Update on Novem­ber 10: We just got news that Leonard Cohen has passed, only a short few weeks after releas­ing his final album, avail­able below. The sad news comes from his Face­book page. 

Leonard Cohen’s new album You Want It Dark­er is stream­ing free online for a lim­it­ed time, thanks to NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Now 82 years old, and sens­ing that time is run­ning short, Cohen offers, writes Rolling Stone, a “gift to music lovers: a real­is­ti­cal­ly grim, spir­i­tu­al­ly radi­ant and deeply poet­ic world­view, gen­er­al­ly spiked with a roman­tic thrum and an exis­ten­tial wink.”

Hear the title track above. And stream the com­plete album right below. You can pur­chase your own copy of Cohen’s album on Ama­zon and iTunes. We’d also encour­age you to read this new pro­file of Cohen, writ­ten by The New York­er’s long-time edi­tor David Rem­nick. It’s quite poignant.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poet­ry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musi­cian Began)

A Day in the Life of Zen Monk Leonard Cohen: A 1996 Doc­u­men­tary

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Reads The Great World War I Poem, “In Flan­ders Fields”

There are many ways to cel­e­brate a new album from a band you admire. You can have a lis­ten­ing par­ty alone. You can have a lis­ten­ing par­ty with friends. You can learn the title track in a cou­ple days and play it onstage while the band you admire sits in the audi­ence. That last one might be overkill. Unless you’re Jimi Hen­drix. Hen­drix was so excit­ed after the UK release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band in 1967 that he opened a set at London’s Sav­ille The­ater with his own, Hen­drix-ified ren­di­tion of the album’s McCart­ney-penned title song. In the audi­ence: McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son.

It’s a loose, good-natured trib­ute that, as you might imag­ine, made quite an impres­sion on the Bea­t­les in atten­dance. “It’s still obvi­ous­ly a shin­ing mem­o­ry for me,” McCart­ney recalled many years lat­er, “because I admired him so much any­way, he was so accom­plished.”

To think that that album had meant so much to him as to actu­al­ly do it by the Sun­day night, three days after the release. He must have been so into it, because nor­mal­ly it might take a day for rehearsal and then you might won­der whether you’d put it in, but he just opened with it. It’s a pret­ty major com­pli­ment in any­one’s book. I put that down as one of the great hon­ours of my career.

McCart­ney fre­quent­ly rem­i­nisces about that night. See him do so in the clip above from an August, 2010 con­cert. Mac­ca gush­es over Hendrix’s solo, then tells the audi­ence how Jimi—having thrown his gui­tar out of tune dur­ing the solo with his wham­my bar dive-bombing—asked Eric Clap­ton to come onstage and retune for him.

Clap­ton, who McCart­ney says was actu­al­ly in the audi­ence, demurred. It’s a sto­ry he con­tin­ues to tell–in fact, as recent­ly as this week­end at Old­chel­la.

One lin­ger­ing ques­tion is whether or not Hen­drix knew there were Bea­t­les present that night. NME and the BBC both say he did not. In a recre­ation of the moment, above, from the 2013 fic­tion­al­ized biopic Jimi: All is by My Side, Hen­drix (played by André Ben­jamin) knows. Not only that, but he decides to open with “Sgt. Pepper’s” right before the gig, with no rehearsal, over the stren­u­ous objec­tions of Noel Red­ding, who thinks the Bea­t­les might be insult­ed. It’s high­ly doubt­ful things went down that way at all. (The scene takes oth­er licenses—note the Fly­ing V instead of the white Stra­to­cast­er Hen­drix actu­al­ly played). But it makes for some inter­est­ing back­stage dra­ma in the film.

In any case, I’d guess that Hendrix—“the coolest guy in the world,” as Ben­jamin called him—would have pulled off the cov­er with panache, whether he knew McCart­ney was watch­ing or not. There may be lit­tle left to say about Hen­drix’s bril­liant gui­tar the­atrics, com­plete­ly inno­v­a­tive play­ing style, onstage swag­ger, and pow­er­ful song­writ­ing. But his “Sgt. Pepper’s” cov­er is an exam­ple of one of his less-dis­cussed, but high­ly admirable qual­i­ties: his gen­uine­ly awe­some rock and roll col­le­gial­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Jimi Hen­drix Wreaks Hav­oc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From BBC (1969)

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

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

Image via iTunes

John Cage’s 4’33” is one of the most infa­mous works of the 20th cen­tu­ry and which still has the abil­i­ty to divide peo­ple. Three move­ments of silence, where the per­former does noth­ing, it forces the audi­ence to lis­ten to its sur­round­ings and be present, a dis­til­la­tion of zen thought if there ever was one. In an increas­ing­ly dis­tract­ed age, being silent and present is very dif­fi­cult for most peo­ple. A Men­tal Floss arti­cle on the piece’s lega­cy ref­er­enced a 2014 Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia study where hun­dreds of peo­ple sat in silence for a total of 15 min­utes. “25 per­cent of women and 67 per­cent of men opt­ed to endure painful elec­tric shocks rather than pass the time with­out any stim­u­la­tion,” says the arti­cle.

