What in the heck did THAT sound like?

Frank Lloyd Wright might never have anticipated this. But the rotunda of his late masterpiece the Guggenheim Museum -- which opened in 1959, six months after his death -- is an ideal place to perform one of the most mesmerizing and eclectic musical works ever written: "Orbits" for 80 trombones, soprano and organ by the Montreal-born American composer Henry Brant.

Interesting? ...or too...shall we say...brassy?

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Tags: Guggenheim Museum, MakeMusicNY, trombones

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Only in New York City:

Just after 9 p.m. on June 17, the third installment of the High Line Park Renegade Cabaret was held on Patty Heffley's fourth-floor fire escape. There were colored lanterns, and a festive array of undergarments hung from the railings.

Ms. Heffley, 55, a former punk rock photographer, had staged a laundry "installation," as she put it, to bolster the live performance she was hosting. Elizabeth Soychak, a jazz singer and professional organizer who gives her age as "permanently 39," wore a 1950s moss green chiffon dress and waited while Ms. Heffley, in black, introduced her.

"This is in response to 31 years of obscurity," Ms. Heffley announced from the fire escape. "Now, every day there are thousands of people looking in my window. We're not here to celebrate, we're here to exploit. Welcome to the Renegade Cabaret."

Ah, beautiful New York, New York!!

View a slide show and audio of Patty Heffley's cabaret.

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Tags: Chelsea, Elizabeth Soychak, High Line, New York, Patty Heffley

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The demise of the pre-eminent jazz magazine, Jazz Times, has stranded many writers and critics, among them NY Times jazz and music critic, Nate Chinen. After 52 articles for them, Nate has found a new home this month in a cozy new blog entitled, "The Gig." Check it out!

It's from one of his posts that I found out that the band - The Roots - is providing the music for Jimmy Fallon's new Late Night slot.

Jimmy's got a segment called "Freestylin' with The Roots" and it's really good. Check it out:

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Tags: Jimmy Fallon, Late Night, The Roots

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OK, this one, by Ben Ratliff of the NY Times, is for all you crazy Dead Head's out there:

I went to a Phil Lesh concert in New York last fall, on the third night of a 14-night run. I sat next to a man who looked informed: he listened with familiarity and good humor and a touch of impatience, as if he wanted to fast-forward through certain parts.

"Seen any of the other shows?" I asked.

"I've been to every show since 1972," he said. "In the New York area."

His name was Jimmy. By his definition, "every show" meant every concert by the Grateful Dead, the San Francisco rock band, until the death of Jerry Garcia, its guitarist and singer in 1995, and then every subsequent show by Phil Lesh, the band's bassist, who has led various touring bands with a sound much in the spirit of the Dead. We got to talking. I asked when he thought the Dead reached its peak, game to try out a half-formed argument for 1975, or thereabouts.

Thus begins Ratliff's search for the consensus "best Dead show ever."

"Well, I agree with the people who say it was May 8, 1977," he said.

Jimmy was jumping a level on me. There are at least five different levels to how fans talk about the Dead. The basement level concerns the band’s commercially released albums. This is how a lot of interested but inexpert people once talked about the Dead -- myself included -- in the early 1980s. I had a couple of skunky-sounding audience tapes, tinkling out distant brown scurf from Nassau Coliseum, but I was an unconnected kid. I listened to "Live/Dead," "Europe '72," and "Anthem of the Sun" -- all in the racks at Sam Goody.

The next level is periods or eras, the conversation I was prepared for. There was the aggressive, noisy, color-saturated improvising from 1968 to 1970; the gentler and more streamlined songwriting and arranging of '72 and '73; the spooky harmonies of 1975; the further mellowing and mild grooves that lay beyond. Next comes the level of the Dead's best night: Jimmy's level, one based on years of close listening to noncommercial live recordings, from the band's own engineers or radio broadcasts or audience tapers. These began circulating in the early '70s and became commonplace by the mid-1980s, after I had wandered off the trail.

After that comes particular songs within particular performances. (Some will say the "Dark Star' from Veneta, Ore., on Aug. 27, 1972, or the "Dancing in the Street" from Binghamton, N.Y., on May 2, 1970, encapsulates much of what they like about the Grateful Dead.) Beyond that is an area with much thinner air: here involving, say, audience versus soundboard tapes, the mixing biases of different engineers, techniques of customizing early cardioid microphones, and onward into the darkness of obsession.

In any case, once you get to Level 3, you have a sufficiently authoritative understanding of the Dead. Or so I thought.

What level are you? ...it goes on from there...

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Tags: Ben Ratliff, Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, The Dead, The Dead's Best Show

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