40 Years On: Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Revisited

"... It doesn’t really matter whether The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is Mitchell’s best album. What does matter is that anyone who thrills to, say, Blue, as well they might, may find this even more thrilling if they’ve yet to hear it. Mitchell is unusual among major artists in that little of her very finest work is among her most famous, with the possible exception of this album’s predecessor, Court And Spark. Hejira, the magnificent record that followed it, is stranger, more exotic, more thickly draped in mysteries. There are those - I’ve met one or two - who most adore Mingus, her daring 1979 collaboration with the great double bassist. Then again, 'daring' is tautological when cited in tandem with Joni Mitchell, whose career is one of unparalleled audacity. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
Guardian - Joni Mitchell: the sophistication of her music sets her apart from her peers – even Dylan (Video)
The Four Oh Project: Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns
pod
W - The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Spotify: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

2015 July: Blue (1970)

King Tubby's Special 1973-1976 (1989)

"This two-disc set brings together some of the finest dub mixes ever produced by the legendary King Tubby. The first disc compiles 13 tracks played by the Observer All Stars and originally produced by Winston 'Niney' Holness; the second consists of 17 cuts by the Aggrovators (produced by Bunny Lee) and includes the collection's title track, a DJ talk-over featuring the great U-Roy. King Tubby's approach to dub was always distinctive; his mixes are distinguished by a touch that is sweet sounding and endlessly creative, balancing innovation with respect for the original even during the most drastic deconstruction of a song. And unlike some other dub producers, Tubby generally left swatches of the vocal line in place, dropping it in and out of the mix and applying dirty analog echo, sometimes subtly changing the lyrical focus. This collection's unusually helpful liner notes will assist interested listeners in finding original versions of many of the tracks. A truly essential dub collection."
allmusic
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: KING TUBBY'S SPECIAL 1973-1976 (Full Album / Both Disks)

2009 December: Augustus Pablo, 2011 November: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown - Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, 2011 May: East of the River Nile, 2013 January: King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, 2015 April: Valley of Jehosaphat (1999), 2015 June: Hugh Mundell & Augustus Pablo - Jah Will Provide + Hungry (Dub Version), 2015 August: Hugh Mundell - Africa Must Be Free By 1983 + Dub (1978).

Circles: Charles Henri Ford

"Charles Henri Ford’s vanity turns 100 today. Its owner, poet and publisher Charles Henri Ford, was by all reliable accounts born in Mississippi on this day in 1908 but he insisted that he was born in 1913, a fudge which endures on his Wikipedia entry. Beyond contention, however, is his status as a major cultural catalyst. His influence and relationships ranged from the Surrealists and the interwar expat community in Paris through to the Beats and the Factory, connections which he carried right into the 21st century, dying in 2002. Anyone whose address book has space for both Faulkner, William and Arcade, Penny is surely worth investigating further. Even allowing for the half-decade headstart, Ford’s early activities are remarkable. At 21 he launched Blues, a literary journal which attracted contributions from the likes of Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. ..."
Strange Flowers
The Garden of Disorder
Wikipedia
BOMB
NY Times: Charles Henri Ford, 94, Prolific Poet, Artist and Editor
Johnny Minotaur by Charles Henri Ford; narration by Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Warren Sonbert, Dan Basen and Lynne Tillman & 25th Anniversary Party
amazon: Charles Henri Ford

Sun Ra and His Arkestra: Jazz in Silhouette (1958)

"In the jazz universe, Sun Ra typically travels in an unknown, distant galaxy of his own. He is on the map, but understood and given his proper significance by only a loyal few. Most know his esoteric philosophising, lavish stage shows, and outward-bound music, but those features only scratch the surface of Ra’s music. Recorded in 1958, Jazz in Silhouette stands as an overlooked masterpiece, a work that shows Ra not as a mere curiosity or backwater galaxy, but as a major creative force in the jazz universe, a center of gravity around which many of jazz’s major developments have orbited. This album simply inspires, no matter what perspective you adopt: rhythm, melody, ensemble or mood. You can listen to John Gilmore sculpt his solo on 'Saturn' with sensitivity and flair, or Hobart Dotson extemporize with grace and wit on the two-beat gospel number 'Hours After'. ..."
all about jazz
W - Jazz in Silhouette
YouTube: Jazz In Silhouette [Full Album] 44:40

Robert Walser - Looking At Pictures (2015)

"An elegant collection, with gorgeous full-color art reproductions, Looking at Pictures presents a little-known aspect of the eccentric Swiss writer's genius. His essays consider Van Gogh, Manet, Rembrandt, Cranach, Watteau, Fragonard, Bruegel, and his own brother Karl. The pieces also discuss general topics such as the character of the artist and of the dilettante as well as the differences between painters and poets. Each piece is marked by Walser's unique eye, his delicate sensitivity, and his very particular sensibilities—and all are touched by his magic screwball wit."
New Directions Publishing Company
Robert Walser, Original Art Blogger
Portrait of a Lady
Guardian: Translation Tuesday: from Looking at Pictures by Robert Walser
amazon

Bronx Cheer

"'The Bronx is on Fire,' a journal of the New York real-estate industry recently trumpeted, 'Because the Real Estate Market Is Heating Up.' The headline deliberately echoed a famous line attributed to sportscaster Howard Cosell: 'The Bronx is burning,' he is remembered saying—though he did not actually use those words—during a 1977 World Series game, as flames shot up in the beleaguered neighborhood beyond Yankee Stadium’s outfield wall. ... Once a synonym for urban collapse, the New Bronx was now a hot property. Some of the hottest new properties include purchases by Silvercup Studios—the Queens-based facility where The Sopranos and 30 Rock were filmed—of South Bronx land on which it will erect an additional 120,000-square-foot studio for other productions, and by the food-delivery company Fresh Direct, which announced it would build a 500,000-square-foot warehouse also in the South Bronx. ..."
The American Prospect
NY Times: Bracing for Gentrification in the South Bronx (17 Photographs)
What's Burning in the South Bronx?
W - South Bronx
The meaning and origin of the expression: Bronx cheer, W - Blowing a raspberry (Video)

k. leimer - music for land and water (1983)

