Hear What is Jazz?: Leonard Bernstein’s Introduction to the Great American Art Form (1956)

By 1956, jazz was enter­ing its hard bop phase, far from its New Orleans birth­place. At the same time, it was frac­tur­ing into sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al gen­res, with the influ­ence of Latin rhythms and the south sea breezes of lounge.

Rock and Roll was just about to dis­place this music as a pub­lic men­ace du jour (or a pass­ing fad as some thought). This fas­ci­nat­ing Colum­bia release from 1956 finds the com­pos­er and con­duc­tor Leonard Bern­stein set­ting down his thoughts on the art form of jazz. A spo­ken word record with sam­ples from rag­time to Miles Davis, Bern­stein’s defense-as-lec­ture is a win­dow on the cul­ture wars at the time.

He’s here to defend jazz against its crit­ics, and argues against their opin­ions: jazz has low-class ori­gins, it’s loud, and it’s not art — the same cri­tiques to be lev­eled decades lat­er against hip hop.

In 1956, Bern­stein was already known to the gen­er­al pub­lic as an edu­ca­tor on clas­si­cal music. He gave lec­tures on CBS’ Omnibus TV pro­gram on the great sym­phonies, while he had already dab­bled in the instru­men­ta­tion and tex­tures of jazz in his score to On the Water­front, and was busy work­ing on West Side Sto­ry. So he was in a per­fect posi­tion to intro­duce a con­ser­v­a­tive mind to jazz. “I love it because it’s an orig­i­nal kind of emo­tion­al expres­sion, in that it is nev­er whol­ly sad or whol­ly hap­py,” he says.

Appear­ing on the album is Buck Clay­ton, Louis Arm­strong, Buster Bai­ley, Bessie Smith, Teo Macero, and Miles Davis. Davis, who had just been signed by Columbia’s George Avakian, plays “Sweet Sue,” mak­ing this track his first record­ing for the label. Bern­stein illus­trates jazz music the­o­ry, “blue notes,” dis­so­nance, rhythm and explores the African ori­gins of the music for 42 fas­ci­nat­ing min­utes. Did this LP turn a lot of clas­si­cal musos on to jazz? Did this influ­ence the chil­dren whose par­ents had this in their col­lec­tion? Was it all for­got­ten sev­er­al years lat­er with Beat­le­ma­nia? What­ev­er the answer, it’s an intrigu­ing rem­nant of a tran­si­tion­al time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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

In 2013, New York’s most pop­u­lar clas­si­cal music sta­tion WQXR cel­e­brat­ed the cen­ten­ni­al of Igor Stravinksy’s The Rite of Spring, with a series of events that cul­mi­nat­ed in Rite of Spring Fever, 24 hours of dif­fer­ent per­for­mances of the work and a live solo inter­pre­ta­tion by Bang on a Can pianist Vicky Chow.

As a pro­mo­tion­al post­ing, WQXR also cre­at­ed this mashup of 46 record­ings in 3 min­utes, show­ing the vary­ing approach­es to Stravinsky’s score, and the wild­ly dif­fer­ent dynam­ics of inter­pre­ta­tion.

Six­teen years after the work’s tumul­tuous live pre­miere in 1913, both Stravin­sky and con­duc­tor Pierre Mon­teux com­pet­ed to record the first ver­sion in 1929 in Paris. That was fol­lowed in 1930 by Leopold Stokows­ki and the Philadel­phia Orches­tra, whose re-record­ed ver­sion would become the most famous when it appeared in Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia. That film did more to bring Stravin­sky to wide swathes of soci­ety, from kids to grand­par­ents, than any oth­er per­for­mance. Plus it had frickin’ dinosaurs:

Phil Kline, the com­pos­er and cura­tor of WQXR’s event, notes that it was high-fideli­ty LPs, not 78s, that real­ly brought the dynam­ics of Rites into its own. “Few oth­er clas­sics so des­per­ate­ly need to be heard with a wide dynam­ic range, espe­cial­ly on that big bot­tom end,” he writes.

This mashup is pret­ty schizoid, but shows the per­son­al­i­ties and influ­ences of each con­duc­tor: Leonard Bern­stein cre­ates a col­or­ful and sparkling Rite; Pierre Boulez is like a machine; Kara­jan is thun­der­ous. The var­i­ous piano inter­pre­ta­tions lose none of their bite after being resigned to the key­board. And Stravinsky’s 1960 record­ing with the Colum­bia Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra (aka the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, renamed for con­trac­tu­al rea­sons) is also here, sound­ing just that lit­tle bit sweet­er than the rest.

