Last year, Tony Con­rad–an avant-garde video artist, exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er, musi­cian, com­pos­er, and sound artist–died at the age of 76. In its obit­u­ary, The New York Times wrote:

Mr. Con­rad was relent­less and rig­or­ous in expand­ing the para­me­ters of the fields in which he worked. His ear­ly musi­cal com­po­si­tions, like “Four Vio­lins” (1964), were high-vol­ume sus­tained drones. His first film, “The Flick­er” (1966), cre­at­ed a pul­sat­ing stro­bo­scop­ic effect with alter­nat­ing black and white frames. It was pre­ced­ed by a stern warn­ing that the film could induce epilep­tic seizures in cer­tain spec­ta­tors and that audi­ence mem­bers remained in the the­ater at their own risk.

Anoth­er work that else­where gets spe­cial men­tion is “Music and the Mind of the World,” a piano com­po­si­tion com­pris­ing over 200 hours of record­ed music. Influ­en­tial but lit­tle heard, “Music and the Mind of the World” fea­tures “the sounds of prac­tic­ing, bang­ing on the keys, for­mal exer­cis­es, exper­i­ments with the har­mon­ic sonor­i­ty of the piano itself, and even ‘On Top of Old Smokey’.” Begun in 1976 and com­plet­ed in 1982,“Music and the Mind of the World” is a “total encounter between an impro­vis­ing per­former and the cen­tral instru­ment of West­ern musi­cal cul­ture.”

For the first time, that influ­en­tial piece has now been pub­lished and made avail­able online for free on Youtube (above), or at this ded­i­cat­ed web­site. Set aside a big chunk of time and start stream­ing.

To learn more about the con­cep­tu­al under­pin­nings of this avant-garde cre­ation, read this inter­view with Con­rad. (I’d sug­gest click­ing here and doing a key­word search for “Could you tell me some­thing about your late 70s music, such as Music and the Mind of the World?”).

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

Ital­ian Pianist Ludovi­co Ein­au­di Plays a Grand Piano While Float­ing in the Mid­dle of the Arc­tic Ocean

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Ear­li­er this week we told you about this 326-track, 20-hour playlist of music from the films of Mar­tin Scors­ese. One of the mas­ters of jux­ta­pos­ing song with image, Scors­ese paved the way for anoth­er direc­tor with a fine record col­lec­tion, Quentin Taran­ti­no. And what do you know? There’s a sim­i­lar Spo­ti­fy playlist that you can enjoy fea­tur­ing 100 tracks and run­ning five hours. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.)

Taran­ti­no might be more of a music geek, but he just hasn’t made as many films as Scors­ese. How­ev­er, if you came of cineaste age dur­ing the 1990s, dol­lars to donuts you had a CD of the Pulp Fic­tion sound­track in your col­lec­tion. Just like Taran­ti­no resus­ci­tat­ed John Travolta’s career, he took an obscure single–a cov­er of a Turk­ish-Ara­bic-Egypt­ian melody called “Misir­lou” by a once-pop­u­lar surf guitarist–and made it not just the open­ing track, but the sound of 1980s film­mak­ing being shot and stuffed in a trunk. (And gui­tarist Dick Dale got to have a sec­ond career from it.) The sound­track made surf instru­men­tals pop­u­lar again, Urge Overkill rel­e­vant, Neil Dia­mond cool, and insert­ed a Statler Broth­ers’ song into the col­lec­tions of thou­sands of peo­ple who wouldn’t touch coun­try with a ten foot pole.

Pri­or to this, Reser­voir Dogs used both “Lit­tle Green Bag” by George Bak­er and “Stuck in the Mid­dle with You” by Steal­ers Wheel to great effect, and the sound­track includ­ed the nar­colep­tic DJ pat­ter by come­di­an Steven Wright, but it was just an appe­tiz­er for the full Pulp Fic­tion meal.

After that, there’s still flash­es of bril­liance–Jack­ie Brown is a safe but excel­lent col­lec­tion of most­ly ‘70s soul–but the sound­tracks by them­selves don’t stand up as cul­tur­al objects in the post-CD era. Instead, there’s moments like the 5.6.7.8’s “Woo Hoo” and Tomoy­a­su Hotei’s “Bat­tle with­out Hon­or or Human­i­ty” from Kill Bill, and the goose­bump-induc­ing use of David Bowie’s “Cat Peo­ple” in an oth­er­wise peri­od cen­tric, WWII-set Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds.

