High Plane's Drafter

Welcome to the weekend! Let's start it off in grand 2016 fashion, with yet another death of yet another architect of the music of our lifetimes. I sure didn't intend this page to be In Memoriam in perpetuity, but here we are anyhow.

Yesterday we lost the co-founder and essential musical director of a seminal group from my neck of the woods. The classic 1960s "San Francisco Sound," surely one of the most globally influential substrata of Rock music, would not have been what it became without today's honoree.

Yes, today we mourn the loss and celebrate the life and lasting legacy not of a flashily pyrotechnic lead guitar slinger, or an iconic vocalist, or a bedrock drummer or linchpin bassist. Today is about the catalyst that excels at putting the people holding those instruments into motion with something to run with. The person more in charge of the songwriting and the quality control. In order for Grace Slick and Marty Balin to sing about how we should be together, and for their whole generation to hear the message, someone had to first write those words down on a sheet of paper.

By now you have figured out that that someone was Paul Kantner, co-founder and pilot of the Jefferson Airplane and 1st Officer of the Jefferson Starship, who passed away yesterday at 74 from multiple organ failure brought on by a series of heart attacks over these last few years. Strangely, I had been tuned into the director's cut of Woodstock and had watched the whole Airplane segment just the other night. For whatever reason, it caught my attention before bedtime.

 

There's Paul on the left, holding it down even though they had been waiting something like all of August 1969 to go onstage. Watching their set in the film on Wednesday night, I was struck by how integral he is to what's going on, and how he was central to their sound even in a concert setting where the back row of the show was somewhere in the next zip code.

Somehow I could discern that this band was mostly his idea, even though he seems somewhat backgrounded by the ridiculously charismatic frontline of Slick, Balin and Jorma Kaukonen with their twisty, winding vocal harmonies. PK's rhythm guitar definitely helped it all not to dissolve into a puddle of psychedelic goo, anyway.

So this is a Bay Area icon to whom we must bid farewell, a hometown hero out here. To match that iconography I am going to share one of the very bestest Jefferson Airplane things that circulates in archival, unreleased circles, revamped and reinvented by one of that community's top audio wizard-workers.

This was taped at what I believe was intended to be a two-night, Friday/Saturday stand at the old Winterland Ballroom in SF, for which apparently a third show was added on the Sunday to meet demand. The second and third nights were recorded from the mixing desk to reels, but the tapes had issues with the stereo mix and placement, and fluctuations in the stereo field.

Enter noted audio necromancer MOB, who worked on these sets extensively and ended up turning them into something virtually indistinguishable from a legitimate live album. He fiddled with the stereo imaging and moved things around until they settled into their proper places and the music was freed from bondage. In other words, he did a stunning job.

Jefferson Airplane
"A Weekend At Winterland"
Winterland Ballroom
San Francisco, CA
10.25-26.1969
MOB remaster

CD1
01. Somebody to Love
02. Young Girl Sunday Blues
03. Wooden Ships
04. Volunteers
05. Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon
06. Uncle Sam Blues
07. Fat Angel
08. Greasy Heart
09. Martha
10. The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil

CD2
01. Eskimo Blue Day
02. 3/5 of a Mile In 10 Seconds
03. Mau Mau (Amerikon) Jam
04. The Other Side of This Life
05. Good Shepherd
06. Wild Tyme (H)
07. Greasy Heart
08. We Can Be Together
09. Come Back Baby

CD3
01. Martha
02. Plastic Fantastic Lover
03. Drifting
04. It’s No Secret
05. The Other Side of This Life
06. Wooden Ships
07. Eskimo Blue Day
08. You Wear Your Dresses Too Short
09. The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil

Total time: 3:08:50

Grace Slick - vocals, organ, percussion
Marty Balin - vocals, percussion
Paul Kantner - vocals, guitar
Jorma Kaukonen - guitar, vocals
Jack Casady - bass
Spencer Dryden - drums

master soundboard reels, meticulously corrected & remastered by MOB

1.09 GB FLAC/January 2016 archive link

I think that last picture was taken outside the Cole Street Cafe off Haight in SF. It also could be Vesuvio in North Beach, hmmmm. A friend of mine said he saw PK in there just three weeks ago, having a coffee. Either way, you're gonna wanna pull these shows down and start your weekend off remembering Paul Kantner, a true believer and one of the primary architects of the legendary San Francisco Sound, gone from us now but in no danger of slipping from memory anytime soon.--J.

