The Last Emperor

1987 seems so long ago. Watch this movie! 

Nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Score.

See also 

From Emperor to Citizen: the autobiography of PuYi

Twilight in the Forbidden City  (account of Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, tutor to the last emperor of China)

Happy New Year 2020

It's been a wonderful year and a wonderful decade. All the best to everyone :-)

Be of good cheer -- we will prevail !!!


A New Year's present to you, the documentary: Bill Evans Time Remembered.

"Truth and Beauty .. forget the rest."



You can watch the whole thing on Amazon Prime.


Bonus: from 1966, The Universal Mind of Bill Evans. I originally posted this video as a 2012 Christmas present to readers.

Best introspective bits about his development, improvisational ability, intellectual / analytical approach versus raw talent @30 min and thereafter.

Not bad for a heroin junkie (like Chet Baker: see earlier post Time After Time).

All About Jazz: ... He played an equal role with Miles Davis in composing Kind Of Blue, the top-selling jazz album ever, yet the association proved disastrous as Evans' shyness and pressures of the stage fed a drug addiction that led to his death in 1980. His intelligence allowed him to surpass other players with more raw talent and he inspired a rare cult-like following, but also endured critics who saw him as a fraudulent lightweight.

Evans is generally acknowledged as the most influential pianist since Bud Powell, and a primary influence on players such as Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea. Many consider his Sunday At The Village Vanguard the best piano trio album ever and compositions such as "Waltz For Debby" are all-time standards. He is also credited with advancing harmonic and voicing structures, and pioneering modern trio format elements such as giving sidemen equal interplay during improvisations.

His career peaked early during the late 1950s and early 1960s, then went through a series of peaks and valleys for the rest of his life. The best of those latter periods were probably during the early 1970s and right before his death, although neither reached the pinnacle of his early days.

Music and Mathematics: Noam Elkies

Dinner with two old Harvard friends -- mathematician Noam Elkies and MSU physicist Dean Lee. Noam is in town this week to give a lecture, a colloquium, and perform a piano recital.

At 26 Noam became the youngest full professor in Harvard history, and the youngest to ever receive tenure. He has an amazing Wikipedia entry :-)

In 1981, at age 14, he was awarded a gold medal at the 22nd International Mathematical Olympiad, receiving a perfect score of 42 and becoming one of just 26 participants to attain this score,[3] and one of the youngest ever to do so. Elkies graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1982[4][5] and went on to Columbia University, where he won the Putnam competition at the age of sixteen years and four months, making him one of the youngest Putnam Fellows in history.[6] He was a Putnam Fellow two more times during his undergraduate years. After graduating as valedictorian at age 18 with a summa cum laude in Mathematics and Music, he earned his Ph.D. at the age 20 under the supervision of Benedict Gross and Barry Mazur at Harvard University.[7]

From 1987 to 1990 he was a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows.[8]

In 1987, he proved that an elliptic curve over the rational numbers is supersingular at infinitely many primes. In 1988, he found a counterexample to Euler's sum of powers conjecture for fourth powers.[9] His work on these and other problems won him recognition and a position as an associate professor at Harvard in 1990.[4] In 1993, he was made a full, tenured professor at the age of 26. This made him the youngest full professor in the history of Harvard.[10] Along with A. O. L. Atkin he extended Schoof's algorithm to create the Schoof–Elkies–Atkin algorithm.

Noam, Dean, and I are all veterans of the Malkin Athletic Center weight room, when it was old-school and gritty :-)

Here's an earlier version of the talk Noam gave tonight. Video should start with him constructing a canon from thin air!

More Khruangbin!

See post from 2016: Khruangbin

... Khruangbin plays a spellbinding twist on surf rock and soul that would be considered trite if it weren’t so appetizing. The band’s origins are delightfully nerdy: Speer bonded with the bassist Laura Lee and the drummer Donald Johnson over lo-fi digital rips of cassette tapes featuring obscure Thai funk bands from the sixties and seventies, which they’d downloaded from the cult blog Monrakplengthai. The cassette tapes catalogue stray releases from Thai musicians who, influenced by imported rock records from bands like Santana and the Shadows, blended the misty, coiling guitars of foundational rock and roll with the melodic sensibilities of their own traditional folk tunes. Many of the songs were used in Bollywood films, reaching wide swaths of Southeast Asian audiences. “Shadow music,” as the sound came to be called, is exhilarating in part for its traceable roots.

Vinyl Sounds

Vinyl + Vacuum Tubes ... Still unsurpassed for warmth and richness of sound.








When I lived in New Haven in the 90s I took the train in to NYC on weekends to visit old friends from physics and mathematics, most of whom worked in finance. One Sunday morning in the spring I found myself with a friend of a friend, a big fixed income trader and devoted audiophile. His apartment in the Village had a large room with a balcony surrounded by leafy trees. In the room he kept only two things: a giant divan next to the balcony, on which several people at a time could recline, and the most expensive audio system I have ever seen. We spent hours listening to jazz and eating fresh cannoli with his actress girlfriend.

Giorgio Moroder is Boss

See also The History of Synth Pop.

Wikipedia: In 1977 ... he co-wrote and produced the seminal Donna Summer hit single "I Feel Love",[5][8] the first track in the Hi-NRG genre. The following year he released "Chase", the theme from the film Midnight Express. ... A double album of the Foxes soundtrack was released on the disco label Casablanca Records which includes Donna Summer's hit single "On the Radio", which Moroder both produced and co-wrote. ... The American Gigolo soundtrack featured the Moroder-produced "Call Me" by Blondie, a US and UK number one hit. The combined club play of the album's tracks was number two for five weeks on the disco/dance charts.[9] In 1982 he wrote the soundtrack of the movie Cat People, including the hit single "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" featuring David Bowie. In 1983, Moroder produced the soundtrack for the film Scarface. ... In 1986, Moroder collaborated with his protégé Harold Faltermeyer (of "Axel F") and lyricist Tom Whitlock to create the score for the film Top Gun (1986) which included Kenny Loggins' hit "Danger Zone" and Berlin's "Take My Breath Away".

TRACK LISTING  

0:00 Donna Summer - Hot Stuff 3:49 Donna Summer - I Feel Love 9:28 Giorgio Moroder - Chase 13:10 Donna Summer - Love to Love You Baby 16:35 Giorgio Moroder - From Here to Eternity 22:26 Blondie - Call Me 26:58 Japan - Life in Tokyo 29:29 Paul Engemann - Push it To the Limit 32:32 David Bowie - Cat People (Putting Out the Fire) 36:35 Giorgio Moroder - E=MC² 41:29 Amy Holland - She's On Fire (GTA version) 44:42 Irene Cara - What a Feeling 48:01 Giorgio Moroder - I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone 53:03 Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder - Together in Electric Dreams 56:51 Berlin - Take My Breath Away 1:01:17 Elizabeth Daily - Shake it Up Tonight (GTA version) 1:04:24 Giorgio Moroder - I Wanna Rock You 1:10:52 Michael Sembello - Maniac 1:13:13 Donna Summer & Barbra Straisand - Enough is Enough 1:17:58 Daft Punk - Giorgio by Moroder

This track starts with a Moroder interview -- The sound of the future! :-)

The History of Synth Pop (video documentary)

I had a vague awareness of synth pop groups like Depeche Mode, Joy Division, New Order, Human League, OMD when I was growing up. I loved the music but knew almost nothing about the bands and the context from which they emerged. This documentary locates them in the post-punk, Kraftwerk-influenced UK of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Highly recommended if songs from these groups give you a jolt of exuberant nostalgia :-)

Now that I'm older I really enjoy this kind of exploration, in which writers, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs reminisce about their youthful moments of creation and discovery. How did it look at the time? And now, in the fullness of life? All those moments, lost in time like tears in rain.

I watched Atomic Blonde on a recent flight and, other than one long fight scene near the end -- "Stoy! Stoy!" (pleading... Bang!), found it mostly forgettable. But the incredible 1980s soundtrack got me thinking about this music again...

Just Like Heaven

Musical intermission. Choose your favorite!

For me it's not the same without that 80's synth...

