Nina Simone - My Baby

A classic...

Brubeck Jazz by others

Here's some beautiful clips, renditions rather than originals.



The bit at 1:20 is just amazing, how he modulates from one key to another!

The bit at 1:50 is hideous!

The kid below is just amazing:



I had to dig this classic one out of youtube!!!
Of course it's by the man himself, Dave Brubeck, but I thought u might appreciate the classical look of the "magic" carpet!

Take Five

So, I was riding in the hood, minding my business, looking for a sand-dune to attack with my new bike, and I come across a boat parked in between two villas. I don't notice it for long and continue riding past in 3rd gear, looking out for any kids that usually play on that street corner.

So, I do my business in the sand, then I come back, a bit sweatier than usual, and I notice the same boat, in the same place, but now I notice the name. It's called "take five" but transliterated (not translated) into Arabic!!!!

I thought I had to take a picture of this in Arabic to show it to my dear friend Louis. So here it is:



What is infinitely more funny is that after taking that picture, I decided to walk around the boat, and I saw something written in English. So I decided to take a snap:



For those of you who have no clue about the subject matter, the boat owner is obviously a Jazz fan, and he's paying homage to the one and only Dave Brubeck and his time-less classic "Take Five"



Enjoy! Thanks Paul Desmond. Shot in 1961.

FYI, back in the early 2000's, I had the honour to meet the great legend himself LIVE at a concert. He kept us waiting for hours and after more than 12 songs, he played Take Five as his last song. It's a brilliant bloody classic!

In case you can't get enough, here is a more recent clip with better sound quality:


Long live Brubeck!

He almost graduated from music school without being able to write music, that's how talented he was!

Arthur Rubinstein - The Aristocrat

Dear Readers,

To follow up on the great theme of classical piano music, I am delighted to bring to you a few snippets of information about the great Pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887 - 1982). Rubinstein was an American of Jewish-Polish descent. Following in the great tradition of piano music, most good composers came from western Europe, while the best pianists came from eastern Europe. Those with Jewish blood are in fact even more talented than others.

Anyway, this post is all about the piano clip at the end. It's so good that the publishers did not want people to share it, so they disabled embedment. However, I kindly ask you to click on the URL link to listen and see this masterpiece.

THE MASTERPIECE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpk_3-RJdN0


It has been told that Arthur Rubinstein was an aristocrat, and he has a velvet touch on the piano. Now, if you're reading this and have no clue about the piano, or you never actually played the piano you might roll your eyes and think this is rubbish, but listen to him and then judge. Rubinstein played many wrong notes, but he didn't care and it didn't matter. How he played the right notes was amazing. He was very gifted technically, but he wasn't as perfect as Pollini for example. Still, he was one of the most eloquent of poets of the ivories.

Here are what a few resources have to say about Rubinstein:

He was a well-known pianist-artist all his life, but not until the middle 1930’s did he become an international headliner. Despite Rubinstein’ s claim that he never settled down until his return to the United States in 1937, the records that he made in the middle 1920’s tell a different story. Such discs as the ones of Liszt’s Tenth Rhapsody, or the Albeniz Navarra, demonstrate a phenomenal virtuosity, gorgeous colorations and the most beautiful of singing lines. To tell the truth, he probably never played better.

What really happened was that, in his young maturity, he suddenly found himself in the right place. The two reigning heroes of the keyboard, Josef Hofmann and Sergei Rachmaninoff, were nearing the end of their careers. The new crop of younger pianists were, by and large, percussionists and not very interesting. (There were exceptions, of course. Benno Moiseiwitsch and Vladimir Horowitz were major pianists by any standards). The public was looking for a new Romantic hero, and Rubinstein met all specifications.

He was Polish, hence romantic and exotic. He had incredible charisma. In the United States he had been preceded by a series of superb recordings - the Tchaikovsky B flat minor Concerto, the Chopin Scherzos and other works by Chopin - that had created a great deal of interest. Suddenly Rubinstein found himself in great demand, and after World War II he became one of the most popular pianists before the public. The other was Vladimir Horowitz; but the moody, unpredictable Horowitz had a habit of taking long sabbaticals, the longest of which (from 1953 to 1965) kept him away from the public for twelve years. Rubinstein never was away.

More at: http://www.arims.org.il/artist.htm

I have to say that Rubinstein is not my favorite of favorite pianists. That title is reserved for someone that I'll reveal later. However, Rubinstein is definitely one of the most entertaining and pleasurable pianists to enjoy music from under their digits.

Again.. please don't forget to listen to this:

THE MASTERPIECE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpk_3-RJdN0

Chopin Waltz - Dinu Lipatti

This is the piece that made me fall in love with Chopin's music. It's also the first piece I decided to learn out of Chopin's 200+ piano works.

Dinu Lipatti is a rare breed amongst pianists. He's really a master at the piano.

Judge for yourselves.

Listen.

Impossible Chopin

This piece is Chopin's notoriously difficult Etude Op 10 n 5 also termed "black keys" since it's all played on the black keys of the piano. Chopin's etudes (or studies) are one of the hardest out there in the piano world. I can play a few of his studies (e.g. Op 10 n 3 and n 12) but haven't managed to play "black keys" yet!!

Anyway this 11 year old makes it look so easy, trust me, it ain't!!

Enjoy!

Extraordinaire instrument de musique

Isn't this just cool?



Fantastic for anyone that loves both engineering and music as much as I do!

MKD Piano Music - A Challenge

In my previous version of this blog, I used to enjoy blogging about my piano improvisations and compositions. I reached my 14th album when life took a turn and I had to abandon my project. The good news is that I am back, and I am trying to find a way to re-publish the music. I am eternally grateful to Secret Dubai for allowing me kind access to her server to upload my music over the years. However, since I am in the UAE at the moment and something happened on the proxy front, it seems that SD's domain is blocked (makes me miss the UK). However this also means that most of my avid UAE-based readers cannot get access to my music.

So the quest is to find a way to upload my mp3 files so that my blog readers can download them. I don't even mind having to pay Etisalat for this, but would rather not because I don't like them. So, if anyone has any ideas then please let yourselves be heard!

Maria Schneider

This is the most beautiful jazzy piece of music ever. By Maria Schneider and her orchestra. The tune is called Choro Dançado.

Every thanks goes to an old buddy for sharing this with us on his blog:

The Journey of Life

Makki

If the last post got people worked up a bit, then this might perhaps work out other bits of your body!

Thanks Mori and DJ for such an excellent find :)



I prefer this song to Eminem's btw.. I wish he used an Arabic beat and jazzed it up to sound like rap/hiphop. Imagine a jazzed up um kulthoom song? :)

UPDATE:



Thanks SoRealT.. fantastic stuff.. i like this second video more.. but do u say the music is of arabic origins as opposed to the eminem song? i really love this video.. very powerful.. and the arabic words in latin script are good..very good. how many arab men do u think agree with what's in this song? arab women?