"these pieces were produced in 1983 for an ensemble of five closed-loop tape players. each player ran a different duration loop as part of a month-long gallery installation. it was later 'performed' in seattle at seward park's open air amphitheater. the setting proved ideal in allowing listeners to experience the work from the stage to the shoreline to points approaching silence out along the heavily wooded trails. like much of my work, music for land and water is systems-based,seeking self-determined outcomes that usually manifest a limited and artificial approximation of theme and variation. as max shaefer has written: 'leimer posits an apparently selfless art concerned with the purity of physical acoustic phenomenon, undisturbed by any manner of distortion or empty space...' clearly derivative of techniques pioneered in pieces such as eno's music for airports and perfected by recent works such as robert henke's indigo transform, music for land and water marks a point of persistent musical dilettantism along the endless search for aesthetically significant self-regulating systems." - k. leimer
Autumn Records (Video)
Discogs
Spotify
YouTube: Very Tired
Soundcloud: Go Slowly

2010 September: K. Leimer, 2014 June: K. Leimer by Alexis Georgopoulos

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Art of Translation No. 4

"Credited with starting a 'quiet revolution,' Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear have joined the small club of major translators whose interpretation of a master­piece displaces the one read by generations before. Volokhonsky, who is Russian, and Pevear, who is American, have been married thirty-three years. In that time, they have translated much of Russian literature as we know it. Their thirty or so translations include The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Demons, The Idiot, Notes from Underground, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Hadji Murat, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, The Master and Margarita, Doctor Zhivago, Gogol’s Collected Tales, Dead Souls, The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories by Nikolai Leskov, and Chekhov’s Selected Stories. ..."
The Paris Review
W - Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Humanities: Done with Tolstoy
New Yorker: The Translation Wars
The Millions Interview: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Pina Bausch: Year - Title (1972 - 1988)

Café Müller (1978) - 1984 Brooklyn Academy of Music

Iphigenia in Tauris (1972)
"... 'Iphigenie,' the choreographer’s second work for her new Wuppertal company, formed just a year earlier, feels, rather touchingly, like the work of a younger [Pina] Bausch. It offers a more or less literal danced depiction of the opera’s libretto, using the 1871 German version based on Euripides’s 'Iphigenia in Tauris.' ... The siblings’ realization of one another’s identity, close to the end of the opera, and as Orestes lies, throat bared to Iphigenie’s dagger, is the dramatic high point of the tale, and Bausch’s piece ends soon after, omitting the more complex ending of the Euripides play. But even in this relatively straightforward, pure-dance account, Bausch’s instinct for the creation of drama through movement alone, and her talent for the conjuring of psychic landscapes and the frightening depthless descent into nightmare, is immediately apparent."
NYT: ‘Iphigenie’ True to Bausch’s Vision
Guardian: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch - review
Telegraph: Iphigenie auf Tauris, Tanztheater Wuppertal, Sadler's Wells, review
YouTube: Orfeo y Eurídice visto por Pina Bausch, Iphigenia in Tauris - Pina Bausch, Iphigenia in Tauris

Orpheus and Eurydice (1975)
"The German choreographer Pina Bausch is celebrated (and occasionally denounced) for her epic tragicomic productions, in which her performers speak as much as they dance, offering vignettes of human life and behavior that are absurd, uncomfortable and moving amid strange and powerful stage landscapes. But in Ms. Bausch’s 1975 'Orpheus and Eurydice,' a rarely seen early piece currently being performed by the Paris Opera Ballet, she has created an exquisite work of pure dance that possesses as much theatrical power as any of her better-known later works, perhaps more."
NYT: Two Immortal Lovers Have a Rematch in Paris
culture kiosque
NYT: Squeezing All the Love Out of a Love Story
W - Christoph Willibald Gluck
UbuWeb: Orpheus und Eurydike (1975)
YouTube: Orpheus and Eurydice - Deuil, Piax, Violence

The Seven Deadly Sins (1976)
"The Dance Session is strictly speaking not the session of dance. 'The Seven Deadly Sins' by Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht and her dance company have come up with the most destructive show one could have ever imagined to see on the German stage. It goes without saying they are doing this quite consciously. This show is not only absolutely unpretentious in terms of scale or humor. It totally lacks any outward luster. This performance is poor, infinitely sad and yet charged with enormous energy… In contrast with Brecht who spoke about seven mortal sins, Pina Bausch focuses on one – renting out female flesh. It is by no means limited to the all too old theme of a woman’s degradation to a sell able pleasure article that can be obtained through fluttery or by force. Neither has it anything to do with emancipation. - Die Welt, June 18, 1976"
"The Seven Deadly Sins" by Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht
NYT: "The Seven Deadly Sins" and "Don't Be Afraid"
W - The Seven Deadly Sins (ballet chanté)

Come Dance With Me (1977)
"... Come Dance With Me, which features scenes of a woman being pawed by a group of men onstage, may seem tame to an audience inured to the likes of exhibitionist/artist Tracy Emin. But when Bausch’s works were first presented in Europe in the ’70s, they were greeted with slammed doors and thrown fruit. In other quarters, the performances were simply panned, with New York’s Village Voice dismissing them as 'a crock' and The Washington Post more specifically alluding to a 'Teutonic attraction to the powers of darkness, to an alliance of art, disease and malevolence.' Audiences accustomed to Balanchine and Graham were shocked—as were the dancers themselves."
Metropolis
YouTube: Komm tanz mit mir

Blaubart (1977)
1984 - Brooklyn Academy of Music
"A room ringed by women pasted on the the walls like flies, a floor covered with dry leaves that inevitably become entangled in the loose hair of the woman who wallows in them, a chain of mournful figures moving with heads bowed, a scene of repeated physical abuse signaled by the not-so-silent stop-and-start of a tape recorder. These are only a few of the moments - aimed primarily as an assault upon the senses - that flow through Pina Bausch's dance-theater piece 'Bluebeard.' Presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Thursday night, this second of three New York premieres by Miss Bausch's company from Wuppertal in West Germany relies more heavily upon a knowledge of German than did her first program."
NY Times
The Violence on the Female Body in Pina Bausch’s Work
Pina Bausch Choreographs Blaubart: A Transgressive or Regressive Act?
YouTube: Blaubart (1977) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

The Rite of Spring

1984 - Brooklyn Academy of Music
"... A young woman took her place, lying on the ground beside a red scarf. The sound of Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' flooded the rotunda. One, two, three women ran in, men joined them, and soon all 32 dancers were on the floor, with signs of effort, concentration and perhaps a hint of puzzlement written across their faces. After 10 minutes, Ms. Bausch waved an arm. The music stopped, and she and her three assistants joined the dancers to dissect the rights and wrongs of what they had just seen. Even after a month of rehearsals, some of the dancers were evidently still struggling to come to terms with the unusual movements associated with Ms. Bausch's vocabulary. Nothing had prepared them for the sudden neck movements, for the sharp bending and turning, even for dancing barefoot. Yet all seemed to consider it a rare privilege to learn from Ms. Bausch, and they exuded a nervous determination to succeed. ..."
NY Times: Using Muscles Classical Ballet Has No Need For
Wikipedia - The Rite of Spring
From the Pet Shop Boys to Pina Bausch | 100 years of The Rite of Spring
YouTube: The Rite of Spring