The weirdest academic seminar ever

... but in a good way! :-)

Beijing-based economist and rapper Andrew Dougherty ("Big Daddy Dough") presents The Redprint: Rhyme and Reason in the Riddle Kingdom at the BYU Kennedy Center.




This is his classic cover Beijing State of Mind:




Dougherty interview on Sinica podcast.

Prince Rogers Nelson

If you're a true fan, and like guitar, you'll enjoy this 20 minute live version of Purple Rain. The whole concert.

Prince was at his peak in 1985. I saw him on the Purple Rain tour in Los Angeles, with Sheila E. opening. We camped out at a Tower Records in Pasadena to get the tickets.

When the movie opened in 1984 I was home for the summer in Iowa after my freshman year. I think all of my high school friends were big fans. Eventually I had it on VHS and watched it many times with my girlfriend.

Here's Sheila E. doing The Glamorous Life. 80's forever! :-)

Khruangbin

New Yorker: ... Khruangbin plays a spellbinding twist on surf rock and soul that would be considered trite if it weren’t so appetizing. The band’s origins are delightfully nerdy: Speer bonded with the bassist Laura Lee and the drummer Donald Johnson over lo-fi digital rips of cassette tapes featuring obscure Thai funk bands from the sixties and seventies, which they’d downloaded from the cult blog Monrakplengthai. The cassette tapes catalogue stray releases from Thai musicians who, influenced by imported rock records from bands like Santana and the Shadows, blended the misty, coiling guitars of foundational rock and roll with the melodic sensibilities of their own traditional folk tunes. Many of the songs were used in Bollywood films, reaching wide swaths of Southeast Asian audiences. “Shadow music,” as the sound came to be called, is exhilarating in part for its traceable roots. Several cuts would fit seamlessly into your favorite countercultural film score, were it not for vocalists unspooling lyrics in their native tongue.

Speer, Lee, and Johnson would return to these tapes sporadically when they gathered in a barn in Burton, Texas (in addition to conferring via Skype when Lee briefly relocated to London), to write and record “Universe.” (The band’s name means “airplane” in Thai, but none of the members claim roots in the South Asian country.) ...

David Bowie 1947-2016

Heroes

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing, will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day

And you, you can be mean
And I, I'll drink all the time
'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact
Yes we're lovers, and that is that

Though nothing, will keep us together
We could steal time, just for one day
We can be heroes, forever and ever
What'd you say?

I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, forever and ever
Oh we can be heroes, just for one day

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be heroes, just for one day
We can be us, just for one day

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, forever and ever
Then we could be heroes, just for one day

We can be heroes
We can be heroes
We can be heroes
Just for one day
We can be heroes

We're nothing, and nothing will help us
Maybe we're lying, then you better not stay
But we could be safer, just for one day
Oh-oh-oh-ohh, oh-oh-oh-ohh, just for one day

Marcus Aurelius

Or does the bubble reputation distract you? Keep before your eyes the swift onset of oblivion, and the abysses of eternity before us and behind; mark how hollow are the echoes of applause, how fickle and undiscerning the judgments of professed admirers, and how puny the arena of human fame. For the entire earth is but a point, and the place of our own habitation but a minute corner in it; and how many are therein who will praise you, and what sort of men are they?

Vangelis and Tangerine Dream

Eighties forever! :-)

The ravages of time

These make me happy and sad at the same time.

Summer of '69

I love this video. The clothes, the hair, the faces -- they're all so familiar. Every person in the video looks like someone I grew up with in the midwest :-)

Jolene

Summertime Sadness

See also Lana Del Rey.

Stringy Bohemian Rhapsody

Wow, this is awesome. Thanks to a former student now managing billions in fixed income assets for the link ;-)

Empire state of mind: Beijing

Look out, Jay Z!

Everybody digs Bill Evans

Yesterday someone told me I was a techno-optimist, and I replied that I had grown up in an era in which university libraries were the main repositories of high quality information. Sitting in front of the computer, I can share all kinds of things with my kids that weren't available to me as a child. Who could imagine a time when typing in a few words would evoke rich sounds and images of Bill Evans or Chet Baker? Thanks to all the jazz fans who are uploading this rare footage and music!




With vocals (Monica Zetterlund). See also this profile, The Universal Mind of Bill Evans.