#aizuri

[internationalemeteorologie]

Utagawa Kunisada 

Ogiya uchi Hanaogi, Tamaya uchi Hanamurasaki, Matsubaya uchi Yosoi (The courtesans Hanaogi from the Ogiya house, Hanamurasaki from the Tamaya house and Yosoi from the Matsubaya house). ca. 1830

[lionofchaeronea]

White Falcon in a Pine Tree, Sawa Sekkyō, ca. 1800

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #MonochromeMonday, here are two aizuri-e* prints by Utagawa Hiroshige I (Japanese, 1797–1858) from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston collection: 1. Bats and Branch 2. Cicada on a Tree Trunk Woodblock prints: blue ink on paper, vertical chûban size

*Aizuri-e (Japanese: 藍摺絵 "blue printed picture") usually refers to Japanese woodblock prints printed entirely or predominantly in blue....[Its] development was associated with the import of the pigment Prussian blue from Europe in the 1820s." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aizuri-e

[kadampalife]

Seven Limbs ~ how a Brooklyn-based composer is using art as an offering

By Clare Morin There are moments in our meditation practice where we get a glimpse of our mind’s potential. Our otherwise incessant mental chatter ceases for a while and we meet our capacity for radiant, soaring peace. We meet our Buddha nature. There is a moment in Brooklyn-based composer Douglas J. Cuomo’s recent album and performance project, Seven Limbs, that captures this moment of radiant…

[hannadeutscher]

Aizuri-e and Aigami

[a-bit-of-japanology]

Water Fall - Yamada Kaido (c. 1900 - 1920)

Waterfall in a rocky mountain shrouded in the mist. Aizuri-e.

[treadingwater9]

Poster for Blue Eye Samurai, based off of a work by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (I couldn't find the original image, which makes me a bit upset since I would like to compare and contrast).

I attempted to work in the Aizuri-e technique used in ukiyo-e prints, since the primarily blue color scheme seemed to fit with the overall "blue" theme of the show.

Drawn and edited in Photoshop.

[milesbentleyresume]

Music

2023

Freedom First – A LIVE ALBUM RECORDING & BENEFIT CONCERT FOR KEITH LAMAR - live stream, FOH, monitor, recording engineer & administrative - September 10

Jack DeJohnette’s Tribute to Miles Davis & More (Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman Santana, Don Byron, George Colligan, Living Colour (Will Calhoun, Corey Glover, Vernon Reid, Doug Wimbish) Matthew Garrison, Wallace Roney Jr., Luisito Quintero) - live stream engineer & administrative - August 8

Doom Dogs (Reeves Gabrels (The Cure), Jonathan Kane, and Jair-Rohm Parker Wells) - recording, live stream, FOH, monitor engineer & administrative - July 22 

2022

Jack DeJohnette with Jon Batiste, Matthew Garrison & Roy Wood Jr. - recording and live stream engineer & administrative - December 15

Jack DeJohnette with Dave Holland & Jason Moran - recording and live stream engineer & administrative - October 29

BAM Celebrates Jack DeJohnette’s 80th Birthday and ShapeShifter Plus - administrative - October 8

Jack DeJohnette & Savion Glover - recording and live stream engineer & administrative - September 17

2021

February 4 - Douglas J. Cuomo Seven Limbs featuring Nels Cline (Wilco) & the Grammy-nominated Aizuri Quartet live stream mixing and recording engineer

Ron Carter and Houston Person Valentine’s Day Duo Concert - recording engineer - January 29

2020

Terri Lyne featuring Lisa Fischer and Louis Cato - live stream and recording engineer - December 22

Arturo O'Farrill Quartet - live stream and recording engineer - December 21

THEATER

[nonesuchrecords]

Kronos Quartet has announced its eighth-annual Kronos Festival, to take place at SFJAZZ Center, June 22–24, 2023. This year's festival celebrates works created for Kronos Fifty for the Future, a commissioning, performance, education, and legacy project. Featuring pieces by Rhiannon Giddens, Philip Glass, Zakir Hussain, Angélique Kidjo, Terry Riley, Wu Man, and more, the festival is hosted by Kronos in multiple performances over three days; the group is joined by Aizuri Quartet, Attacca Quartet, and Friction Quartet plus special guests Rafiq Bhatia (guitar), Soo Yeon Lyuh (haegeum), sound artist and instrument-maker Victoria Shen, and student ensembles from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Details/tickets here.

