remembering two great musicians
Dec. 12th, 2012 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerDave Brubeck and Ravi Shanker, two wonderful musicians, have died recently. Both were in their 90s, so my first thought is not "how sad to lose them" but more "how wonderful to have had such people with us!"
I heard this piece on NPR last week, which brought home to me how much of Dave Brubeck's most popular work I know and recognize, and how crucual he was to the way that jazz developed in this country. I remember playing many of his pieces on the short-lived radio show I had on WCFM Williamstown in 1986. Since then, NPR's special correspondent Susan Stamberg has also filed this piece, a lovely memory of Dave Brubeck visitng her home.
I'm pretty sure that it was this recording of Blue Rondo a la Turk that I first heard. Same thing for Take FIve (which I also came to love for it's use in the odd and amusing series Oliver's Travels".)
Just this morning, I heard Stamberg's tribute to Ravi Shankar. It was the first I had heard of his death, but I didn't even need a phrase of his music to remind me of it; just his name conjures it powerfully from my memory. My dad had a special interest in India, having served there for two tours in World War Two. I don't know whether he first heard of Shankar through his collaboration with George Harrison or before that (one of his Shankar albums, which I think I still have, was "In London," recorded in 1964, two years before Harrison met the master of the sitar), but he enjoyed finding a way to get back in touch with an experience of his past. (The same was true of the fervour with which my parents patronised Indian restaurants, when those started appearing in southeastern Virginia where they lived.)
Thank you, Dave Brubeck and Ravi Shankar, for making the world a more beautiful and vibrant place, both while you were here with us and ever after, as your music endures.
I heard this piece on NPR last week, which brought home to me how much of Dave Brubeck's most popular work I know and recognize, and how crucual he was to the way that jazz developed in this country. I remember playing many of his pieces on the short-lived radio show I had on WCFM Williamstown in 1986. Since then, NPR's special correspondent Susan Stamberg has also filed this piece, a lovely memory of Dave Brubeck visitng her home.
I'm pretty sure that it was this recording of Blue Rondo a la Turk that I first heard. Same thing for Take FIve (which I also came to love for it's use in the odd and amusing series Oliver's Travels".)
Just this morning, I heard Stamberg's tribute to Ravi Shankar. It was the first I had heard of his death, but I didn't even need a phrase of his music to remind me of it; just his name conjures it powerfully from my memory. My dad had a special interest in India, having served there for two tours in World War Two. I don't know whether he first heard of Shankar through his collaboration with George Harrison or before that (one of his Shankar albums, which I think I still have, was "In London," recorded in 1964, two years before Harrison met the master of the sitar), but he enjoyed finding a way to get back in touch with an experience of his past. (The same was true of the fervour with which my parents patronised Indian restaurants, when those started appearing in southeastern Virginia where they lived.)
Thank you, Dave Brubeck and Ravi Shankar, for making the world a more beautiful and vibrant place, both while you were here with us and ever after, as your music endures.