Kontakthof (1978)
"When it came to the battle of the sexes, Pina Bausch had a shrewd eye. In her trenchant dance-theater works, which gave cause for laughter one moment and a cringe the next, she grasped the tension that lived beneath the skin, the despair that lurked within joy. Bausch died in 2009, just days after learning she had cancer, but her rigorous productions have longevity and a universal reach: They appeal to the spy in us all. In 'Kontakthof,' men and women — anxious with hope and longing — meet in a cheerless dance hall for nearly three hours of romantic encounters. (The title means 'courtyard of contact.') Created in 1978, 'Kontakthof' is vintage Bausch."
NYT: Wallflowers and Lotharios in an Age-Old Courtship Ritual
Guardian
YouTube: Kontakthof, Kontakthof at 65
UbuWeb: Kontakthof mit Senioren ab "65" (2000)

Café Müller (1978)
1984 - Brooklyn Academy of Music
"... There is something allegorical about Miss Bausch's own role in 'Cafe Muller,' which juxtaposes tense dramatic action with five arias from Purcell's 'Fairie Queen.' In an evidently public room (designed by Rolf Borzik), a deserted cafe with scattered tables and chairs, Miss Bausch wanders in a nightgown, with eyes closed. Yet everything about this groping sleepwalker suggests that she is absorbing into her pores every single detail of the emotionally stunted behavior around her - just as she has absorbed the life around her to create her work. The performers are exceptional. Their hallmark is to avoid recognition of each other on stage and as Dominique Mercy and Beatrice Libonati hurl each other against a wall or repeatedly fall out of an embrace, they do so nearly as strangers. Their lips meet but whether they kiss is another matter. When Jean Sasportes crashes through the furniture, he seemingly goes unacknowledged, and his destination is always undefined. When Meryl Tankard's fearful scurries dot the action, she too becomes an unimportant bystander. In Jan Minarik, Miss Bausch - whose background solos serve as an abstraction of the drama - has a powerful perfomer who needs only to stand still to hold the stage."
NY Times: BAUSCH TROUPE MAKES NEW YORK DEBUT
Review: Pina Bausch Wuppertal Tanztheater in Cafe Muller/The Rite of Spring at Sadler's Wells 
UbuWeb: Café Müller (1978)

Bandoneon (1980)
"Bandoneon abounds with variations on Miss Bausch's favorite themes. As usual, people are either paralyzed with shyness or goaded by aggression, and love's pains outweigh its pleasures. A bandoneon is an accordion used in Argentine tangos, and the work's recorded accompaniment is a collage of tangos and cafe songs. Just as their rhythms are maddeningly insistent, so Miss Bausch's images grow equally obsessive. What makes the piece special are its references to dance training. Everyone knows that dance classes are demanding. But, at least according to one theory, the joy of accomplishment makes the rigorous training worth enduring. Miss Bausch may not disagree with that theory. Nevertheless, she takes pains -- sometimes literally physical ones -- to show that dancing does not always transcend the woes of the human condition."
NY Times
Laurent Paillier - PhotoShelter

1980 (1980)
1986 - Montreal - Place des Arts
"I performed with the company from 1975 and joined in 1978. The dance world was completely different at that time. There was just one modern dance company in Germany apart from Pina's. Our first audience was theatre people not dance people. We were not moving the way people expected from dance performances but there was a great fascination about the work. People were touched by it. Pina had a kind of authority. I don't know where it came from – it was just there. She never talked loudly, she never screamed, she talked so low that everyone had to be quiet to understand what she said. After the death of her longtime partner and closest collaborator, Rolf Borzik, it took some time for her to decide to work on her next piece, which became 1980. It was a difficult time. All the people involved in its creation tried to entertain and distract Pina. I felt freer to do anything stupid to cheer her up. And then I was surprised that she put many of those things into the final piece. Some people find 1980 hilariously funny; some very melancholic. It depends what you focus on."
Guardian: Performing Pina Bausch's 1980 - in her dancers' words
NYT: Premiere Of '1980, A Pina Bausch'
YouTube: "1980" (excerpt), 1980-(another excerpt)

Nelken (1983)
"Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal productions are noted for their stunning, sometimes bizarre imagery, their collage-like sequences, and their pastiche of ritual, dance, text, music, and theatre. Bausch eschews linear story lines, working through juxtaposition and contrast to convey meaning. Much of her work addresses the issue of power in oppressive social structures, the violence between men and women, and the desperate search for love. Receiving its West Coast premiere at UCLA's Royce Hall, her latest work to tour the United States, Nelken ('Carnations'), explores with compassion, darkness, and humor the relationship between individuals, and between individuals and the state. At the opening of the piece, the stage was filled with thousands of pink and white (artificial) carnations, which served as both a backdrop to the performance and an emblem of playful innocence. Dancers entered in evening attire carrying chairs and sat in the midst of the carnations in a sort of bucolic bliss, then walked offstage, chairs in tow. Several male dancers dressed in loose-fitting frocks bounded gleefully through the carnations on all fours. This bunny heaven, however, turned ominous as officials holding leashed German shepherds invaded the perimeter of the stage."
Project MUSE
NY Times: Review/Dance; Pina Bausch's 'Carnations' in U.S. Premiere
ballet-dance
YouTube - The Man I Love (vocal: Sophie Tucker), Dominique Mercy

Viktor (1986)
"The first co-production of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch with Teatro Argentina and the City of Rome. As with much of Bausch’s work the imagery in Viktor is brilliantly bizarre and breathtakingly beautiful. The audience is transported through the fragmented action by the human characters who carefully communicate personalities through a few precise gestures or perfectly pitched words. Viktor is accompanied by a combination of symphonic music, folk tunes and music composed for social dancing - from the Middle Ages to the Jazz Age. Even though the work deals with human pain and neurosis, much of it is humorous."
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch — Viktor
DanceTabs
Telegraph
Guardian - Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: Viktor – review
a studio in covent garden
Sadlers Wells: Viktor