[the-haiku-bot]

Moonlit Landscape, from

an untitled series of

blue (aizuri) prints

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

月下山水Katsushika Hokusai

Moonlit Landscape, from an untitled series of blue (aizuri) prints

Publisher: Moriya Jihei (Kinshindô) (Japanese) Japanese Edo period

about 1831 (Tenpô 2)

[albarrancabrera]

Albarran Cabrera   —–   Instagram

The Mouth of Krishna

Japan, 2018, #782, Pigments, gampi paper and gold leaf.

[fujiwara57]

Uchiwa-e 団扇絵 - peinture sur éventail de

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重 (1797 - 1858).

[lionofchaeronea]

Poet on White Horse Approaching a Bridge (from the series Chinese Poetry, Art, and Music), Totoya Hokkei, between 1830 and 1844

[jgthirlwell]

playlist 04.03.19

John Zorn IAO / Dream Machines / Painted Bird / The Hermetic Organ / There is no Firmament (Tzadik) Ni Pantophobie (Due et Doux) Lee Gamble In A Paraventral Scale (Hyperdub) Andrew WK Youre Not Alone (Sony) Linnuissa Vihreä Talo (True Aether) Wyxz YiY (Mogul Intermissions) Aizuri Quartet Blueprinting (New Amsterdam) Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Music for Meditation and Yoga (TouchThe Plants) Folke Rabe What?? (ImpRec) Oceansize Everyone Into Position (Beggars Banquet) Samuel Sighicelli Etudes pour piano et sampler (La Buissonne) Internazionale Avatar In Life (Posh Isolation) Penelope Trappes Penelope Two (Houndstooth) Invisible Anatomy Dissections (New Amsterdam) Rustin Man Drift Code (Domino)

[sinceileftyoublog]

20 Years of Wilco’s Most Enduring Statement

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The version of Wilco that made Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was vastly different from the band that came both before and after it, and not just in lineup or even aesthetic. Wilco’s approach to the album, which is now celebrating its 20th anniversary of retail release, was deliberate, yet inventive, yielding what remains their most sonically and lyrically sophisticated work to date. 

If you’re unaware of the record’s context, Sam Jones’ 2002 documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco details the lore and history behind it. Early on in its recording, Wilco replaced drummer Ken Coomer with Glenn Kotche. Jeff Tweedy and the late Jay Bennett were clashing, famously arguing over small elements in the album, like what should constitute the 10-second transition between “Ashes of American Flags” and “Heavy Metal Drummer”. Tweedy was suffering from migraines. And eventually, the band’s record label at the time, Reprise, a division of Warner Music Group, heard the record and thought it would be career killing, subsequently dropping Wilco. Of course, Wilco--eerily originally supposed to release the album, which contained a different set of twin towers on its cover, on 9/11--would stream the album for free on their website a week later and eventually get picked up by another Warner subsidiary, Nonesuch.

This month, in celebration of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s 20th anniversary, Wilco played five nights at New York’s United Palace Theatre and three at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre. Each night’s schedule was purportedly pretty similar: a string quartet introducing the show, a full album play with that quartet and a horn section, followed by an encore of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-era rarities and some older fan favorites. Friday night in Chicago, after the quartet--The Magnificent Strings as opposed to the Aizuri Quartet in NYC--played lines from “Reservations”, “War on War”, “Pot Kettle Black”, and “Poor Places”, Tweedy came from behind the curtain to turn on an old radio. It was an immediate reference to the album’s backstory: the title Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was taken from a series of letters in the phonetic alphabet Tweedy heard on The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations, and a sample of the spoken title is prominently featured in “Poor Places”. (To add to Wilco’s YHF-related woes, The Conet Project’s record label, Irdial-Discs, would sue Wilco for copyright infringement, which reached an out-of-court settlement.) The curtain lifted to reveal upside-down, minimal columns resembling the Marina City towers. The band launched into “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”, all of the studio album’s pristine effects in hand, even the high-pitched note that led into “Kamera”.

