Tag: music

Coltrane 1961

What was going on in the world in 1961? A lot of eeriness, a lot of confused, threatened, concealed or failed aggression

Ben Ratliff

Taking inspiration from Coltrane’s two weeks at the Village Vanguard almost exactly 60 years ago, Ben Ratliff in the Washington Post riffs on John Coltrane and the Essence of 1961.

So here was a tendency: self-immersions, burials, entrapments, irritating provocations, projects with a built-in self-destruct button, all in the name of asking a better question. But whenever one proclaims a tendency in culture, one had better be prepared to find the opposite tendency at the same time. Sure enough, one could: plenty of joyous, communal, repetitive music, but similarly intense, and similarly resisting the concept of a leader, or a hero.

Ben Ratliff

Also mentioned: The previously unreleased recording of a live performance of A Love Supreme in 1965.

You Can Buy Dave Brubeck’s House in Connecticut

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck’s house has eight bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, and at least four pianos. It’s not clear whether the latter, or the Nakashima furniture, is included in the $2.75 million price tag.

Brubeck East. Source: Larry Lederman/Town and Country Magazine.

Dave and Iola Brubeck hired an unknown young architect, Beverly David Thorne, to design their first house, completed in 1954, in Oakland, California. When they moved east, Thorne also designed their Connecticut house. He “often slept outdoors on the property in a sleeping bag while designing the house to chart where the sun emerged in the sky each day so he could best position the structure for maximum sun exposure during season changes,” according to Brubeck. The house was completed around the same time Thorne designed Case Study House #26 in California.

The adult Brubecks in their Connecticut house (the Brubeck children were required to stay outside). Source: Sears, Roebuck/www.jazzwax.com – Marc Myers.
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