“Ste­vie Won­der, the awardee of the sec­ond Library of Con­gress Gersh­win Prize for Pop­u­lar Song, pre­mieres “Sketch­es of a Life,” a sprawl­ing, hybrid pop-clas­si­cal con­cer­to, writ­ten between 1976 and 1994. The work was unveiled through a com­mis­sion for the Library of Con­gress in the Coolidge Audi­to­ri­um.” The per­for­mance was record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 23, and it runs 55 min­utes. You can watch it here.

Via The Library of Con­gress Twit­ter Feed (Get ours here)

A quick find worth pass­ing along… 

Although some­what uncon­ven­tion­al as far as mem­oirs go, Chron­i­cles: Vol­ume One recap­tures Bob Dylan’s “first stir­rings of cre­ativ­i­ty with amaz­ing urgency” (as Janet Maslin once put it) , and brings you to places that the nor­mal Dylan biog­ra­phy won’t. It brings you back to the small moments that shaped Dylan’s ear­ly days as a musi­cian in New York, and to the intel­lec­tu­al and musi­cal influ­ences that framed his way of see­ing things: Thu­cidy­des, Hank Williams, Dos­to­evsky, Woody Guthrie, John Locke and Jean Genet. I down­loaded the audio book ver­sion of Chron­i­cles over the week­end and was per­haps most cap­ti­vat­ed by the nar­ra­tion record­ed by Sean Penn, the new­ly-mint­ed Acad­e­my Award win­ner. Penn is not play­ing a role here. But, at points, you think you’re lis­ten­ing to Dylan him­self, which makes it a rather unique audio expe­ri­ence. You can down­load the audio book for $13.65. But, you could also poten­tial­ly get it for free.  Audi­ble runs a reg­u­lar pro­mo­tion that lets you down­load two books for free if you sign up for a 14 day free tri­al. Get the details here.

For many free audio books, check out our col­lec­tion here.

More just a heads up than any­thing else. If you’re spend­ing mon­ey down­load­ing MP3s from iTunes, you may want to give Ama­zon MP3 down­loads a seri­ous look. Ama­zon MP3s are gen­er­al­ly cheap­er, and you can find some out­stand­ing deals there. Take, for exam­ple, $3.99 for The Pogues’ If I Should Fall from Grace, or $1.99 for John Coltrane’s Blue Train. (Both deals were men­tioned over at Large­heart­ed Boy.) For more cheap music on Ama­zon, vis­it this page. And find 500 free songs here, although caveat emp­tor, these may be geo-restrict­ed.

It’s worth men­tion­ing that Ama­zon MP3s are all DRM-free (that’s not the case over at Apple), which means that you can play these sound files in any music pro­gram and on any MP3 device. Ama­zon also notably makes the pur­chas­ing process easy for iPod users. Once you down­load a lit­tle installer, all pur­chas­es will be auto­mat­i­cal­ly uploaded to iTunes or Win­dows Media Play­er. This makes the buy­ing expe­ri­ence pret­ty seam­less and removes all bar­ri­ers to enjoy­ing Ama­zon’s low­er prices.

Appear­ing last month at the TED Con­fer­ence, jazz pianist Eric Lewis pre­sent­ed a quite amaz­ing ver­sion of Evanes­cence’s hit Going Under. As you’ll see from the very out­set, the piece has some rather uncon­ven­tion­al ele­ments (some won’t like it), but stay with it. It all hangs togeth­er in a strange­ly beau­ti­ful way.

via Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio

Leg­endary Cana­di­an musi­cian Leonard Cohen is now tour­ing the Unit­ed States for the first time in 15 years (get all of the details here). Fans who can’t catch a show will be pleased to know that NPR’s All Songs Con­sid­ered pro­vides free access to Cohen’s recent show at the Bea­con The­atre in NYC. (It was record­ed on or around Feb­ru­ary 19th.) The set should run about 1:14 and includes 12 songs. You can get it here:  Stream — RSS Feed — iTunes.

Appar­ent­ly, in April, Bob Dylan plans to release a new album. Let’s hope that he con­tin­ues to defy grav­i­ty. Get more details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

When Bob Dylan Went Elec­tric: New­port, 1965

Like A Rolling Stone 1966

Bob Dylan at The Super Bowl