Thursday, June 30, 2011

Michel Petrucciani: New Documentary

Michael Radford, who directed Il Postino, premiered a new documentary about the great jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (1963-99) at this year's Cannes Film Festival.  Here's a trailer:
Here's a review from the Guardian, and some recent items in French herehere and here.  You can see another documentary about Petrucciani, in its entirety, here (also available on DVD), and you can watch a complete 1985 set at the Village Vanguard with guitarist Jim Hall (b. 1930) here.  A chronology of Petrucciani's life is available here (in German, English, and French).

There are a couple of books of transcriptions of Petrucciani's solos; one of them seems to be out of print, but another is available in France.  Some transcriptions are available online here, here, and here.  David Hajdu wrote a nice article about Petrucciani in The New Republic, which was reprinted in his book Heroes and Villains.

Earlier this year, the French writer Benjamin Halay published a full-length biography of Petrucciani.  There's also a Master's thesis by Phil Broadhurst in New Zealand.

Here's a transcript of an interview Petrucciani gave in 1998, a year before he died, and here's a filmed conversation:

For a pretty thorough discography, go here.  There are lots of good Petrucciani tracks on Grooveshark.  And some of the best albums that currently seem to be available on Amazon are Music, Solo Live, Live at the Village Vanguard, and Power of Three, with Wayne Shorter and Jim Hall, which is also available on DVD:

Here are a few good videos:
• "Little Peace in C for You," with Anthony Jackson and Steve Gadd:

• Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol's "Caravan," solo:

• ...and Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood":

• ...and "C Jam Blues":

• "Looking Up":

Petrucciani is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery:

Monday, June 27, 2011

Jean Renoir's The River

All right, I saw Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937), and liked it.  I saw The Rules of the Game (1939), and liked it.  So I was looking forward to The River (1951):

What a massive disappointment!  I gave up after about half an hour.  I can't remember the last time I gave up on a film so quickly.  I guess maybe when it was first released, four years after India's independence, it gave Western audiences a nostalgic romanticized view of a recent colonial past, in pretty technicolor, that may have had a certain appeal.  But the dialogue is clichéd, the acting wooden, and the whole scenario pretty cringe-inducing.  If I have an hour and a half spare, I'd rather spend it looking at something that Jean Renoir's father cooked up seventy years earlier, in 1881:
 ...for more on the "Luncheon of the Boating Party," click here.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Hope Stephanie Germanotta's had a chance to check out Kathryn Kalinak

"Born This Way":

Bernard Herrmann's title sequence from Hitchcock's Vertigo:


Kathryn Kalinak's "A Brief Analysis of Vertigo".

Marcel Carné, Les Enfants du Paradis, Arletty

Carné....

Les Enfants du Paradis (1945):

Arletty... some forty years later...
"Si mon cœur est français, mon cul, lui, est international!"


Alan Riding on Charlie Rose:

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Blue

Krzystof Kieslowski's Blue (1993):

Pablo Picasso's "La Vie" (1903):

Miles Davis's "Blue" from Aura (1984):

Yves Klein....

...his blue paintings, such as:

...and his Anthropometries of the Blue Period (1962):


Joni Mitchell's "Blue" (1971):

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Hands

Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" (1508-12):


August Rodin, Hand Sculpture:



Paul Strand's photograph "Rebecca's Hands" (1923).

M.C. Escher's "Drawing Hands" (1948):

Yvonne Rainer's "Hand Movie" (1966) (I think this was made when she was in the hospital and temporarily couldn't dance):

Richard Serra's "Hand Catching Lead" (1968):

Christian Moeller's mural at San Jose Airport.

Jesse Helms's "White Hands" (1990) racist television campaign ad:

Monday, June 6, 2011

Things Bartolomeo Cristofori May Not Have Anticipated

Misha Mengelberg:

Ursula Oppens playing Elliott Carter:

Yuji Takahashi playing Iannis Xenakis:

 Conlon Nancarrow, Study No. 5:

Harpo Marx:

Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Ligeti:

Sylvie Courvoisier:

Lisa Moore playing Rzewski:

1967 Radio Piano Smashing Contest:

Maurizio Pollini playing Stockhausen:

Henry Cowell's The Tides of Manaunan:

Cecil Taylor:

David Tudor playing John Cage's Music of Changes:

La Monte Young's X for Henry Flynt:

Jean Barraqué's Piano Sonata:

Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731), inventor of the piano: