On March 19, 1965, the Bill Evans Trio stopped by the BBC stu­dios in Lon­don to play a pair of sets on Jazz 625, the now-leg­endary pro­gram host­ed by the British trum­peter Humphrey Lyt­tel­ton. The combo–which fea­tured Evans on piano, Chuck Israels on bass and Lar­ry Bunker on drums–played two sets, includ­ing most of the songs from their just-com­plet­ed album, Trio ’65. The two 35-minute pro­grams (shown con­sec­u­tive­ly in the video above) take us back in time to see and hear one of the most bril­liant and influ­en­tial jazz pianists of all time, at work in a tight­ly inte­grat­ed trio.

Set One:

1. “Five,” by Bill Evans
2. “Elsa,” by Earl Zin­dars
3. “Sum­mer­time,” by George Gersh­win
4. “Come Rain or Come Shine,” by Harold Arlen
5. “My Fool­ish Heart,” by Vic­tor Young
6. “Re: Per­son I Knew,” by Bill Evans
7. “Israel,” by John­ny Carisi
8. “Five,” by Bill Evans (reprise)

Set Two:

1. “Five,” by Bill Evans
2. “How My Heart Sings,” by Earl Zin­dars
3. “Nardis,” by Miles Davis
4. “Who Can I Turn To?” by Antho­ny New­ley and Leslie Bricusse
5. “Some­day My Prince Will Come,” by Frank Churchill
6. “How Deep is the Ocean?” by Bill Evans
7. “Five,” by Bill Evans (reprise)

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz

Thelo­nious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Clas­sic Jazz 625 Show

The Fla­men­co gui­tar grew up in Andalu­sia, the major province in south­ern Spain, where it became inte­gral to the cul­ture dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry. The mod­ern fla­men­co gui­tar (a first cousin of the mod­ern clas­si­cal gui­tar) is typ­i­cal­ly made with two of three woods — spruce on the top, and cypress or sycamore on the back and sides. When put in the hands of the right luthi­er, the gui­tar can become a thing of beau­ty. Case in point: This art­ful video by Greek film­mak­er Dim­itris Ladopou­los brings you inside the work­shop of Vasilis Lazarides, who spe­cial­izes in mak­ing high qual­i­ty fla­men­co gui­tars by hand. (Vis­it his gui­tars online here.) 299 hours of blood, sweat, tears and love go into mak­ing each fine gui­tar. But you can watch it all hap­pen in a mat­ter of three min­utes, with the music of Edsart Udo de Haes pro­vid­ing the sound­track.

If elec­tric gui­tars hap­pen to be your thing, you can also watch Fend­ers being made in 1959 and 2012.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch FLAMENCO AT 5:15, a Life-Affirm­ing, Oscar-Win­ning Doc­u­men­tary About a Fla­men­co Dance Class

Hear Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” Cov­ered in Unex­pect­ed Styles: Gre­go­ri­an Choir, Cel­lo Ensem­ble, Finnish Blue­grass, Jazz Vocal & More

On Mon­day, we post­ed the Artist Series, short pro­files of var­i­ous aes­thet­i­cal­ly-ori­ent­ed cre­ators by the late Hill­man Cur­tis. Today, please enjoy what feels like the jew­el in the Artist Series’ crown, despite not offi­cial­ly being part of it: Cur­tis’ pro­mo­tion­al doc­u­men­tary on Bri­an Eno and David Byrne and their col­lab­o­ra­tion on 2008’s Every­thing That Hap­pens Hap­pen Will Hap­pen Today.

Cur­tis inter­views Eno and Byrne in their sep­a­rate work­spaces, cap­tures their con­ver­sa­tions about parts of their songs, and even — pre­sum­ably in keep­ing with the album’s do-it-your­self pro­mo­tion­al spir­it — lets them pho­to­graph one anoth­er. He also shows them doing what they do best when not cre­at­ing: cycling, of course, in Byrne’s case, and look­ing pen­sive­ly through win­dows in Eno’s.

