Forty years ago this month, Miles Davis opened for Neil
Young at the Fillmore East. I wrote about their intersection a while back for an EMP Pop Conference, and
now the piece has
finally been released into the wild, thanks to the intrepid online magazine At
Length.
One animating idea in the piece is the power of unknowing.
At one point in Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography, by Jimmy McDonough, Young offers probably the single best analysis of
Crazy Horse:
File under: self-promotion, duologue, pianism. This weekend
I will be in Princeton, N.J. for a pair of concerts featuring
Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn. The two pianists, former section-mates in the superb new-music
ensemble Roscoe Mitchell’s Note Factory, will perform back-to-back solo sets,
followed by new works for duo piano. To quote from the program notes: “Both pianists share an
enthusiasm for structural rigor and rhythmic precision, but also maintain a
more gestural, interpretive and intuitive approach to improvisation.”
The event(s) comes courtesy of the Institute for Advanced
Study, a center for theoretical research with a distinguished history. (Einstein
is among the more prominent former faculty.) Iyer
and Taborn are appearing at the invitation of composer Derek Bermel, the
Institute’s current Artist-in-Residence. My contribution will be a post-concert
conversation on Friday and a pre-concert talk on Saturday.
Tickets are free, but way gone. (I’m told that
the waiting list is substantial.) No word on whether this collaboration will
yield a future spate of bookings, but as precedent has taught us, it could happen.