Two years ago, the John Cage Trust launched the 4’33” app, which sounds coun­ter­in­tu­itive. How can a phone app make one present?

Well, it doesn’t exact­ly do that. Instead, it offers a chance for mem­bers to record and share their own “per­for­mances” of Cage’s famous piece, once again demon­strat­ing Cage’s result-—there is no real silence. (Even in 1951, one year before 4’33”’s com­po­si­tion, when Cage sat in a sound dead­en­ing ane­choic cham­ber in Har­vard, he could still hear the blood rush­ing in his veins.)

The iPhone app, which costs 99 cents, is sim­ple and comes with a record­ing of the piece from John Cage’s New York apart­ment, which high­lights the traf­fic sounds and police sirens. Tap on the “World of 4’33”” but­ton at the bot­tom and a world map opens, show­ing green push­pins in var­i­ous loca­tions where users record­ed their own moments of silence. (The project is sim­i­lar to the 2008 inter­net project of field record­ings, “One Minute Vaca­tion”).

One user’s Kaloli, Hawaii record­ing is all trop­i­cal insects and birds busy com­pos­ing their own music. The one some­body record­ed down­town in my home city is of our shop­ping mall at Christ­mas, with pedes­tri­ans, far off car­ols, and the sounds of com­merce. In Japan, there’s a love­ly record­ing of Chi­tose air­port, espe­cial­ly if you find echoey tan­noy announce­ments roman­tic (I do). From urban to sub­ur­ban to coun­try­side, this is a por­trait of a world that is nev­er silent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage’s Silent, Avant-Garde Piece 4’33” Gets Cov­ered by a Death Met­al Band

John Cage Per­forms His Avant-Garde Piano Piece 4’33” … in 1’22” (Har­vard Square, 1973)

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Those who know the work of Igor Stravin­sky will be famil­iar with the recep­tion the Russ­ian composer’s The Rite of Spring received dur­ing its first per­for­mance in Paris in 1913. The typ­i­cal descrip­tion for what hap­pened is that the bal­let caused a “riot,” though giv­en our usu­al asso­ci­a­tions with that word, it hard­ly seems like the appro­pri­ate term. As The Telegraph’s Ivan Hewett notes, the respons­es, though bemused and irate, were gen­teel by most stan­dards of civ­il unrest. But there was vio­lence and the threat of vio­lence.

Accord­ing to a mem­ber of the orches­tra, “many a gentleman’s shiny top hat or soft fedo­ra was igno­min­ious­ly pulled down by an oppo­nent over his eyes and ears, and canes were bran­dished like men­ac­ing imple­ments of com­bat all over the the­atre.” What could cause such a scan­dal? Hear­ing the piece, above, it’s per­haps not obvi­ous why “peo­ple start­ed to whis­per and joke almost imme­di­ate­ly.” Both Stravin­sky and Russ­ian bal­let impre­sario Sergei Diaghilev sought to pro­voke the audi­ence, but both were tak­en aback by the vehe­mence of the reac­tions. As audi­ence mem­bers began to shout, “I left the hall in a rage,” Stravin­sky lat­er wrote. “I have nev­er again been that angry.”

Of course, the music alone, with­out Vaslav Nijinsky’s chore­og­ra­phy, only gives us half the sto­ry. Onstage, writes Hewitt, “there’s no sign that any of the crea­tures in the Rite of Spring has a soul, and there’s cer­tain­ly no sense of a rec­og­niz­able human cul­ture. The dancers are like automa­ta.” And yet, Stravin­sky seems to have intend­ed his music to alien­ate lis­ten­ers as well: “there are sim­ply no regions for soul-search­ing,” he said, “in The Rite of Spring.” It’s a com­ment that suc­cinct­ly sums up the composer’s icon­o­clasm and defi­ance of sacred musi­cal norms.

Stravinsky’s first bal­let, 1910’s The Fire­bird, fol­lowed Debussy in recu­per­at­ing the so-called “Devil’s Inter­val,” a tonal fig­ure avoid­ed for hun­dreds of years in reli­gious music for its sin­is­ter sound. But The Fire­bird’s exot­ic beau­ty charmed audi­ences, as did his next bal­let Petrush­ka.  And despite the Rite of Spring con­tro­ver­sy, many of Stravinsky’s sym­phonies are quite tra­di­tion­al next to the avant-gardism of his peers. His ten­den­cies of “regres­sion and restau­ra­tion,” writes clas­si­cal site CMUSE, “an amal­gam of the archa­ic and the mod­ern,” caused Theodor Adorno to describe Stravin­sky as schiz­o­phrenic in Phi­los­o­phy of Mod­ern Music.

Unlike his mod­ernist rival Arnold Schoen­berg, Stravin­sky is “in the same cat­e­go­ry as T.S. Eliot, as both were well-versed in literary/musical tra­di­tion and well aware of the cur­rent avant-garde move­ments, but main­tained quite a con­ser­v­a­tive approach to nov­el­ty.” Stravinsky’s con­ser­v­a­tive mod­ernism had a pro­found effect on anoth­er form of 20th cen­tu­ry music that looked both back­ward and for­ward: jazz. Artists like Char­lie Park­er paid trib­ute to him, and the com­pos­er very much appre­ci­at­ed it. “This cat,” said Park­er, “he’s kind of cool, you know.”

In the chrono­log­i­cal playlist above from Ulysses Clas­si­cal, hear the ear­ly sym­phonies and sonatas that inspired Diaghilev to hire him as the Bal­lets Russ­es first com­pos­er, and many of the bal­lets that enraged the Parisian elite, delight­ed Char­lie Park­er, and repelled Adorno. And find out why, as CMUSE argues, Stravin­sky may be “the great­est com­pos­er of the 20th cen­tu­ry.”

The playlist runs 32 hours. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

Stravinsky’s “Ille­gal” Arrange­ment of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” (1944)

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

Glenn Gould died young, in 1982 at the age of 50, but the Cana­di­an clas­si­cal pianist made great con­tri­bu­tions to the world of music in his short life. He did it in part by start­ing young — so young, in fact, that he first felt the vibra­tions of music played for him while still in the womb by his moth­er. She’d decid­ed even then to raise a suc­cess­ful musi­cian, and her plan sure­ly worked bet­ter than she could ever have expect­ed. Young Glenn had per­fect pitch, learned to read notes before he learned to read words, entered Toron­to’s Roy­al Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music at age ten, and grew into the very arche­typ­al image of a musi­cal genius: eccen­tric and often dif­fi­cult, but pos­sessed of almost oth­er­world­ly skill and dis­tinc­tive­ness.

Those qual­i­ties came out nowhere more clear­ly than in Gould’s rela­tion­ship with the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, whom he described as “beyond a doubt the great­est archi­tect of sound who ever lived.” Even lis­ten­ers only casu­al­ly acquaint­ed with Gould’s work will know his record­ings of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, the first of which, record­ed in 1955, shot him to star­dom and became one of the best-sell­ing clas­si­cal albums of all time.

Four years after that, the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da doc­u­men­tary Off the Record, just above, cap­tured his play­ing on film in the clips at the top of the post. “When Gould is not on tour or record­ing,” he spends most of his time at his retreat, a cot­tage on the Shore of Lake Sim­coe 90 miles north of Toron­to. Here he works on the piano he favors above all oth­ers for prac­tic­ing: a 70-year-old Chick­er­ing with a res­o­nant, harp­si­chord qual­i­ty recall­ing the instru­ments of the time of Bach.”

There, in that cot­tage in the small com­mu­ni­ty of Upter­grove, we see the 27-year-old Gould play Bach’s Par­ti­ta No. 2, vocal­iz­ing along with the dis­tinc­tive mix of force­ful­ness and del­i­ca­cy issu­ing from the instru­ment that he nev­er chose, but mas­tered to a degree few had before or have since. “His ambi­tion,” the nar­ra­tor says, “is to make enough mon­ey by the time he is 35 to retire from the con­cert stage and devote him­self to com­pos­ing.” In fact Gould put live per­for­mance behind him just five years lat­er in order to pur­sue with more focus his own kind of pianis­tic per­fec­tion, which he con­tin­ued to do for the rest of his life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Glenn Gould Per­form His Last Great Stu­dio Record­ing of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions (1981)

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

Glenn Gould Offers a Strik­ing­ly Uncon­ven­tion­al Inter­pre­ta­tion of 1806 Beethoven Com­po­si­tion

The Art of Fugue: Gould Plays Bach

Glenn Gould Gives Us a Tour of Toron­to, His Beloved Home­town (1979)

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.