Category Archives: Uncategorized

It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Da Capo Ornamentation

Posted on May 24, 2013 by

Aesthetic, Not Anesthetic is officially adopting pianist/composer Helen Sung‘s definition of “swing.” Understanding it as “the irresistible forward motion that makes you want to get up, dance and groove” not only explains the most common examples of the term, it … Continue reading →

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A Long Time Ago In A Record Store

Posted on May 22, 2013 by

Time was that recorded music needed to be stored on some type of circular object (with rectangular objects briefly, and in hindsight laughably, substituted at a few points). If a listener wanted to hear their favorite band, they could insert … Continue reading →

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Clarence Williams Overcomes All

Posted on May 10, 2013 by

Miraculously, sometime between hopping buses, scarfing down meals and burning through emails, today I got to listen to “Breeze”: Bandleader and pianist Clarence Williams skips the introduction and goes straight to the tune: the closest thing to “hurrying” accomplished by … Continue reading →

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Happy Every Day!

Posted on April 30, 2013 by

For most of the regular readers of ANA, every day is a great day to hear jazz, but the second International Jazz Day is as good an excuse as any to pour a lot of great jazz onto Twitter.  I’ll … Continue reading →

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What A Difference A Baritone Makes

Posted on April 29, 2013 by

Here‘s my coverage of world-renowned baritone Thomas Hampson galvanizing the Jupiter Quartet in the Celebrity Series of Boston, via The Boston Musical Intelligencer.  Please enjoy! While you’re at it, check out some other reactions to the performance, from David Wright … Continue reading →

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Finding Bill Moore

Posted on April 25, 2013 by

Bill Moore. The name seems like a joke on itself, a homophone inviting literally “more” to be said about it, while resisting that urge through its own frequency. The number of birth certificates, census records, coroners’ reports and gravestones for … Continue reading →

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Color, Imagination and More Than the Cigar

Posted on April 18, 2013 by

Even within the limits of a 78rpm record, notable jazz arrangers like Duke Ellington, Don Redman and Bill Challis were allowed to indulge their compositional chops as well as soloists’ imaginations. Technology and audience expectations now allow contemporary arrangers to … Continue reading →

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Thoughts On Recent Events Here in Boston

Posted on April 17, 2013 by

One of the goals behind this blog has been to approach “old” music on its own terms, as a sound that happens to have been created years ago but which exists right now. I’ve tried to keep my own little … Continue reading →

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Domenica con Vivaldi: My Favorite “Season”

Posted on April 14, 2013 by

Antonio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678-July 28, 1741) composed over five hundred concertos, yet Stravinsky joked that Vivaldi actually wrote the same concerto five hundred times. Many of the Venetian composer/violinist’s concertos display similar traits, making them instantly recognizable as the … Continue reading →

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