In lat­er films, he’s become more of a cura­tor of Ennio Mor­ri­cone works and oth­er com­posers of the films he loves, and less of a pop mag­pie. But then, his films have dark­ened and deep­ened, and his sound­track vinyl collection–which he has col­lect­ed since a kid–just con­tin­ues to grow.
In an inter­view with Bill­board mag­a­zine, he men­tioned how inte­gral his record col­lec­tion is to his film­mak­ing process.

I am always look­ing for some cool song that I could use as a big set piece. I’ll fin­ish work and I’ll go into my record room and I’ll put on some song, and lit­er­al­ly, I can see it on the screen. I can project myself into a movie the­ater and I’m watch­ing the scene onscreen and I’m hear­ing the music and I’m imag­in­ing an audi­ence: either an audi­ence of peo­ple I know who are dig­ging it or an audi­ence of peo­ple I don’t know who are dig­ging it — they’re always dig­ging it. (laughs) And it keeps remind­ing me that I’m mak­ing a movie.

And Taran­ti­no usu­al­ly gets the rights to use what­ev­er he pleas­es because of his fame and the Quentin-bump he gives the artists: “It’s actu­al­ly quite easy to get the rights now, because I’ll use music that some peo­ple haven’t heard that much before,” he says in the same inter­view. “Then after my movie comes out, it seems like every com­mer­cial in the world buys it. They can dou­ble or triple and quadru­ple their income just by the expo­sure the movie gets it.”

Dive into this playlist and let us know any spe­cif­ic gems you find.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Hear a Playlist of the 336 Songs Men­tioned in Bruce Springsteen’s New Mem­oir, Born to Run

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Asked to think of a vir­tu­oso cel­list, many of us imme­di­ate­ly imag­ine Yo-Yo Ma, not just because of his con­sid­er­able skill but also because of the sheer length of his res­i­den­cy in pop­u­lar cul­ture. Though only 61 years old, bare­ly mid­dle-aged by clas­si­cal musi­cian stan­dards, he’s been famous for well over half a cen­tu­ry, start­ing with his entry into the pres­ti­gious child-prodi­gies-who-per­form-for-Amer­i­can-pres­i­dents cir­cuit. Sev­en years after his birth in Paris, Ma’s fam­i­ly relo­cat­ed to New York, by which time he’d already been at the cel­lo for near­ly half his short life. From there, it took him no time at all to com­mand an audi­ence whose mem­bers includ­ed Dwight D. Eisen­how­er and John F. Kennedy.

The event, a ben­e­fit con­cert called “The Amer­i­can Pageant of the Arts,” hap­pened on Novem­ber 29, 1962. Its oth­er guests, a who’s-who of the Cold War cul­tur­al scene, includ­ed Mar­i­an Ander­son, Van Cliburn, Robert Frost, Fredric March, Ben­ny Good­man, and Bob Newhart. As mas­ter of cer­e­monies, Leonard Bern­stein intro­duced the evening’s wee enter­tain­ers.

“Yo-Yo came to our atten­tion through the great mas­ter Pablo Casals, who had recent­ly heard him play the cel­lo. Yo-Yo is, as you may have guessed, Chi­nese, and has lived up to now in France — a high­ly inter­na­tion­al type.” The same could be said of his sis­ter Yeou-Cheng, who accom­pa­nies him on the piano in a per­for­mance of Jean-Bap­tiste Bré­val’s Con­certi­no No. 3 in A Major.

Three years lat­er, the still extreme­ly young but much more famous Ma would write a let­ter to the con­duc­tor:

Dear Mr. Bern­stein,

Do you still remem­ber me? Now I am ten years old. This year I learned with Prof. Leonard Rose three con­cer­tos: Saint-Saëns’, Boc­cherini’s and Lalo’s. Last week my sis­ter and I played in a Christ­mas Con­cert in Juil­liard School. We are invit­ed to give a joint recital in Brear­ley School on Jan­u­ary 19 1966 at 1:45 p.m.

If you have time, I would be glad to play for you.