We are all outlaws in the eyes of America
In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge hide and deal
We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young
But we should be together

3.17.1941 - 1.28.2016

Mensch Machine Monday

All right, it's the start of a new week and so far no musical luminaries have passed on! So I get to post a sweet and very beautiful anniversary special on here today, with a birthday twist.

It's appropriate I put this up today, as it's also the 49th birthday of a treasured friend of mine who himself is a current luminary of Electronic Music. His name is Kurt and he is responsible for lots of extraordinary soundshapings dating back to the 1980s, most recently the incredible vintage-synth score for this brilliant and award-winning film. So obviously a very happy birthday to Kurt, whom I know is about as big a fan of the band I am sharing today as anyone currently alive. This post is dedicated to him.

And what a post it is. This one is probably one of the most prized items in the vaults, illustrating as it does a revolution in full progress. This performance dates from around the time that Kraftwerk began to morph from a still-rock-oriented group using electronics into the full-on electro-assault that has them in the Hall Of Fame 40 years later. This is also around the time that their trademark pulsating rhythmic approach really started to take hold. A year later they were wielding the first prototype arpeggiating sequencers and the rest is EDM history.

This show was recorded for German radio back in the day, but no decent tape of it circulated for decades, making it sort of the Holy Grail of these guys. This, until it was rebroadcast in 2014 in Europe and captured direct to digital. The original taper dubbed the 320K stream from the station to an mp2 file, which I split into tracks whilst removing the DJ chatter. I also volume adjusted things a little, as it was a little all over the place in that regard from track to track.

Kraftwerk
Zwischen Pop und Avantgarde
Großer Sendesaal des Hessischen Rundfunk HR1
Frankfurt, Germany
1.25.1974

01 Klingklang
02 Ruckzuck
03 Atem/Tongebirge
04 Tanzmusik
05 Kohoutek/Kometenmelodie I & II

Total time: 49:33

Ralf Hutter - Minimoog synthesizer, Farfisa Professional piano, mixer
Wolfgang Flür - electronic percussion
Florian Schneider-Esleben - Arp Odyssey synthesizer, EMS Synthi AKS, amplified flute, mixer
Klaus Röder - electronic violin & guitar

HR2 rebroadcast from 2014 (320K mp2 stream capture); converted to FLAC, volume adjusted & split into tracks by EN, 2016
(most announcer talking removed)

255 MB FLAC/January 2016 archive link

This concert is made all the more ethereal and special by the presence of violinist/guitarist Klaus Röder, who joined Kraftwerk for a brief period in 1974... it is thought to be the only recording of them with him sitting in. Anyway it's extraordinarily gorgeous music with all the Kraftwerk trademarks: the childlike melodies, the chugging rhythms, the slowly-transforming compositions, etc etc. So pull it down and enjoy a day on this page when I don't have to lament another marvelous muso's premature demise!--J.

Frey Day On My Mind

OK, we are back from lunch and ready to put this up. I mean, it's been what? 48 hours since the last irreplaceable musician or artist or actor left the world? 72? I don't want you to think I'm slacking as this page becomes Memorial Central, the most morbid blog on the web!

I will confess this is not my toppermost music. I only have what I am going to put up today because I lived with someone who was a huge fan and I grabbed it for them when it got upgraded a while back. But I do have it, and it's a fine example of today's honoree, who passed yesterday at 67 after a battle with ulcerative colitis, a condition you do not want. Trust me on that.