Ahnen (1988)
"The stage is full of enormous cacti. A couple in head-to-toe leopard-skin outfits, cat-ears perched on their heads, wander around with beatific, fixed smiles. Punk-rock music pounds. That music is a tribal beating of drums and a summons to the world of Pina Bausch and her 1987 dance 'Ahnen,' newly revived by her company, the Tanztheater Wuppertal, after a decade-long absence from the repertory. ... But it is also testament to the addictive nature of her oeuvre. Once you have seen a few Bausch pieces, you are likely to have been drawn into a theatrical universe that is like no other — immediately, compellingly familiar, no matter how strange the antics onstage. Wildly different in their particularity, the works are alike in a broader way. All are about love, loss, longing and desire, and the ineradicable human will to survive all."
NY Times
Guardian: Ahnen review – cactuses, cartoon fights and choreography on speed
Ahnen, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's Wells
A touch of genius. Pina Bausch and her 'Ahnen'

Pina Bausch: Year - Title (1989 - 2009)

Palermo, Palermo (1989) 
"... Human degradation, especially what men do to women, but also the infinite capacity of all peoples to harm themselves, is, in the end, Miss Bausch's underlying theme. 'Palermo, Palermo' is low on the simulated or actual violence that has made Miss Bausch controversial in the past. She has learned to inflict pain without striking. In one of the most forceful and resonant passages, a group of men in black suits rushes in carrying Beatrice Libonati, as uninhibited a Bausch veteran as any. They support her as they place a bottle of mineral water between her knees. The water pours out as immediately as the image of humiliation."
NYT: Pina Bausch's 'Palermo, Palermo' Explores a World Beyond Logic, September 30, 1991
Telegraph: Pina Bausch: Palermo, Palermo, Sadler’s Wells, review
Palermo, Palermo, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's Wells
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch – Palermo Palermo – London
YouTube: Palermo Tanztheater Italia 1990 (Italia)

Two Cigarettes in the Dark (1992)
""... 'Two Cigarettes in the Dark' is not devoid of cruelty: a woman bangs a man into a wall; a man spills water on the floor and treats a woman accusingly like a dog who has transgressed. But there are also bitterly comic images about escapist fantasies and domestic disputes. All appear ultimately to deal with the banal chores of getting through life. By now it is clear that each dance-theater piece by the German choreographer is a fresh installment in a serialized opus about human existence. Male-female relations receive special attention; hopes and failures are her larger concern."
NYT: Pina Bausch, but Not So Sure This Time
The New Criterion - Smokeless “Cigarettes”: Pina Bausch at BAM
Fresh Hamm: The Prada Pina
YouTube: Two Cigarettes in the Dark, Two Cigarettes in the Dark - 1

On the Mountain A Cry Was Heard (1993)
"The most memorable element of Pina Bausch’s Auf dem Gebirge Hat Man ein Geschrei Gehört (On the Mountain a Cry Was Heard) is the thick layer of special dirt that blankets the stage at Sadlers Wells – a clean soil, chemical-free, that cushions the dancers as they roll around in it. The dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal spent most of Thursday evening flailing around in it, diving into it, tossing each other into it. That is, when they weren’t racing through the auditorium, stripping between intervals of piano playing, or attempting to scale the proscenium wall. ..."
On the Mountain a Cry Was Barely Heard: Pina Bausch at Sadlers Wells
NY Times
The Emotion Extinguisher
facebook: Das StÜck mit dem Schiff 1994 (Video)
YouTube: Das Stück mit dem Schiff

Danzón (1995)
"There is a thorny problem that exists in the dance world. Should a company that is identified with one creator, continue after that creator’s death? Take, for example, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. For 36 years, the daring and innovative German choreographer had redefined the meaning of dance theatre with her singular collision of movement, drama, text and music. ... The company performed Danzón, a work created in 1995. It’s an interesting choice for this post Bausch era, precisely because while it is one of the choreographer’s most dancey pieces, it also deals with matters of life and death. When Danzón toured the United States in 1999, Bausch even performed a short solo, so her ghost literally inhabits the work."
Danzón brings Bausch's dance back to life after her death
Critic's Notebook: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch is in moment
YouTube: Danzón, 1995, with Dominique Mercy
facebook: Danzón

Der Fensterputzer (The Window Washer) (1997)
"The curtain opens on a set consisting of a twenty-foot-high hill of red silk flowers in one corner, an image that alludes to Hong Kong region's geography, as well as to the impending onslaught of Bauschian imagery. It is morning. A young girl greets us, repeating 'Hello, good morning' with a saccharine smile, while others go through the mundane actions of shaving, dressing, and fixing their hair with a synchronization and smoothness that elevates the actions to dance. One desperate soul attempts to please her guests--the audience--by offering coffee, food, or soft drinks. A lone window washer attemps a ludicrous task: behind a reflective sheet of plastic, suspended in a seat with squeegee and pail, he trys to keep the glass surfaces of Hong Kong's glimmering neon cityscape free of grime and glare. His lonely toil, contrasted with his later appearances as a well-dressed, pipe-smoking, poodle-toting gentleman, reminds us of the gap between rich and poor, worker and dandy. - Kelly Hargraves"
Stanford
Sanjoy Roy
WhatsOnStage
British Theatre Guide
Peter Lindbergh: DER FENSTERPUTZER

Masurca Fogo (1998)
"... In 'Masurca Fogo' ('Fiery Mazurka'), which had its United States premiere on Tuesday night, Ms. Bausch turns, as in recent years, to a geographic springboard (Portugal) for still another chapter in her epic examination of life lived by all. By Bausch standards, the piece looks deceptively entertaining, with a quotient of bathroom humor. It has none of the simulated violence and confessional cruelty that shocked so many when her Tanztheater Wuppertal troupe made its New York debut in 1984. Yet 'Masurca Fogo,' to be performed through Sunday afternoon, is not fluff. Its unstated theme has to do with love, lust and desire, and much of it has a northern European view of Latin sensuality."
NYT: Sun, Surf and Sexuality In a Pina Bausch Romp
Guardian[PDF] Talk to Her! Look at her! Pina Bausch in Pedro Almodóvar’s Hable con ella
Pina Bausch & the Tanztheater Wuppertal
Masurca Fogo - Sadler's Wells
Telegraph: A place where life happens
frieze: Body Language
YouTube: Masurca Fogo - Mazurca Fogo en Teatro a Mil, Santiago, 2007

Wiesenland (2000)