Yo-Y0 Ma

Not only did Bern­stein remem­ber him, he also, by pre­sent­ing him as a vision of human­i­ty’s artis­tic future, ensured that every­one else at The Amer­i­can Pageant of the Arts would as well. “Now here’s a cul­tur­al image for you to pon­der as you lis­ten,” he said just before let­ting Yo-Yo and Yeou-Cheng take it away. “A sev­en-year-old Chi­nese cel­list play­ing old French music for his new Amer­i­can com­pa­tri­ots.” Did Ma recall those words of decades and decades ago when he formed the Silk Road Ensem­ble, sub­ject of the recent doc­u­men­tary The Music of Strangers, which brought into the fold musi­cians from Syr­ia, Mon­go­lia, Japan, Arme­nia, Gali­cia, and else­where, all to share, mix, and rein­ter­pret the music of one anoth­er’s home­lands? Now there’s a cul­tur­al image for you.

via Peter B. Kauf­man

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yo-Yo Ma & the Goat Rodeo Ses­sions

Col­lab­o­ra­tions: Spike Jonze, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lil Buck

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

There were the Beats, with their inter­est in Bud­dhism and East­ern phi­los­o­phy. Then the Bea­t­les and Rolling Stones mined East­ern music and tra­di­tions for their psy­che­del­ic head trips, and turned a lot of peo­ple on to the sitar and the Nehru jack­et. But in many sig­nif­i­cant East meets West moments, the empha­sis skewed heav­i­ly toward West­ern artists. These cul­tur­al moments cre­at­ed some tru­ly inspired rock and roll and writ­ing, but not much in the way of a gen­uine con­gress of artists of equal recog­ni­tion.

Though we might expect to find some­thing like this in the Col­lab­o­ra­tions box set, cred­it­ed to Ravi Shankar and George Har­ri­son, what we get instead are four discs of most­ly Shankar com­po­si­tions and clas­si­cal Indi­an inter­pre­ta­tions, which Har­ri­son pro­duced and played on as a guest artist. These albums refresh­ing­ly reverse the usu­al dynam­ic: “The music here,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible, “is far from West­ern pop musi­cians dab­bling with sitars in the 1960s.” But for a tru­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive work, we should look else­where, and we’ll per­haps find few fin­er exam­ples than Shankar’s work with Philip Glass.

The two giants of their respec­tive musi­cal worlds first met in Paris in 1965, but it was only 25 years lat­er that they decid­ed to work togeth­er on an album. You can hear the result, Pas­sages, at the top of the post and in the Spo­ti­fy playlist just above. Although it took over two decades for Glass and Shankar to record togeth­er, their col­lab­o­ra­tion began even “before The Bea­t­les had met Ravi,” remem­bered Glass in a lec­ture at the Red Bull Music Acad­e­my. “This music would’ve been very exot­ic, at that time… in the ‘60s, this was the first time this kind of music had been heard. At least in the West.”

In his mid-twen­ties at the time, Glass was hired to tran­scribe Shankar’s score for the cult film Chap­paqua. He began to com­bine what he had been learn­ing in his master’s pro­gram at Juil­liard “with the work I had been doing with Ravi Shankar. Almost imme­di­ate­ly I began doing that.” And so audi­ences heard Shankar’s influ­ence on West­ern min­i­mal­ism before they heard it in pop music. “It was through Shankar’s music,” NPR notes, “that the Amer­i­can com­pos­er came to real­ize that music could be con­struct­ed with rhythm as its very foun­da­tion…. That real­iza­tion became a cor­ner­stone of Glass’ own work.”

Since his first meet­ing with Glass, Shankar influ­enced and col­lab­o­rat­ed with many oth­er West­ern musi­cians in his long and var­ied career, inspir­ing John Coltrane and oth­er jazz greats and releas­ing three albums with vio­lin­ist Yehu­di Menuhin, each called West Meets East, in 1967, 1968, and 1976. Pas­sages is a shar­ing of both musi­cal vocab­u­lar­ies and com­po­si­tion­al meth­ods: Shankar and Glass each com­posed themes that the oth­er arranged. “There is a great deal of tech­ni­cal data involved here,” writes Jim Bren­holts at All­mu­sic. “Both of these artists have long tak­en intel­lec­tu­al approach­es to music.”

The­o­ry aside, “the music is bril­liant,” whether we under­stand its vir­tu­os­i­ty or not, though it trends large­ly in a sym­phon­ic direc­tion. Those inter­est­ed in a more beat-ori­ent­ed but also bril­liant “East meets West” col­lab­o­ra­tion would do well to check out table play­er Zakir Hus­sain and bassist Bill Laswell’s project Tabla Beat Sci­ence, which, All­mu­sic writes, fus­es the “rich and time-hon­ored tra­di­tion of the tabla” with “con­tem­po­rary elec­tron­i­ca stu­dio wiz­ardry.” And, of course, don’t miss Hus­sain’s work with gui­tarist extra­or­di­naire John McLaugh­lin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ravi Shankar Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

‘The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney

Watch “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” the Abstract Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion Scored by Philip Glass (1979)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness