It might not sur­pass Glenn Gould’s record­ing of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions from 1981. (Watch him per­form it here). But this clip, fea­tur­ing teenage pianist Kadar Qian and beat­box extra­or­di­naire Kevin Olu­so­la of Pen­ta­tonix, has a charm of its own. The clip comes from From the Top, a non-prof­it whose YouTube chan­nel presents out­stand­ing per­for­mances from the coun­try’s best young clas­si­cal musi­cians.

If you want your own copy of the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, you can instant­ly down­load The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, the first Kick­starter-fund­ed, open source record­ing of Bach’s mas­ter­piece. It’s avail­able entire­ly for free. Also don’t miss the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach. They’re free too!

via Boing­Bo­ing

The relief con­cert is stream­ing live from New York City. Artists on the line­up include Bon Jovi, Eric Clap­ton, Dave Grohl, Bil­ly Joel, Ali­cia Keys, Chris Mar­tin, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Spring­steen & the E Street Band, Eddie Ved­der, Roger Waters, Kanye West, The Who, Paul McCart­ney and oth­ers. You can make your dona­tions to the relief effort right here.

Ravi Shankar, the Indi­an sitarist (and father of Norah Jones) known for his col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Bea­t­les and oth­er west­ern musi­cians, died Tues­day in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. He was 92 years old. Born in India in 1920, Shankar began play­ing the sitar dur­ing the late 1930s, and, by the 1940s, he start­ed think­ing about how to bring east­ern music to west­ern audi­ences. Tours brought him to the Sovi­et Union, West­ern Europe and the Unit­ed States dur­ing the 50s. But every­thing changed when he crossed paths in 1966 with a rock star devel­op­ing his own inter­est in the sitar.

George Har­ri­son taught him­self enough to play the sitar on “Nor­we­gian Wood,” the east­ern-inflect­ed song writ­ten by Lennon and McCart­ney in 1965. Shankar and Har­ri­son met the next year in Lon­don, mark­ing the begin­ning of an impor­tant musi­cal part­ner­ship. Soon enough, Har­ri­son trav­eled to India — to a remote region in the Himalayas — to study the sitar and read spir­i­tu­al texts with Shankar. Return­ing the favor, Har­ri­son saw to it that Shankar per­formed at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in June 1967. Lat­er, the two orga­nized the influ­en­tial Con­cert for Bangladesh, which brought them togeth­er with Bob Dylan, Eric Clap­ton, and Bil­ly Pre­ston.

Above, we have doc­u­men­tary footage fea­tur­ing Shankar and Har­ri­son togeth­er in a sitar les­son. Below, we present oth­er clips from that fer­tile peri­od.

Ravi Shankar’s Appear­ance with Har­ri­son on the Dick Cavett Show (1971)

Shankar at Mon­terey Pop (1967)

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Sor­ry to bring you the sad news.  This morn­ing, the great jazz musi­cian Dave Brubeck died in Con­necti­cut, just a day short of his 92nd birth­day. He’s, of course, best remem­bered for his jazz stan­dard “Take Five,” record­ed and per­formed first in 1959. Below, you can watch a vin­tage per­for­mance from the Jazz Casu­al TV show in 1961.

Above, we’re bring­ing you a reprise of our favorite moment with Brubeck. The footage you’re watch­ing was record­ed in Decem­ber 1997, when the pianist paid a vis­it to the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry. Dur­ing his con­cert, an audi­ence mem­ber asked him to impro­vise on the old Russ­ian sea shan­ty “Ej, Uhnem.” About two min­utes into the impro­vi­sa­tion, a young vio­lin­ist rose from his seat and start­ed to play along. You just have to love Dav­e’s sur­prised look at 2:09. The young man turned out to be a stu­dent at the con­ser­va­to­ry. His name is Denis Kolobov and he is now a vio­lin­ist of inter­na­tion­al renown. We will sore­ly miss you Dave.…

Mate­r­i­al for this post was con­tributed by @MatthiasRascher

Led Zep­pelin — they start­ed off mak­ing a mess of bour­geois house­holds; now, like many of their 60s coun­ter­parts, they’re get­ting hon­ored by the pow­ers that be. This week­end, the band’s three sur­viv­ing mem­bers — Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jim­my Page — were hon­ored for their cul­tur­al achieve­ments at a fes­tive cer­e­mo­ny in Wash­ing­ton D.C.. Look­ing very at ease with things, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma remind­ed us that, 30 years after the band’s last album, the “Led Zep­pelin lega­cy lives on.” Some­where Paul Ryan is eat­ing his heart out.

Below we have footage of Led Zep dur­ing their hey­day — a full con­cert record­ed Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall in 1970.