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

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

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The Science of Singing: New, High-Speed MRI Machine Images Man Singing ‘If I Only Had a Brain’

Back in Decem­ber, Ayun Hal­l­i­day took you inside an MRI machine to explore the neu­ro­science of jazz impro­vi­sa­tion and musi­cal cre­ativ­i­ty. Along the way, you got to see Johns Hop­kins sur­geon Charles Limb jam on a key­board inside one of those crowd­ed, claus­tro­pho­bia-induc­ing tubes. How could you beat that for enter­tain­ment?

Today, we return with a new video show­ing anoth­er way the MRI machine is giv­ing sci­en­tists new insights into the mak­ing of music. This time the focus is on how we pro­duce sounds when we sing. When “we sing or speak, the vocal folds—the two small pieces of tis­sue [in our neck]—come togeth­er and, as air pass­es over them, they vibrate,” and pro­duce sound. That’s basi­cal­ly what hap­pens. We know that. But the typ­i­cal MRI machine, cap­tur­ing about 10 frames per sec­ond, is too slow to real­ly let sci­en­tists break down the action of the lar­ynx. Enter the new, high speed MRI machine at the Beck­man Insti­tute at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, work­ing at 100 frames per sec­ond. It does the trick.

Above, you can see the new machine in action, as a vol­un­teer sings ‘If I Only Had a Brain.’ Get more of the back­sto­ry over at the Beck­man Insti­tute.

via Men­tal Floss

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

Why We Love Rep­e­ti­tion in Music: Explained in a New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

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Johnny Cash Machines: Johnny Cash Stars in 1980s Commercials for ATM Machines

Back in the 1980s, Cana­da Trust installed a bunch of ATM machines and began con­vinc­ing cus­tomers that banker’s hours were a thing of the past. Now cus­tomers could get mon­ey 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And who bet­ter to tell cus­tomers how they could con­ve­nient­ly tap their cash than John­ny Cash. Enter the John­ny Cash Machine. Don’t believe me? Here are two 1985 com­mer­cials to prove it.

Get more on the sto­ry at Retrontario.

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Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

John­ny Cash’s Short and Per­son­al To-Do List 

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings

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Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Classic Album by The Alan Parsons Project

If some­one asks whether you like Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion, you’d bet­ter clar­i­fy which Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion they mean: the first com­plete col­lec­tion of hor­ror and sus­pense sto­ries by mas­ter of psy­cho­log­i­cal unease Edgar Allan Poe, or the first album by pro­gres­sive rock band The Alan Par­sons Project? But if you like one, you might well like the oth­er, giv­en that Par­sons based his group’s debut, which con­tains such tracks as “The Raven,” “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” and “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” direct­ly on Poe’s work.

Not only do Par­sons’ com­po­si­tions use Poe’s themes, they use Poe’s words. “How impor­tant the Poe con­cept is is ques­tion­able,” declared the con­tem­po­rary Bill­board review, “but the LP as a whole holds up well as a viable musi­cal work.” It hav­ing been 1976, the writer does note its “strong FM poten­tial,” but time has much increased Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion’s sta­tus in rock, pro­gres­sive or oth­er­wise. All Music Guide’s Mike DeGagne more recent­ly called the album “an extreme­ly mes­mer­iz­ing aur­al jour­ney” and “a vivid pic­ture of one of the most allur­ing lit­er­ary fig­ures in his­to­ry.”

Of course, those two reviews don’t eval­u­ate quite the same pro­duc­tion, since, in 1987, Par­sons, a born stu­dio tin­ker­er, went back and remixed Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion. He added a good deal of not just 1980s-style reverb, but new gui­tar bits and pieces of Poe recital, this time per­formed by no less an ide­al read­er than Orson Welles, who’d sent Par­sons a tape of his Poe per­for­mance short­ly after the orig­i­nal album appeared. You can hear his con­tri­bu­tion on the tracks “A Dream With­in a Dream” and “Fall of the House of Ush­er.” Both above. The com­plete album is avail­able below on Spo­ti­fy.

