I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RED BARAAT-“100+ BPM” (Live in front of the Brooklyn Public Library) (Field Recordings, June 2, 2014).

Continuing with the fun that is Red Baraat, I stumbled upon this Field Recording [What Happens When 350 Musicians Meet For The First Time In Brooklyn?] from the NPR studios.

As part of the Make Music New York Festival, NPR commissioned new music from Red Baraat and Sunny Jain created “100+ BPM.”  And as the blurb informs us:

“We put out a call and they came — by the hundreds. When we invited wind, brass and percussion players to join us yesterday in Brooklyn to perform a world premiere by Red Baraat‘s Sunny Jain for the annual Make Music New York festival, we were hoping that lots of different kinds of musicians would join us. And boy, did they ever.

On this absolutely gorgeous Saturday afternoon, about 350 musicians assembled on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library to play Jain’s 100+ BPM. Young, older, professional drumlines, community marching bands, seasoned jazz players, Indian wedding band musicians, Brazilian samba drummers and scads of amateur players came out to play. It was just incredible.

I don’t know how they managed to record the music so perfectly, but it sounds fantastic.  You can really hear the different instruments (well, except maybe the poor violins and that piccolo) as they zoom in on one section or another.

The whole group plays along perfectly.  And there’s even some great sax solos (how did they decide who got to solo?) an excellent trombone solo and lots and lots of drums and percussion.

I love that after the wild soloing everybody joins back in for that great melody once again.

At 6:15, the song stops (and you get to see how psyched Sunny is).  Then after a short pause he starts clapping and selects which group of instruments will keep the beat going.  First it’s drums, then percussion, then the tubas and then the brass comes into play a new staccato riff that is fun and catchy and easy to speed up. Which it does.

He drops out the drums and selective instruments until it’s just the tuba and percussion.  Then the drums come back in and he starts picking up the tempo of that riff again.  Faster and faster do they get to 100BPM? According to this excellent free BPM counter, they make it to 106/107 BPM during the main part.

Then after a breather it’s time to keep going, faster and faster until they reach 126 BPM by the end and Sunny gives an exultant leap to end the song.

What an excellent way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

[READ: February 26, 2018] “Pardon the Intrusion”

Lydia Davis stories are usually really short–a paragraph or two or three.

This one is very different.

It is a series of posts–requests and thanks for various items.  And that’s it.

It’s hard to tell if a story can be constructed from these requests–at times it seems like you can follow a narrative.  But mostly it just seems to be people requesting goods and services.

Some examples:

• Does anyone have experience resurfacing porcelain?
• I’d be grateful if someone could recommend a good periodontist in the area.  Thanks!
• Could anyone recommend a dermatologist in the area?
• Could anyone recommend a chiropractor in the area?
• Pardon the intrusion, Is anyone in need of brown expanding folders?
• An umbrella was left behind after the meeting yesterday.  It is being held at the information desk.

So there is a sense of where this is set.  We do also get one name:

• Kayak for sale.  If interested, please call Betty.

And then this apropos of nothing

• The couch comes with two matching brown pillows and is fairly low to the ground.  Have a lovely holiday weekend!

So there is a sort of time placement as well, although it could be any holiday.

And there is a follow-up (obvious by style and content):

• Pardon the intrusion.  The folders have been taken.

Lots of other things happen.  People are traveling to Boston and need a ride.  A wok gets posted and sold.  Tickets for plays are requested and sold.  There’s a  recommendation to avoid a specific vascular specialist

It ends with

• Is anyone interested in bagged leaves from the past winter?

This was printed in Harper’s which often prints lists like this usually excerpted from some various web site or other.  Those are usually pointed or funny in some way. This was just a bunch of items and it felt utterly random . I suppose if I’m being generous it shows life in a small community/apartment complex. But mostly it’s just a listserv that I would ask to be removed from.