But it isn't entirely about what I like. I mean, I like European Progressive Rock... am I the right guy to worry about what someone else likes? Really it's all about who contributed what of what lasting value to our culture. Who sent the most diverse bunch of folks home feeling their best after the show. Who was there to lend vibrational meaning and heft to the arc of our individual and collective lifetimes.

Yesterday we lost one of those people. I wasn't going to go anywhere near these guys -- not just cuz of them but because I try my best to tone down the Caucasian Rock Star Quotient on here when I can -- but I took a poll of friends and it was a near unanimous "Yes, please!" Even my roommate was down, and I thought he only dug hip-hop. So here we are.

Song Power is an appropriate T-shirt for Glenn Frey to be wearing, as he was one of the principal driving forces behind the band that had the most hit singles in the decade of the 1970s. I more liked them around the time of today's share, when they acquired Joe Walsh off the waiver wire for a guitarist to be named later. They actually jam three James Gang tunes in this set, with JW out front.

So Glenn Frey died yesterday, but not -- as stated by his pal and co-conspirator Mr. Henley in his obituary -- before doing what he had set out to do. Which was to be a hit songwriter and for his group, The Eagles, to become the biggest band in the world. Mission very accomplished.

The short list is their non-#1 singles... the hits outnumber the misses. Some of these songs will outlive everyone you know, have known and will ever know, forever. Yes, the music business is as near to Hell on Earth for the creatives as can be, but they struggle through and deliver the goods... sometimes the motherlode if the conditions are right. It helps a lot to have mixing bowls of Peruvian cocaine on hand and a line of gorgeous groupies stretched out to the horizon, though.

No, it's really not my call. The world decides and I report, to an extent. These guys started as Linda Ronstadt's backing band and the rest is all the historical totems of a life well lived, regardless of whether Josh opts for Tequila Sunrise or Desperado or not. A life that will enrich the lives of people the artist will never know, centuries after we who were the witnesses are long gone from here. Somehow, the accomplishments of the CEOs of hedgefunds and petrochemical corporations don't engender the same reaction from me. I can't imagine why that is.

All right, enough polemical putridity from me; let's share some hard-to-find shit. Here comes the prime Eagles piece, that used to circulate from a terribly generated VHS tape until that VHS master miraculously surfaced a few years ago. The Summit in Houston was one of the first venues to have an elaborate direct-to-video closed circuit system, and almost every classic 1970s band's performance from Parliament to Supertramp was recorded on videotape there. The date of this one is endlessly argued over, with some collectors insisting it's June 1977 and the Eagles tour list indicating it was an extra show added during a swing through Texas in November of 1976. Either way, it's one of the first where Joe Walsh replaces Bernie Leadon, and there's obviously plenty of primo Glenn Frey tunes on tap up and down the set.

Eagles
Summit
Houston, TX
11.6.1976

01 Hotel California
02 Lyin' Eyes
03 Wasted Time
04 Take It to the Limit
05 Desperado
06 Midnight Flyer
07 Turn to Stone
08 Already Gone
09 One of These Nights
10 Funk #49
11 Good Day In Hell
12 Rocky Mountain Way
13 Witchy Woman
14 James Dean
15 The Best of My Love
16 Walk Away
17 Tequila Sunrise

Total time: 1:42:54

Glenn Frey - guitar, piano, vocals
Don Henley - drums, guitar, vocals
Joe Walsh - guitar, vocals
Don Felder - guitar, vocals, banjo
Randy Meisner - bass, vocals

NTSC DVD of what looks like a 1st generation VHS master tape, possibly with overdubbed and improved stereo sound, shot by The Summit on closed circuit in the venue

3.30 GB total/January 2016 archive link

I hope you all pull this down -- I just noticed it was likely taped on Glenn Frey's 28th birthday -- and get into it as we sit here awaiting news of the next muso to sail away. When that happens I'll be back to sing the praises and bury the fallen. But like I was saying, they don't really die. When they leave beautiful art for us and subsequent hominids to enjoy, it's almost as if they can check out anytime they like, but they can never leave.--J.