"... Alongside the steady flow of water, there is also a downpour of imagery, particularly in the opening part, where the multi-layering of episodes is particularly intense. Long sequences are roughly interrupted and different strands of activity are often super-imposed so that two or more are developing simultaneously. This layering is not uncommon in Bausch’s repertoire but it seems to be more overt and more frequent in Wiesenland. The work is between 30 and 50 minutes shorter than all but one of the other nine World City pieces and yet it seems that it might contain as much action, given this overlay of scenes. It is hardly unusual for the episodes in any Bausch work to be described as sexy and funny, but in Wiesenland the balance seem to be sexier and funnier, perhaps because the sinister and melancholic themes are not so prevalent. ..."
London Dance
Laurent Paillier - Dance photographer
PINA BAUSCH: LOCK, STOCK AND BARREL
Sadlers Wells: Wiesenland
facebook: Diaporama Wiesenland

For the Children of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (2002)
"In Pina Bausch's 'For the Children of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow' at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a dancer parts her hair with the stiletto heel of her shoe. In Ms. Bausch's world, this is par for the course. But that world is also ours, re-examined and recreated in strange contexts by a fierce choreographic sensibility and a ferocious imagination. ... 'For the Children' will strike some as mellow Bausch or Bausch gone soft. It has none of the violence that sometimes offends so many, and its few little cruelties, if any, are related to the games children play. The wit and depth are still there with a major dose of tenderness. ..."
NY Times
Flight of the scorched squirrel
Ballet Dance
The Pina Bausch Smorgasbord: Brooklyn’s Favorite Take-Away
YouTube: Für die Kinder von gestern, Fur die Kinder (Splitter) Venedig 2005 15:48

Nefés (2003)
"Pina Bausch fell in love with Turkey four years ago, and out of that love has come 'Nefés,' which her Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch performed on Saturday night as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. It is a dark piece, though Ms. Bausch’s sly humor and audacious visual imagination are in full play in this nearly three-hour modern-dance work. The fabled ancient city of Istanbul, gaudy and hectic, may have been the piece’s inspiration, but for all its humor, 'Nefés' is imbued with a meditative sadness. (Its title is the Turkish word for 'breath.') 'Nefés' sprawls out in a series of solos, duets and group processionals. The piece opens with a direct reference to Turkish culture, in a scene-setting tableau in which a man wrapped in a white bath towel comically cries: 'He is me! That’s me in the hamam!' over a succession of prone bodies."
NY Times
Review: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch - Nefés - Sadler's Wells
the arts desk
Istanbul in Paris: "Nefés" by Pina Bausch
Sadlers Wells: Nefés (Video)

Ten Chi (2004)
"... A giant whale tail sticks up in the middle of the stage, with hump and dorsal fin at the back. The first half of the work contains a lot of swimming actions, as if the stage were a sea, but the overriding sense is of falling asleep: Dominique Mercy snores softly at the front row, as if encouraging them to drift off; Helena Pikon turns a man into a big bear and snuggles down on to his back; a goodnight kiss leads to a lullaby chorus of kissy noises as the cast search for imaginary songbirds. Hushed music and a slow, continuous fall of white petals impart a dreamlike quality to the sharper second half."
Guardian
NYT: An Olympian Twirl Around the Globe
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch – Ten Chi – London
Ten Chi, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Barbican Theatre
Renate Stendhal
DailyMotion: Ten Chi
YouTube: JAPON CREATION TEN CHI

Vollmond (Full Moon) (2006)

"It’s been over a week since I saw Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch perform Vollmond (Full Moon) at Brooklyn Academy of Music, yet many of the images from the piece – and the endless downpour of water – still linger in my memory. ... But the twelve dancers were utterly mesmerizing as they frolicked, climbed, kissed, yearned, tumbled, and flung themselves through a nonstop array of dream-like vignettes set against a rainstorm. A large boulder and a dip in the stage to create a flowing river transported the audience to a separate, mystical setting far from earth. At full moon, these fierce spirits let themselves go."
Dancing Perfectly Free
Interview Working with Pina Bausch
Guardian: Tanztheater Wuppertal – review
YouTube: Vollmond (Full Moon) - -parte 01, parte 02, parte 03. Dominique Mercy solo 2007

Rough Cut (2007)
"... The Berliner Festspiele always brings the most stunning and creative shows to Berlin. Tonight, was no exception. All the energy that emanated from this dancing performance flooded the audience, giving them no other option than hanging on and enjoying the ride. The female dancers, in colourful ball-gown style dresses, run, jump and somehow float around the huge stage. The male dancers, many times carrying, throwing and spinning these beautiful creatures, seem infatigable. This passionate combination of woman and man on stage, interlacing their bodies is very liberating. However, I was sometimes melancholic when the facial expressions and body movements were full of sad emotion. The music also emphasised this feeling."
My Journeys
Dance Photos
Reportage : ROUGH CUT de Pina Bausch
Choreographer Pina Bausch Stages 'Rough Cut' Portraying Korean Culture
[PDF] Rough Cut: Phenomenological Reflections on Pina Bausch’s Choreography

Bamboo Blues (2007)
"Pina Bausch’s 'Bamboo Blues' (currently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) is, like most or all of her work, an incoherent dreamscape. Sometimes strikingly picturesque, always fluid in its comings and goings, it switches between episodes of sensual impulsiveness; coy, catwalklike audience-awareness; rushing scenes of harrowing need or anxiety; and diverse aspects of melancholia. Even this much analysis is risky: Ms. Bausch, who has been a leading figure in world theater (not just dance) since the 1970s and is the director and choreographer of the Tanztheater Wuppertal in Germany, is the most deliberately vague of artists."
NYT: Glimpses of India, Eruptions of Chaos, Flashes of Choreography
Brooklyn Rail: Pina Bausch Returns to BAM with Bamboo Blues
Telegraph - Pina Bausch: A vision of life’s humour and pain
ballet dance
YouTube: Bamboo Blues@Spoleto52 Festival dei 2Mondi
facebook: Bamboo Blues

“…como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…” (2009)
"The moment the curtain rises on Pina Bausch’s masterpiece, '…como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si…' at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, we see a woman on all fours; a primal position that feels both demeaning and funny, all at once. By beginning the evening with this pose Bausch conveys that this work isn’t about the ethereal women of Marius Petipa or the idealized women of Balanchine. Instead, Bausch is interested in what it means to be a contemporary woman—and there is nothing otherworldly about it. Similar to Marcel Duchamp’s scandalous work 'Fountain' (1917), a porcelain urinal turned upside-down and placed in a museum, Bausch has her dancers reenact everyday female rituals, turns them on their heads and sets them on a stage: a woman applies makeup while a man pours a bottle of water on her head, and a woman sitting at a restaurant eats her meal beneath the table."
The Dance Critic
NYC Dance Stuff
NYT: The Swan Song of Pina Bausch
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch
Review: The Last Testament Of Pina Bausch
YouTube: "...como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si ...", creación de Pina Bausch

Pina Bausch Sourcebook | Etc.