You might won­der what work of Poe’s, exact­ly, you hear Welles read­ing from, since none of it sounds like the writer’s best-known pas­sages. The words spo­ken in “A Dream With­in a Dream” come from a reflec­tion Poe wrote in his Mar­gin­a­lia, and those in “The Fall of the House of Ush­er” per­form some­thing of a remix them­selves, com­bin­ing more non­fic­tion from the Mar­gin­a­lia with the intro­duc­tion to his Poems of Youth. Only a ded­i­cat­ed Poe enthu­si­ast indeed would rec­og­nize all these pas­sages, but sure­ly such a per­son would love both Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion and Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion. If you, per­son­al­ly, don’t go in for Poe in the prog-rock treat­ment, might I sug­gest Par­sons’ take on Asi­mov?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Iggy Pop, Deb­bie Har­ry, Jeff Buck­ley & Oth­er Celebs Read Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­maFol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Interactive Music Video Lets You Explore the Apartments on the Cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti

Dig that heavy met­al / Under­neath your hood / Baby I can work all night / Believe I got the per­fect tools / Talkin’ bout love

Last Feb­ru­ary, Led Zep­pelin released a deluxe, re-mas­tered ver­sion of their sprawl­ing 1975 dou­ble album Phys­i­cal Graf­fi­ti, a record per­haps best known for the epic, orches­tral grandeur of the 8 1/2 minute “Kash­mir” (not to be out­done by the 11-minute “In My Time of Dying”). In an album full of styl­is­tic depar­tures and sol­id returns to form, one track, “Tram­pled Under Foot,” man­ages to be both, dri­ven by down-and-dirty blues and uptown 70s funk, cour­tesy of John Paul Jones’ Ste­vie Won­der-inspired organ groove. With lyrics Robert Plant him­self described as “raunchy,” the song—one of Plant’s favorites—may be the band’s most 70s-sound­ing. That’s not to say it’s dat­ed, only that it most per­fect­ly cap­tures the sound of the Amer­i­can street rep­re­sent­ed on the album cov­er, a shot of two adja­cent ten­e­ments on New York City’s St. Mark’s Place.

Room-10---Kitchen-Girls

Now, lis­ten­ers can enter those build­ings and tool around the apart­ments, cour­tesy of the inter­ac­tive video at the top of the post (view it in a larg­er for­mat here), which fea­tures a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased rough mix of the track called “Brandy & Coke.” Con­ceived and direct­ed by Hal Kirk­land, the video pulls togeth­er some of my favorite things—the peri­od design and styling of That ‘70s Show, the most inven­tive tricks of the music video age, a la Tom Pet­ty or Peter Gabriel, and of course, Zep—with the added 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy of online inter­ac­tiv­i­ty. Click the arrow keys while the video plays and you’re trans­port­ed from one vivid tableaux to anoth­er, some rep­re­sent­ing funky apart­ment scenes, oth­ers some­thing else entire­ly. The video also inte­grates footage from Zeppelin’s per­for­mance of the song at Earl’s Court in ’75.

Room-7---King-and-Queen

Clever ref­er­ences abound, like the nod to god­fa­ther of fan­ta­sy cin­e­ma Georges Méliès (above) and an allu­sion to the clas­sic MTV moon land­ing intro (below). Over­all, it’s an aston­ish­ing visu­al feast that hear­kens back to the very best in music video tech­nol­o­gy, a seem­ing­ly lost art that Kirk­land and com­pa­ny may sin­gle­hand­ed­ly res­ur­rect. See Kirkland’s site for more of his inter­net age music video cre­ations, includ­ing “Sour—Hibi No Neiro,” shot entire­ly on web­cams.

Room-14---Astronaut-Cockpit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

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

Watch Björk’s 6 Favorite TED Talks, From the Mushroom Death Suit to the Virtual Choir

Björk_-_Hurricane_Festival

Image by Zach Klein

Singer-song­writer Björk, cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing a career ret­ro­spec­tive at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, cel­e­brat­ed TED’s bil­lionth video view with a playlist of six trea­sured TED Talks. What do her choic­es say about her?

In this talk, artist Jae Rhim Lee mod­els her Mush­room Death Suit, a kicky lit­tle snug­gy designed to decom­pose and reme­di­ate tox­ins from corpses before they leech back into the soil or sky. Despite Björk’s fond­ness for out­ré fash­ion, I’m pret­ty sure this choice goes beyond the mere­ly sar­to­r­i­al.

For more infor­ma­tion, or to get in line for a mush­room suit of your own, see the Infin­i­ty Bur­ial Project.

Con­tin­u­ing with the mush­room / fash­ion theme, Björk next turns to design­er Suzanne Lee, who demon­strates how she grows sus­tain­able tex­tiles from kom­bucha mush­rooms. The result­ing mate­r­i­al may var­i­ous­ly resem­ble paper or flex­i­ble veg­etable leather. It is extreme­ly recep­tive to nat­ur­al dyes, but not water repel­lent, so bring a non-kom­bucha-based change of clothes in case you get caught in the rain.

For more infor­ma­tion on Lee’s home­grown, super green fab­ric, vis­it Bio­Cou­ture.

Björk’s clear­ly got a soft spot for things that grow: mush­rooms, mush­room-based fab­ric, and now…building mate­ri­als? Pro­fes­sor of Exper­i­men­tal Archi­tec­ture Rachel Arm­strong’s plan for self-regen­er­at­ing build­ings involves pro­to­cols, or “lit­tle fat­ty bags” that behave like liv­ing things despite an absence of DNA. I’m still not sure how it works, but as long as the lit­tle fat­ty bags are not added to my own ever-grow­ing edi­fice, I’m down.

For more infor­ma­tion on what Dr. Arm­strong refers to as bot­tom up con­struc­tion (includ­ing a scheme to keep Venice from sink­ing) see Black Sky Think­ing.

Björk’s next choice takes a turn for the seri­ous… with games. Game Design­er Bren­da Romero began explor­ing the heavy duty emo­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties of the medi­um when her 9‑year-old daugh­ter returned from school with a less than nuanced under­stand­ing of the Mid­dle Pas­sage. The suc­cess of that exper­i­ment inspired her to cre­ate games that spur play­ers to engage on a deep­er lev­el with thorny his­tor­i­cal sub­jects. (The Trail of Tears required 50,000 indi­vid­ual red­dish-brown pieces).

Learn more about Romero’s ana­log games at The Mechan­ic is the Mes­sage.

Remem­ber those 50,000 indi­vid­ual pieces? As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Aaron Huey doc­u­ment­ed life on Pine Ridge Reser­va­tion, he was hum­bled by hear­ing him­self referred to as “wasichu,” a Lako­ta word that can be trans­lat­ed as “non-Indi­an.” Huey decid­ed not to shy away from its more point­ed trans­la­tion: “the one who takes the best meat for him­self.” His TED Talk is an impas­sioned his­to­ry les­son that begins in 1824 with the cre­ation of the Bureau of Indi­an Affairs and ends in an activist chal­lenge.

Proof that Björk is not entire­ly about the quirk.

See Huey’s pho­tos from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic cov­er sto­ry, “In the Spir­it of Crazy Horse.”

Björk opts to close things on a musi­cal note with excerpts from com­pos­er Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque” and “Sleep” per­formed by a crowd­sourced vir­tu­al choir. Its members—they swell to 1999 for “Sleep”—record their parts alone at home, then upload them to be mixed into some­thing son­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly greater than the sum of its parts.

Lis­ten to “Sleep” in its entire­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Take a Virtual Tour of Abbey Road Studios, Courtesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

Once again, Google qui­et­ly drops a nifty piece of inter­ac­tive web­bery and acts like it ain’t no big deal.

Google’s new web site, Inside Abbey Road, lets view­ers walk inside Abbey Road Stu­dios, check out the famous record­ing stu­dio (home to most of the Bea­t­les’ songs, birth­place of Dark Side of the Moon, Radiohead’s The Bends, Kanye West­’s Late Reg­is­tra­tion, the list goes on) inspect the rooms, and watch inter­views and mini-docs. It also match­es up icon­ic pho­tos (includ­ing the one shot out­side of the famous cross­walk) with the stu­dio today. The site is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google and the stu­dio to cel­e­brate over 80 years of music his­to­ry.

Inside Abbey Road

Abbey Road exist­ed before the Fab Four and Cliff Richard, of course, and the new site includes footage of com­pos­er Sir Edward Elgar open­ing the stu­dio in 1931 and con­duct­ing a record­ing of “Land of Hope and Glo­ry.”

There’s plen­ty of mod­ern footage too, from Kylie Minogue and Rob­bie Williams to Take That and Sig­ur Rós. You have to poke around a lit­tle bit to find every­thing, but the site includes a map in case you get lost.

abbey road beatles

You can also have a go at mix­ing a four-track record­ing in the con­trol booth, fool around on the J37 tape deck that was the height of tech dur­ing the time of Sgt. Pep­per, and try to find the rumored echo cham­ber. (Trust me, it’s there.)

abbey road board

If you want to take a break out­side and watch a real-time ver­sion of this dig­i­tal loca­tion, there’s always the Abbey Road traf­fic cam, where you watch a whole bunch of tourists try to get their Bea­t­les on with­out get­ting hit by an irate lor­ry dri­ver.

Take your vir­tu­al tour of Abbey Road here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCartney’s Con­cep­tu­al Draw­ings For the Abbey Road Cov­er and Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour Film

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

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