11.6.1948 - 1.18.2016

Planet Earth Is Blue

I can't believe I am sitting here typing this, but type it -- through the burning tears -- I must.

We have lost so many luminaries in the last weeks, I can barely keep up with the carnage and the tributes to the fallen. Today, perhaps, we have hit rock bottom and must say goodbye to possibly the singlemost important artist of our lifetimes. Words completely fail.

I know I come on here every so often and tell you that so and so was or is an indispensible link on the chain. A pillar of utmost creativity in a sea of mundanity called Life. Someone you should pause for a moment to appreciate. Then, there are days like today.

In our lifetimes we have borne witness to the most intense and prolific age of artistic expression in the history of the human species. The advent of advanced recording technology, which saw studios go from two to three to four to six to eight and on up to infinite numbers of recordable tracks in just the blink of a few short years -- plus all the concurrent technological advances in the other disciplines like cinema and painting -- contributes mightily to the idea that we who are here now have more music, film, theater, and Art to choose from than all the people ever to live who came before us, multiplied by each other.

 

With so many choices, it's difficult to stand out and produce something that lasts. Something that speaks to the best of human creativity and vision. Something that will transcend the borders of its time of conception and continue on to influence and enrich subsequent output long after the originator has left the stage. 

Few bring this kind of longevity and intensity of brilliance to the table. Today we mourn maybe the greatest of them all. Someone whose work will be pored over like a Rosetta Stone epochs after everyone we've ever known will have gone. Someone who gave us hints of precisely what is possible, and who changed the world in so many ways the mind almost boggles into a state of paralysis pondering this world in his absence.

He just dropped a new platter on Friday, too. Shot to the top of the iTunes charts in just under 6 minutes, 47 seconds. Part of me wants to believe, against all rationale, that all this is just an unprecedentedly tight promotional trick for his Lazarus track from the new record, and that he will raise from the dead and deliver side one of "Heroes" to an adoring audience by next Friday. If only. If only.

One of my most lasting memories of this man illustrates how there was never a greater champion or advocate for the outsider, for the outcast. When MTV first started and they'd play a Black artist roughly once every six months, he came on live to interview with presenter Mark Goodman, and asked point blank where all the Black videos were. This caused Goodman to go into an explanation so craven in its acquiescence to evil that it's a miracle he didn't walk directly offset and jump from the 50th floor after being taken to the woodshed so eloquently.

There are so many things. Made the world hospitable to the weirdest elements in pop music. First modern pop star to introduce openly gay themes. Blew up Stevie Ray Vaughan to a global audience -- and helped advance the career of Luther Vandross to where he eventually would blow up. Made records and visuals and whole feature films so iconic and unique that it's difficult not to make the argument, bold as it may be, that this is the most significant and transformative single artist of our lifetimes, in any field. There will be innumerable tributes and they will be as deserved as any tributes to anyone, ever.

In the last weeks we have lost amazing musicians across the whole spectrum of genre. Lemmy. Boulez. Paul Bley. But none will leave a hole as large as David Bowie, who died after an 18-month battle with the devil Cancer last night. I know of no other artist who has meant more to so many over the course of my almost 50 years on Earth, and I don't suspect we'll ever see the likes of his ilk again for a long, long time... maybe ever.