The Pina Bausch Sourcebook - The Making of Tanztheater
"Climenhaga's book...is not yet another omnibus volume, collecting essays from a symposium. It is a complex and excellent edited sourcebook that ties together traces of written memories which have been slumbering in archived magazines or newspapers - waiting to be woken up from a 30-year sleep. Ultimately, The Pina Bausch Sourcebook - The Making of Tanztheater is a source in itself and can be marked as a 'Survey of Remembering Tanztheater'. As a glance at ways of 'Remembering Dance', this book is an indispensable contribution to the (still to be broadened out) research literature on dance for every scholar and student working in the field of dance history and theory. It focuses on and highlights the roots, aesthetics and methods of the German Tanztheater as well as its followers from the 1960s until today. It is a also a source for the reader who seeks to deeply research, ask further questions and continue her or his own path of reflecting on the Wuppertaler Tanztheater and the dance as art form in general. - Theaterforschung"
amazon: The Pina Bausch Sourcebook - The Making of Tanztheater
Google: The Pina Bausch Sourcebook - The Making of Tanztheater

Kyoto Laureate Symposium 2007 - Pina Bausch
"The Inamori Foundation’s 23rd Annual Kyoto Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Arts and Philosophy was presented to Pina Bausch in 2007. Pina Bausch is an influential modern dance choreographer whose style blends elements of theater and dance into mesemrizing meditations that touch both dancers and audiences deeply. ... Bausch, known as 'the uncrowned empress of modern dance' (Newsweek), constructs dances by using repetition as a counterbalance for meaning. Simple gestures repeated become a movement, the movement becomes a phrase, and then a dance. The dance progresses by starting a phrase as a solo, then adding dancers until the entire company, sometimes more than 20 dancers, joins together."
USD: Kyoto Laureate Symposium
YouTube: Pina Bausch USD Kyoto Prize Presentation


Etc.



Meeting Pina Bausch
"This week the world-renowned Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch arrives in London - for the first time, without its towering creator. Last summer the German choreographer died at the age of 68. The company intends to continue, despite the dodgy track record for troupes formed around one singular giant vision to survive long without that magnet at the core. Bausch (1940-2009) was shy in person and had no need to publicise her work, but at Christmas 2001 I met her in her base in Wuppertal, and she looked back in detail over the surprising sources in her life for her innovative style of dance-theatre. Small, grey, as unobtrusive as a wren, she seemed deceptively gentle and thin-skinned for someone whose theatre is legendarily acerbic, fantastical, sexually assertive and worldly in its wit."
theartsdesk Q&A

Somebody Nailer My Dress To the Wall. A Glimpse Into The Work of Pina Bausch By Randolyn Zinn
"... As an example of her innovations, take the astonishing first moment of Palermo, Palermo as witnessed by some of us at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in September of 1991. Spanning the width of the Harvey Theater’s stage, an imposing 30-foot high gray wall of concrete blocks faced us, silent and still, as we waited in the darkened house for the piece to begin. We expected an entrance, an overture, something…and we thought our eyes were playing tricks on us when it seemed that the solid wall appeared to be tipping forward from the top. All of a sudden, in arguably one of the most astonishing opening cues in the history of theatre, the enormous wall smashed to the floor, whereupon the performers entered to dance through the rubble."
3QuarksDaily

Step-by-step guide to dance: Pina Bausch/Tanztheater Wuppertal
"... To the disgust of traditionalists, Bausch completely revamped the Wuppertal into a vehicle for her own searing style of Tanztheater. Rules of style and presentation were bulldozed by her imperatives of emotional and psychological expression. Despite the hostile reactions, however, she began to attract an international cult following and the small town of Wuppertal became a mecca for the world of dance (and beyond: her devotees included several actors, directors, artists and film-makers). From the mid-80s onwards, many of the company's new works were made through residencies in international cities, including Rome, Lisbon, São Paulo, LA, Istanbul and Tokyo. ..."
Guardian (Video)

Pina Bausch Remembered
"The world-renowned dancer and hugely influential choreographer Pina Bausch died on 30 June at the age of 68 (See News, 30 Jun 2009). She had, reportedly, been diagnosed with cancer, just five days earlier. Her disappearance from the world of dance seems grievously sudden, for she had never stopped working. Retaining her status as a leading light in her field, she made a personal appearance in London just last year, when Sadler's Wells invited her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, to present her celebrated seminal works Café Müller and The Rite of Spring as a double bill."
Pina Bausch Remembered

Pina Bausch (1940-2009) | Costumes

"Philippina 'Pina' Bausch (27 July 1940 – 30 June 2009) was a German performer of modern dance, choreographer, dance teacher and ballet director. With her unique style, a blend of movement, sound, and prominent stage sets, and with her elaborate collaboration with performers during the development of a piece (a style now known as Tanztheater), she became a leading influence in the field of modern dance from the 1970s on. She created the company Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch which performs internationally. ... Her best-known dance-theatre works include the melancholic Café Müller (1978), in which dancers stumble around the stage crashing into tables and chairs. Bausch had most of the dancers perform this piece with their eyes closed. The thrilling Frühlingsopfer (The Rite of Spring) (1975) required the stage to be completely covered with soil. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times
A Stage for Social Ego to Battle Anguished Id - NYT
Pina Bausch - NYT
Guardian: Dancing in the dark - John O'Mahony
Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts
NPR: Modern Dance Master Pina Bausch's Latest Work (Video)
Pina Bausch: A Worldly Choreographer - NYT

"What Moves Me" - Pina Bausch
"... The war experiences are unforgettable. Solingen suffered a tremendous amount of destruction. When the air raid sirens went off, we had to go into the small shelter in our garden. Once a bomb fell on part of the house as well. However, we all remained unharmed. For a time, my parents sent me to my aunt's in Wuppertal because there was a larger shelter there. She thought I would be safer there. I had a small black rucksack with white polka dots, with a doll peering out of it. It was always there packed ready so that I could take it with me when the air raid siren sounded. I remember too our courtyard behind the house. There was a water pump there, the only one in our area. People were always lining up there to fetch water. ..."
[PDF] "What Moves Me" (English version) - Pina Bausch
Photo Caption - Page 17 at 22.