In none of these nine min­utes do Byrne or Eno per­form any­thing. Cur­tis does­n’t need them to; he taps instead into the com­bi­na­tion of artic­u­la­cy, clar­i­ty, and idio­syn­crasy that has earned them near­ly forty years of sta­tus as cere­bral pop­u­lar music icons. Just as the ear­ly eight­ies’ nascent sam­pling tech­nol­o­gy gave Byrne and Eno a new frame­work with which to think about music when they record­ed My Life in the Bush of Ghosts togeth­er, the abil­i­ty to send sounds over the inter­net and exten­sive­ly mod­i­fy absolute­ly any record­ing after the fact shaped the con­struc­tion of Every­thing That Hap­pens Will Hap­pen Today.

The result­ing pro­duc­tion legit­i­mate­ly earns the crit­i­cal­ly abused adjec­tive “dream­like” — have a lis­ten to the track “I Feel My Stuff” above — and the feel of Cur­tis’ video aligns with the feel of the album, using unblink­ing gazes and drift­ing track­ing shots that would­n’t feel out of place in an Apichat­pong Weerasethakul film. If you still want to see these guys actu­al­ly play some­thing, watch Ride, Rise, Roar (trail­er here, clip below), Cur­tis’ con­cert film of the Songs of David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Tour.

Relat­ed con­tent

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Like the Bea­t­les, Cana­di­an piano vir­tu­oso Glenn Gould gave up live per­for­mance in the mid-1960s and focused his cre­ative ener­gies on record­ing. “At live con­certs,” he told an inter­view­er, “I feel demeaned, like a vaude­vil­lian.” Gould ruf­fled quite a few feath­ers in the clas­si­cal music estab­lish­ment when he pub­licly embraced the prac­tice of splic­ing togeth­er pieces of tape from dif­fer­ent record­ings to cre­ate a new per­for­mance. In effect, he pro­voked a re-eval­u­a­tion of the word “per­for­mance.” In this short 1969 doc­u­men­tary from the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion’s Tele­scope series, Gould talks about the rea­sons for his dis­like of play­ing con­certs and his phi­los­o­phy of art in the age of elec­tron­ic record­ing. In the pro­logue, he more or less pre­dicts today’s mash-up cul­ture:

I have a feel­ing that the end result of all our labors in the record­ing stu­dio is not going to become some kind of auto­crat­ic fin­ished prod­uct such as we turn out now with rel­a­tive ease, with the help of splice-mak­ing which we do or which engi­neers do for us, but is going to be a rather more demo­c­ra­t­ic assem­blage. I think we’re going to make kits, and I think we’re going to send out these kits to lis­ten­ers, per­haps to view­ers also, as video­tape car­tridge gets into the act, as I think it will, and we’re going to say, Do it your­self. Take the assem­bled com­po­nents and make of those com­po­nents some­thing that you gen­uine­ly appre­ci­ate. If you don’t like the result as you put togeth­er the first time, put it togeth­er a sec­ond time. Be in fact your own edi­tor. Be, in a sense, your own per­former.

Vari­a­tions on Glenn Gould offers a fas­ci­nat­ing take–or, as the title sug­gests, sev­er­al dif­fer­ent takes–on Gould’s world-view. There is a short musi­cal inter­lude, in which he plays an excerpt from the first move­ment, “Alle­gro ma non trop­po,” of Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 6 in F Major. And with­in the 24-minute time frame, the film­mak­ers allow Gould to devel­op his idio­syn­crat­ic thoughts on sev­er­al sub­jects, includ­ing his “con­tra­pun­tal radio doc­u­men­taries’ and his sense of iso­la­tion from soci­ety. “I absolute­ly enjoy being sur­round­ed by a sort of elec­tron­ic wall­pa­per, hav­ing music every­where about me,” says Gould. “I think that it gives a cer­tain shel­ter, and sets you apart. And I think that the only val­ue I have as an artist–the only val­ue most artists have, whether they real­ize it or not– is their par­tic­u­lar iso­la­tion from the world about which they write, and to which they hope to con­tribute.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

Glenn Gould and Leonard Bern­stein Play Bach