arm­strong, Duke Elling­ton & Much More

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong Per­form­ing Live in Con­cert (Copen­hagen, 1933)

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

The Bal­lets Russ­es, found­ed in 1909 by art crit­ic and impre­sario Sergei Diaghilev, staged some tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­duc­tions on the very edge of aes­thet­ic new­ness. Diaghilev’s bal­lets coor­di­nat­ed set designs by artists like Pablo Picas­so, Hen­ri Matisse, and Gior­gio de Chiri­co, chore­og­ra­phy by such mas­ters as George Bal­an­chine and Vaslav Nijin­sky, and scores by such mod­ern com­posers as Sergei Prokofiev and Erik Satie. But of course, when we think of Diaghilev’s Russ­ian bal­lets, we sure­ly think fore­most of Igor Stravin­sky, whose Rite of Spring was so rad­i­cal it famous­ly incit­ed a riot at its 1913 Parisian pre­miere and “would go on,” writes The Verge, “to leave an indeli­ble mark on jazz, min­i­mal­ism, and oth­er con­tem­po­rary move­ments.”

Just three years ear­li­er, how­ev­er, Stravin­sky was most­ly unknown. Still work­ing under the shad­ow of his teacher, Rim­sky-Kor­sakov, he was giv­en his first big break by Diaghilev only after sev­er­al oth­er com­posers refused the job. That com­mis­sion turned out to be one of the works for which Stravin­sky is best known—the score for The Fire­bird, a bal­let based on a Russ­ian folk tale about a prince who frees a mag­i­cal bird held cap­tive by a sor­cer­er. Fit­ting­ly, giv­en the mon­strous nature of the story’s antag­o­nists, Stravinsky’s score turns on a very sin­is­ter-sound­ing musi­cal inter­val, the tri­tone, whose dis­so­nance caused ear­li­er com­posers to dub it “the Devil’s Inter­val” and to avoid it entire­ly in reli­gious music. Just above, you can see Stravin­sky him­self, at age 82, con­duct “The Lul­la­by Suite” from the bal­let.

Stravinsky’s score built on Claude Debussy’s use of the tri­tone twen­ty years ear­li­er in the eerie Pre­lude to an After­noon of a Faun, and the net effect of the inter­val in these two pieces lead to its dark, moody sound becom­ing “the cen­ter of mod­ern music.” So says Carnegie Hall’s Jef­frey Gef­fen in the short video intro­duc­tion to Stravinsky’s Fire­bird. Gef­fen goes on to tell us that Debussy and Stravin­sky “looked to what was con­sid­ered the most dis­so­nant inter­val of the past 200 years and turned it into into some­thing that becomes exot­ic and per­fumed.” Although The Fire­bird’s sto­ry and many of its musi­cal themes are dis­tinct­ly Russ­ian in ori­gin (as you can see in the Khan Acad­e­my video below), the music “would not have been pos­si­ble,” says Carnegie Hall’s David Robert­son, “with­out the influ­ence of Debussy and that of his friend Mau­rice Rav­el.”

Stravin­sky’s music proved polar­iz­ing even before the riots of Rite of Spring. When leg­endary dancer Anna Pavlo­va heard the Fire­bird score, she declared it “noise” and refused to dance to it, forc­ing Diaghilev to cast Tama­ra Karsav­ina in the title role. But the pro­duc­er believed in his new com­pos­er, remark­ing to Karsav­ina on the bal­let’s pre­miere that Stravin­sky was “a man on the eve of celebri­ty.” Even the for­ward-look­ing Diaghilev could­n’t have pre­dict­ed how much influ­ence Stravin­sky would have on the next 100 years of mod­ern music. Since its first incar­na­tion in 1910, The Fire­bird has been restaged and rearranged sev­er­al times. The suite Stravin­sky con­ducts at the top of the post comes from the 1945 arrange­ment. Two years after this filmed per­for­mance, Stravin­sky con­duct­ed his very last record­ing for Colum­bia Records. He again chose to return, for the last time, to the bal­let that first made him famous, The Fire­bird.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 46 Ver­sions of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 3 Min­utes: A Clas­sic Mashup

Stravinsky’s “Ille­gal” Arrange­ment of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” (1944)

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visu­al­ized in a Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion for Its 100th Anniver­sary

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

There’s some­thing dark and apoc­a­lyp­tic about the Rolling Stones’ 1969 song, “Gimme Shel­ter”–from the lyrics (“Oh, a storm is threat’n­ing. My very life today. If I don’t get some shel­ter. Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away”), to the grim cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the record­ing of the track, released on the album Let It Bleed. A sense of dread runs through­out the Stones’ orig­i­nal song. Less so the ver­sion above, cre­at­ed by the mul­ti­me­dia project Play­ing for Change, which strives to cre­ate world peace through music. Record­ed back in 2011, this cov­er brings togeth­er artists from around the world: India, Italy, Jamaica, Brazil, Mali, Sier­ra Leone, Sene­gal, and the US. And it’s just one of 21 songs that appears on the DVD/CD com­bo, Songs Around the World.  Oth­er videos by Play­ing for Change can be found in the Relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

When “Stand By Me” Trav­els Around the World

If you ever find your­self in Zadar, Croa­t­ia, pay a vis­it to The Sea Organ, the exper­i­men­tal musi­cal instru­ment cre­at­ed by the archi­tect Niko­la Bašić. Unveiled in 2005, the organ–made of 35 poly­eth­yl­ene pipes tucked under white mar­ble steps–turns the wind and the waves into a nev­er-end­ing stream of avant-garde sounds. In 2006, the Sea Organ won the 2006 Euro­pean Prize for Urban Pub­lic Space. Hear it make its music above.

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