Tanztheater Wuppertal - Pina Bausch
"It began with controversy; in 1973 Pina Bausch was appointed director of dance for the Wuppertal theatres and the form she developed in those early years, a mixture of dance and theatre, was wholly unfamiliar. In her performances the players did not merely dance; they spoke, sang - and sometimes they cried or laughed too. But this strange new work succeeded in establishing itself. In Wuppertal the seeds were sown for a revolution which was to emancipate and redefine dance throughout the world. ... Hers is a world theatre which does not seek to teach, does not claim to know better, instead generating experiences: exhilarating or sorrowful, gentle or confrontational - often comic or absurd too. It creates driven, moving images of inner landscapes, exploring the precise state of human feelings while never giving up hope that the longing for love can one day be met. Alongside hope, a close engagement with reality is another key to the work; the pieces consistently relate to things every member of the audience knows; has experienced personally and physically. ..."

Pina Bausch Foundation
"The task of the Pina Bausch Foundation is to preserve the artistic legacy of the great dancer and choreographer; to keep it alive and carry it on into the future. One of the fundamental tasks of the foundation is to assort the very complex and exceptionally comprehensive material from Pina Bausch’s artistic legacy in an archive and make much of it available to the public. In addition, the foundation follows the traces in order to collect the knowledge and experience of Pina Bausch’s companions, dancers, and staff. The objective of this work is to keep Pina Bausch’s art alive by making it perceptible for future generations – for experts and amateurs, for the curious and newcomers, people of all ages and especially for a young generation of dancers. In letting the pieces come true on stage again and again in the future. And in having a long-term home for the Pina Bausch Foundation and the Pina Bausch Archive; a place for people to meet and a creative universe, like a lushly verdant garden. A centre from which Pina Bausch’s work radiates into the world."

Grasses, Weeds and Flowers for Pina Bausch - Bill Davis, Archive



Pina Bausch Costumes


"Visionary choreographer Pina Bausch never followed a prescribed method when conceiving her unique productions. Guided instead by her finely honed intuition, Bausch would let the works develop in an organic, visceral manner and her trusted company of dancers and collaborators at the Tanztheater Wuppertal would fall into step as her creative vision unfolded. For costume designer Marion Cito – who has been in the role since 1980 – this meant designing costumes 'speculatively', relying on a certain amount of guesswork, in terms of the direction she felt each piece might take, in order that her workshop kept pace."
In Pictures
Tanztheater Wuppertal: Marion Cito
Tanztheater Wuppertal: Rolf Borzik
Guardian: Hurts so good
NYT: Person and Performer, and No Space Between
YouTube: Orpheus and Eurydice (Costumes & lights : Rolf Borzik), Bamboo Blues (Costume Design : Marion Cito)

Choreographer Pina Bausch
"Pina Bausch is regarded one of the most influential artists on the European dance scene. Two years ago, Bausch and her Tanztheater Wuppertal visited Beijing with a show at the Tianqiao Theater featuring 'Cafe Muller', one of her signature works. Over the years, Pina Bausch has developed her own dance theater. It's become union of genuine dance and theatrical methods of stage performance. It creates a new dance form that distinguishes itself through an intended reference to reality."
Dance Tech (Video)

Pina Bausch: Video

One Day Pina Asked... - Chantal Akerman (1983)

Die Klage der Kaiserin (1990) aka The Complaint of an Empress
"This first film by choreographer Pina Bausch reflects her method of working as developed with the Wuppertal Theatre of Dance during the 1973/74 season. The film does not tell a story, but is made up of various scenes put together as a collage with scenes set in different locations, such as the woods and fields around Wuppertal, the city centre, the suspension railway, a carpet shop, a greenhouse and the rehearsal room. The futility of human activity and the search for love make up the film's central theme set against the strains of a Silician funeral march. Filmed on location in Wuppertal, Germany, between October 1987 and April 1989. ..."
Die Klage der Kaiserin (1990) aka The Complaint of an Empress

Pina Bausch - (documentary by Anne Linsel, 2006)
"Directed by Anne Linsel, Germany, 2006; 44m. Before choreographer Pina Bausch and her Tanz-theater Wuppertal were known around the world, her new, unusual and original body language was ill-received. In the early days the audience (and most critics) were irritated and confused. Tumultuous scenes in the audience were not unusual. Pina Bausch speaks about the beginnings of the Tanztheater and the inescapable path she felt she had to follow. She talks about rehearsals, her pieces (more than 30 by now), her co-productionswith other cities and countries and being on tour. Some of her dancers, the set designer Peter Pabst and the costume designer Marion Cito, all of whom have been with Pina Bausch for decades, talk about working with her. Shot in Venice at the Teatro Fenice, in Lisbon and Brussels, and in Wuppertal with the support of WDR Cologne, and Arte France."
Pina Bausch - (documentary by Anne Linsel, 2006)

One Day Pina Asked... - Chantal Akerman (1983)
"A fortuitous encounter between two icons of film and dance, Chantal Akerman and Pina Bausch, One Day Pina Asked... is Akerman’s singular look at the work of the remarkable choreographer and her Wuppertal Tanztheater during a five-week European tour. More than a conventional documentary, Akerman’s film is a journey through her world, composed of striking images and personal memories transformed. Capturing the company’s rehearsals and assembling performance excerpts from signature works such as Komm Tanz Mit Mir (Come Dance with Me, 1977) and Nelken (Carnations, 1982), the director applies her unique visual skills to bring us close to her enigmatic subject."
Film Society of Lincoln Center
amazon
YouTube: "One Day Pina Asked..." (1983) Clip, Nelken, excerpt: The Man I Love, In Un jour Pina a demandé, komm tanz mit mir

"Coffee with Pina"
"Lee Yanor first met with the choreographer Pina Bausch in Paris in 1993. They have had an ongoing dialogue for 12 years, which resulted in the film 'Coffee with Pina': a 50 minutes documentary on Pina Bausch`s universe. Filmed in Paris in 2002 and in Wuppertal (Germany) in 2005, hometown of Pina Bausch and her company, the film links different elements in order to convey a choreography of state of mind."
Art Action
YouTube: Coffee with Pina - Lee Yanor, 2, 3, 4