David Bowie
Tokyo Dome
Tokyo, Japan
5.16.1990

01 Ode to Joy/Space Oddity    
02 Changes    
03 TVC15    
04 Rebel Rebel    
05 Be My Wife    
06 Ashes to Ashes    
07 Starman    
08 Life On Mars    
09 Blue Jean    
10 Let's Dance    
11 China Girl    
12 Sound and Vision    
13 Ziggy Stardust    
14 Young Americans    
15 Suffragette City    
16 Fame    
17 "Heroes"    
18 Modern Love    
19 The Jean Genie/Gloria    
20 Rock 'N' Roll Suicide

Total time: 1:58:43

David Bowie - vocals, guitar, saxophone
 Adrian Belew - guitars, backing vocals
Erdal Kizilcay - bass guitar, backing vocals
Rick Fox - keyboards, backing vocals
Michael Hodges - drums

unofficial NTSC DVD of a master VHS of a 1990 satellite TV broadcast, bootlegged in 2003 and 2010

3.77 GB total/January 2016 archive link

We are all devastated by the shock of this news, and we'll be spinning DB's many colossal tracks -- as well as those by Sam Therapy and King Dice -- all day and all week in his memory. Please do not hesitate to enjoy this wonderful two-hour DVD from his 1990 Sound & Vision greatest hits tour, alongside guitar molester-in-chief Adrian Belew... it's never made it to a real DVD so there you are. There really isn't much else to say other than there will never, ever be another artist like David Bowie. Please keep his family and friends in your thoughts on this most unfortunate morning full of memories to last a lifetime.--J.

planet Earth is blue

and there's nothing I can do

1.8.1947 - 1.10.2016

Paul Bearer

It is Sunday and time for the second tribute post in as many days.

In addition to the passing of Maestro Pierre Boulez on Tuesday last, we also bid farewell this week to one of the foremost Jazz musicians of the last 60+ years, who passed away at the age of 83 on January 3rd.

Not too many could say they jammed with Charlie Parker and conducted orchestras for Charles Mingus before they were 30 years old. Paul Bley lived so many lifetimes in Music, it's almost impossible to grasp that he is gone.

He played with Sonny Rollins. Instrumental in founding the Jazz Composers' Guild in the 1960s. Then he got his first Moog and serious mayhem broke loose.

When I think of Paul Bley, I think of the music he created with his first wife Carla, and the truly wild LPs he made with the vocalist Annette Peacock in the 1970s. To honor this most eloquent and exploratory of players, I have a rare treat from those heady days in store.

 

At the end of the Sixties, Bley formed a sort of hybrid Jazz-Rock-Avant Garde group called The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show, which made a (mind frying, not of this world) record in 1971 and toured a few times before PB went back to more acoustically-based music.

What we have today is a delicious, seminal and thoroughly uncompromising performance of this group, taped for broadcast on German radio over 45 years ago and pristinely sourced from a 2014 rebroadcast. This is one of the coolest and strangest shows I have by anyone; it is truly like a transmission from an alternate universe in a lot of ways.

The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show
Stadttheater
Bremerhaven, Germany
11.1.1970

01 Miracles
02 Dreams
03 A Loss of Consciousness
04 Blood

Total time: 52:27

Paul Bley - ARP synthesizer, RMI electric piano
Annette Peacock - voice, ARP synthesizer, electric vibraphone
Steve Haas - drums
Michael Smith - keyboard bass

sourced from a 2014 Nordwestradio rebroadcast

360 MB FLAC/January 2016 archive link

It's sad that people get old and die, and this week -- and really since after Xmas when Lemmy died -- has done little to fail to remind us. But you have to realize that these giants like Boulez and Paul Bley and Lemmy (surely this is the only web page in the history of the internet to namedrop Lemmy and Paul Bley in the same sentence... twice) have eternal life in a very real way. Their contributions to our lifetimes and to the lifetimes of those who'll follow in years and decades to come will have folks saying their names and jamming their tunes long after everyone you have ever known is long gone from here. That's living, and you could say that bodies come and go, but a life lived in such a state of aliveness and creativity can never die. That was Boulez. That was Lemmy Kilmister. That was Paul Bley, who recorded so many illustrious and diverse albums in his lifetime that people aren't entirely certain exactly how many he left for us with which to imagine our world. May he rest in eternal peace, always.--J.