Everything, from the effects to the actual acoustic playing of the songs, was on point, faithful to the album. “Kamera”, which has seen bouncier, power-chord heavy arrangements in recent years, was the sly, subdued version from the record. Tweedy’s rolling acoustic guitars and Kotche’s military march drums popped up on “Radio Cure”. That infamous chopped piano and drum machine from “Ashes of American Flags” into “Heavy Metal Drummer” made its way into the performance, as did the stop-start lawnmower guitars of “I’m The Man Who Loves You” and the coda of “Reservations”. And yes, just like on Colbert the other night, during “Poor Places”, Tweedy pumped his fist with every stab of feedback, as the words “yankee hotel foxtrot” repeated.

Let’s talk about the remarkable “Reservations”, one of the only times I’ve ever seen Tweedy on stage not accompanied by an instrument. Of all the lines on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, “I’ve got reservations about so many things / But not about you,” is, to me, the most resonant, applicable when directed to a loving partner or practiced craft, moving as long as we continue to occupy the hell world that surrounds us. In between verses, a guitar-less Tweedy awkwardly stood and swayed, those reservations showing. But as always, he’s as sure as ever about art and music.

It’s this sureness that allows Tweedy the strength to revisit an album that’s a classic but that also is inseparable from a fraught time in Tweedy’s, Wilco’s, and American history. He thanked the crowd for “being that quiet for that long on a Friday night”, The Magnificent Strings, the horn section, and album mixer Jim O’ Rourke by covering a song the band learned from his record collection, Bill Fay’s “Be Not So Fearful”. But hearing Tweedy acknowledge Bennett’s influence on the band so publicly was the olive branch everyone was waiting for, and Wilco truly did it by performing their favorite songs they wrote with him in the band. Summerteeth’s wonderfully epic “Pieholden Suite”--a multitudinous Bennett-influenced tune if there ever was one, with everything from banjo to synthesizers--was a clear precursor to the complex arrangements of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. They played a few deep cuts, “Cars Can’t Escape” and “The Good Part”, (which first surfaced on 2014 rarities compilation Alpha Mike Foxtrot), and More Like the Moon’s cha cha “A Magazine Called Sunset”. In introducing “The Good Part”, Tweedy said, “This is one of the songs we sent Warner Bros., and their response was, “It gets worse every time.” The beloved A Ghost Is Born tune “Hummingbird”, a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot outtake, was one of three “regulars” in the encore, along with rousing Being There jams “Monday” and “Outtasite (Outta Mind)”, the part of the night that was more a celebration than anything.

In September, Wilco will release 7 special reissues of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the most in-depth a Super Deluxe version with a remaster, outtakes and demos, the band’s full interview on Sound Opinions a week after 9/11, and a live concert. I won’t give too much away, but I’ll say this: It’s not going to change your opinion about how great the original album is, and that’s a good thing. While the reissue doesn’t necessarily contain essential alternative versions of the songs, it further illuminates the band’s creative process in ways Jones’ documentary doesn’t. For an album as deep as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, that’s more than you can ask for. When Jeff Tweedy joked, “See you in 20 years!” towards the end of the band’s Friday set, I thought to myself that the idea isn’t as ludicrous as it sounds. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will provoke and inspire, and while its history will stay the same, its story will always grow along with us.

[3garcons]

Aizuri Quartet at Sanctuary for Independent Media Nov 2019 in Troy