Lissabon Wuppertal Lisboa - Pina Bausch
"A making-of of Pina Bausch's ballet piece 'Masurca Fogo' (1998), for the EXPO 98, from the first workshop in Lisbon until the avant premiere in Wuppertal, Pina Bausch's city, all moments dated on screen. The ballet master presides behind her work desk to the creation of steps by different dancers, as varied a mix as the African, Latin American, Fado and jazz music to which they swirl, representing the spirit of that world event. Not by chance, the camera shows prominently a photo-book on the gypsies close to Pina's ashtray."
IMDb
Masurca Fogo
YouTube: Lissabon Wuppertal Lisboa

Dancing Dreams: Teenagers Perform (2010)
"Pina Bausch was a celebrated and innovative choreographer who became one of the leading figures of modern dance in Germany. Bausch said she believed a piece would change when performed by different dancers even with the same choreography, and as if to demonstrate this, several years after staging her 1978 ballet 'Kontaktof' (aka 'Contact Zone') with a cast of senior citizens, she took the casting in the other direction and employed forty youngsters between fourteen and eighteen years of age, mostly amateurs recruited from schools in Wuppertal. ..."
NY Times
amazon
YouTube: Documentary about Pina Bausch, Trailer
YouTube: Dancing Dreams: Teenagers Perform 1:29:16

After Paris Attacks, a Slow Reawakening for City’s Cultural Offerings

"On Wednesday morning, May Zhang, a tourist from Shanghai, was outside the Louvre using a selfie stick to snap photographs with a friend. The courtyard is normally packed with tourists, but they had it mostly to themselves — and to the dozen or more heavily armed police officers pacing in the background. 'We aren’t too worried,' said Ms. Zhang, 36, a sales manager who began her first trip to Paris just days after assailants killed 129 people and wounded hundreds of others. 'I think security is now at a very high level,' she added, not long after the police finished a raid in St.-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, in which at least two people, including a female suicide bomber, died, and eight people were arrested. Museums and cultural institutions were closed last weekend by executive order, and movie theaters shut until Sunday. ..."
NY Times: After Paris Attacks, a Slow Reawakening for City’s Cultural Offerings
Jacobin: Turning Tragedy Into War
Jacobin: France Returns to the State of Exception

The Attic Tapes - John Renbourn (2015)

"The Attic Tapes is a 20-song archival hodgepodge cobbled together from early recordings of the late British guitarist John Renbourn, who died in March. Renbourn sourced the core of the tracklist from a tape labeled '1962' that he discovered in the attic of fellow folk revivalist Mac MacLeod, pairing those few songs with various onstage collaborations from his salad days, before he and his guitar-sparring partner Bert Jansch and their band, Pentangle, helped redefine the scope of modern folk. Renbourn had yet to sign a record deal, so these takes are rough with their age and his youth. ..."
Pitchfork
World Music Network
amazon
YouTube: Anji, Rosslyn, Candyman, I Know My Babe, The Wildest Pig in Captivity, Judy

2011 September: Faro Annie, 2011 April: Cruel Sister (1970) - Pentangle, 2012 November: John Renbourn - Sir John Alot, 2013 May: The Lady and the Unicorn, 2014 February: Bert &; John (1966), 2014 October: The Hermit (1976), 2015 March: John Renbourn: ceaseless explorer of song – appreciation.

"They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)" - Pete Rock & CL Smooth (1991)

Wikipedia - "'They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)' is a song by Pete Rock & CL Smooth, inspired by the death of their close friend Troy Dixon (better known as 'Trouble' T. Roy of Heavy D & the Boyz) in 1990. The song was the lead single off their debut album, Mecca and the Soul Brother, released in 1992, and later became a staple of classic early 1990s hip hop. ... Over a saxophone and bass sample of Tom Scott's cover of 'Today' by Jefferson Airplane, CL Smooth unravels fond memories of his own childhood, being the son of a young teenage mother, her father and four siblings, and the love he feels for other family members in working class Mt. Vernon. The chorus' ad libs are provided by Pete Rock. The 12 second intro is sampled from the 1971 song "When She Made Me Promise" by The Beginning of the End. The b-side of the 12" pressing is 'The Creator', which is taken from the group's 1991 EP, All Souled Out. ..."
Wikipedia
Genius
Spotify
YouTube: They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.), The Creator

Why New York Subway Lines Are Missing Countdown Clocks

"There are people who stand every morning outside the Carroll Street station in Brooklyn staring dead-eyed into the middle distance. They stand still in ones and twos, clearly strangers to one another, mostly quiet, as though they’d stopped on their way to work to take note of some spectacular disaster in the sky. But you look in the general direction they’re all looking and there’s nothing there. They are, as it turns out, waiting for the F train. Carroll Street is one of the rare New York subway stations whose trains are boarded underground but where you can stand outside to see them coming. When you spot the F rolling down the bridge, you have just enough time to run inside to catch it. So people stand there waiting. They wait for as long as it takes, for as long as their patience will allow, because in 2015 there is no app, no screen, not even a scratchy voice over a PA system that can tell them when the train is actually going to arrive. ..."
The Atlantic

Winter on Fire (2015)

"It's blood in the streets in this arresting and immediate documentary portrait of the Maidan protests in Kiev that, in the winter of 2014, forced Viktor Yanukovych, then president of the Ukraine, to flee to Russia. Yanukovych had once before been booted from the presidency — in 2004, the Ukrainian supreme court determined that his recent election had been fraudulent. This time it was months of protests in the capital that sent him packing, but only after his Berkut security forces assaulted the citizenry with stun grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets, ultimately killing 125 people. The uprising of thousands at first targeted Yanukovych for his refusal to follow through on plans to bring Ukraine closer to the European Union, but the crackdown of his troops inspired such outrage that the crowds swelled. ..."
Voice: Bracing Doc ‘Winter on Fire’ Puts You in the Heart of Ukraine’s Maidan Protests
Slant
NY Times - ‘Winter on Fire’: The View From the Trenches of a Political Uprising
YouTube: 'Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom' Comes to Netflix

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Complete Albums 1965-1980

"Many a musical artist has made their bones by singing the blues, but it's not just about singing them, it's about playing them, too. In the 1960s, many a young Caucasian found success by sitting at the knees of his favorite African-American blues artists, and the best of the bunch were never afraid to give credit where credit was due. Take Paul Butterfield, for instance, who - along with his buddy Nick Gravenites - spent a good deal of time making the rounds of Chicago blues clubs, meeting and sometimes even jamming with such greats as Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Otis Rush, and Muddy Waters, all of whom encouraged Mr. Butterfield and his colleague. ..."
Rhino
amazon

2014 January: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (1965), 2015 July: East-West (1966)