 11.10.1932 - 1.3.2016

Avant to Live

Hello and welcome to the first of two weekend posts in honor of two legends who left us this past week.

First on the memorial parade we have likely the premier conductor of orchestras of our lifetimes, and perhaps ever. To say that today's honoree, who passed away Tuesday at 90, spent a lifetime at the outer reaches of Art would be a grandiose understatement.

The name Pierre Boulez is synonymous with the utmost in musical adventurism. Likely the foremost champion of 20th Century Classical music -- from Ives to Stravinsky to Webern -- of our age, if you had a dollar for every Rite of Spring he conducted, you'd be able to purchase the whole Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and have enough left over for a down payment on the Louvre.

I feel lucky to have seen him wield his baton once -- OK, his hands... he rarely used the conventional baton -- in NYC for a performance of Stravinsky's Petrushka way back in the day. It was like seeing a full-on Rock star, like the David Bowie of the Classical world. I wonder if he ever conducted any of those Philip Glass symphonies based on Low and "Heroes," hmmmm.

I was thinking, how many times and for how many great works did this guy step up to the lectern? The list must be endless. He started in the 1940s and up until eye issues and a shoulder injury sidelined him a couple of years ago, he was still doing it at the supreme level he always had. And here you were, basking in the accomplishment of vacuuming the living room and thinking you had skills.

I spent much of the week collating a bunch of the cool stuff with Boulez in charge of the ensemble that got posted in various locations after he left us, and I came up with a pretty nifty six hours of unreleased music of all varieties, ranging from solo piano serialistic voyages originating in the Forties to a few thoroughly awesome jams by our old pal, the aforementioned Mr. Igor Stravinsky. 

Most of it is from 21st Century rebroadcasts on the epic France Musique radio station, so it's top notch in terms of sound. All the notes below are of the original seeder, so thanks to him... these were all taped by one person in Europe over the last 40 years, mostly after 2003.

Pierre Boulez

unissued broadcasts, 1945-85
 

 1. The Lost Works
1945-1957

CD1
01 Oubli signal lapidé (I - Séquence) pour 12 voix mixtes
02 Trois psalmodies pour piano
03 Notations 7, 4, & 9 pour piano
04 Premier mouvement de sonate     [Sonata n°1, prototype]
05 Sonate n° 2 pour piano [excerpt from movement IV]
06 Symphonie mécanique, pour bande magnétique

Total time: 44:00

Track 01: Köln, Germany  10.3.1952
Ensemble vocal de Marcel Couraud
[Claudie Lorena (soprano), Antoinette Laby (soprano), Jacqueline Henry (soprano), Alice Boyer (alto), Hélène Brunet (alto), Suzanne Tan (alto), Pierre Maurin (ténor), Jacques Husson (ténor), Roger List (tenor), André Robin (bass), Jacques Hochard (bass), Pierre Hasquenoph (bass)]

Tracks 02-03: Paris, France  2.12.1945
Yvette Grimaud (piano)

Track 04: Paris, France  6.10.1947 
Yvette Grimaud (piano)

Track 05: Paris, France  c.1952
Yvonne Loriod (piano)

Track 06: work for magnetic tap; soundtrack for Jean Mitry's film, 1955

CD2
01 L'Orestie [excerpt from I - Agamemnon)

Total time: 42:13

Track 01: Bordeaux, France  5.26.1955
music directed by Pierre Boulez
ensemble Compagnie Renaud-Barrault
cast:
Jean-Louis Barrault: Oreste
Marie Bell: Clytemnestre
Nathalie Nerval: Electre
William Sabatier: Egisthe
Marcel Tristani: Pilade

digital captures of analog France Musique FM broadcasts, March 2015   

CD3
01-03 Le crépuscule de Yang Koueï Fei

Total time: 58:50

Tracks 01-03: Paris, France  7.1.1957
radio play by Louise Fauré
music directed by Pierre Boulez
Ginette Guillaumat (soprano)
cast:
Monique Bélinand: Yang Koueï Fei
Jean Yonnel: Emperor Ming Huang
Renaud Marie: Kao Li Sheu
Roger Blin: The Poet
Roger Carles: Dean of the Monks
Jean Martinelli: Chen Suan Li
Georges Lecomte - text
Alain Trutat - realisation

master cassette of an analog France Culture FM broadcast from June 2003

2. BBC Symphony Orchestra
unknown venue
probably London, UK
1967

01 Le Soleil des Eaux

Total time: 7:53

The BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez

captured from a recent analog France Musique FM rebroadcast

3. Ensemble Instrumental du Domaine Musical
Michel Tabachnik
Simone Rist
Ruth Bezinian
unknown venue
Paris, France
10.19.1970

01 Improvisation I sur Mallarmé  (5:05)
02 Improvisation II sur Mallarmé (9:17)
03 Eclat (7:40)
04 Le Marteau sans maître  (31:26)

Total time: 53:27

works of Pierre Boulez
performed by Ensemble Instrumental du Domaine Musical, conducted by Michel Tabachnik
Simone Rist - soprano
Ruth Bezinian - alto

compiled from various analog France Musique FM rebroadcasts, 2007-15

4. Three BBC Recordings
mid/late 1970s
venue unknown
possibly London, UK

01 ...explosante/fixe...
This is perhaps the most interesting of these recordings, as it represents a state of this long gestating/developing work that I don't believe I have ever seen recorded. This is pre-Ircam, and was using a device to achieve the electronic manipulations--mostly echo and panning effects--called a Haller-phone. I was present at rehearsals for this series of performances, and I can tell you that it was a very unreliable machine. Still, as a transitional stage in this work's development, of some interest to Boulez completists out there.

02 cummings ist der Dichter
Also dating from around this period, this is not the actual first performance, but close to it. So this is the "first" version, and corresponds to the first published score. I do remember that the chorus was the Scola Cantorum Stuttgart, conducted (in addition to Boulez conducting the orchestra, which how he did it then) by Clytus Gottwald.

03 Figures/Doubles/Prismes
Probably very close in time to the commercial recording, and much like it. But it does have the live quality of this work, which is very challenging to play, and not without little mishaps here and there that only add to the excitement.

Total time: 1:02:15

master reel recordings from France Musique FM radio in the 1970s

5. Orchestre National de France
Choeur de Radio France
Phyllis Bryn-Julson
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
Paris, France
10.29.1981
 

01 Le Chant du Rossignol (1917)
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

02 Le Soleil des eaux (1948-65)*
Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)

03 Pélleas und Melisande, op.5 (1902-03)
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951)

04 outro applause

Total time: 1:13:41

Orchestre National de France, Choeur de Radio France, conducted by Pierre Boulez
Phyllis Bryn-Julson - soprano*

digital capture of a memorial analog France Musique FM rebroacast, 1.6.2016

6. Ensemble InterContemporain
La Grange de Meslay Festival
Parçay-Meslay, France
6.29.1985

01 Movements for Piano and Orchestra (Igor Stravinsky) [1959]
Sviatoslav Richter (piano)

Total time: 10:39

digital capture of an analog France Musique FM broadcast

all segments zipped together

1.82 GB FLAC/January 2016 archive link

I'll be back in 24 hours with another memorial to another heroic person with the initials P.B., but don't hesitate to pull this puppy down and spend your Saturday and beyond sampling its sumptuous variety of soprano songbirds and 12-tone serialism. And obviously there will never be another Pierre Boulez, who did more than maybe any figure in history to promote the vast array of incredible 20th Century composers we take for granted as integral parts of the pantheon today.--J.

3.26.1925 - 1.5.2016