Friday, September 30, 2011

Mulatu Astatqé

Mulatu Astatqé
5.75" x 12"
pastel, ink on wood, 2003 (2011)
Jazz music is played throughout the whole world. The music Buddy Bolden pioneered in New Orleans more than a century ago has exploded into a thousand different styles and genres. There are hybrids of jazz with pretty much every type of music imaginable. The term fusion, musically, refers to jazz mixed with all sorts of popular music. Growing up in the Netherlands I was exposed to improvisational free jazz of the highest quality. Cities, most notably Amsterdam and Tilburg, had vibrant jazz scenes in the years I became interested in the music. The interest never faded and now on the world wide web, along with a broader interest in the music from the whole wide world, I'm finding all sorts of real exciting jazz from locations not typically associated with jazz. A few weeks ago I put a spotlight on the first Indian Indo-Jazz recording by Shankar Jaikishan. I've know the music of Mulatu Astatqé, the father of Ethio-Jazz, for many years now. A large series of cds called Ethiopiques (Buda Musique) with recordings from Addis Ababa of the 1970s was released beginning in 1997 to advance that music scene to the ears of eager listeners outside the borders of Ethiopia. The Columbus Metropolitan Library had a whole bunch of those cds and every one of them stayed at my house for a few weeks.  Volume 4 from Ethiopiques has the music of Astatqé on it and I found my long lost copy back to accompany me on a long drive down the country. Coincidentally a friend brought another along copy a week later for me to listen to. Mulatu Astatqé is back in Top 100 land after a nine year hiatus. I pulled out that portrait again of Astatqé I did in 2003, I always liked it but I had to fix a few things before posting it because of inadvertent proportional incongruities.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Top 100 2010: The Book

The Top 100 2010, back
11" x 8.5", 117 pages
printed book, 2011
The Top 100 2010, cover
11" x 8.5", 117 pages
printed book, 2011






















The Top 100 2010 is now available in a book format. The contents roughly follows the posts on this blog from April 2010 through March 2011. It's printed by myself and spiral-bound in a local copy shop in black and white on heavy paper. It's printed on demand in a running edition that will not exceed one hundred copies. It contains lists, reproductions of all 100 paintings in the Top 100, and the commentaries to all 100 as well, and more. 117 pages of informative and fun reading, full color front and back covers, numbered and dedicated. Price: $37.50 + shipping. Contact me through the e-mail provided under View my complete profile on the right hand side of this page.
More updates: If you are in or near Washington, DC this weekend, some of my newest paintings are on view at the (e)merge Art Fair through New York's White Columns:
WHITE COLUMNS
at (e)merge
SEPTEMBER 22 - 25, WASHINGTON DC
works by:
DAVID ALBERTSEN
JASON BRINKERHOFF
JEFF FUNNELL

JOHN HILTUNEN
JADRANKA KOSORCIC
ELLA KRUGLYANSKAYA
DANIEL RIOS RODRIGUEZ
BERRY
VAN BOEKEL
editions by:
ANNE COLLIER
TAMAR HALPERN

SCOTT KING

AUBREY MAYER

ADAM McEWEN

THURSTON MOORE
MARLO PASCUAL
JOSH SMITH

+ more
for more information:
WHITE COLUMNS / 1970 - 2011 / 40+ YEARS OF SUPPORT FOR ARTISTS

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Shankar Jaikishan

Shankar Jaikishan
30" x 24"
oil on canvas, 201
 
Back yard
30" x 24"
oil on canvas, 2011
Exactly at those moments that you think you've heard it all something comes around that totally blows that thought. And it happens in such a fashion that you realize you should never ever think such thoughts again. How often does it happen that you hear a piece of music so original, passionate, and exciting, that you hear a sound that you've never heard before? A few times a year, to answer my own question, just enough to continue the top 100 project with ever more zeal, even after almost thirty years of doing it. It happened again last week listening to a piece of jazz music, a hybrid of Hindi popular, Indian classical music and American Jazz. The two Indian gentlemen in front of my back yard are  Shankar Jaikishan [शंकर-जयकिशन], Shankar Jaikishan are a composer duo consisting of Shankar and Jaikishan, Shankar Singh Raghuvanshi and Jaikishan Dayabhai Panchal to be more precise. They are best known for their work in the Hindi film industry but the track entering the Top 100 2011 is from an autonomous album called Raga Jazz Style from 1968. The album is noted as the earliest Indo Jazz recording in India. The moment that the opening track Raga Todi propels itself into a higher stratosphere is at the moment the sitar, played by Rais Khan is introduced. From there on the record is  ecstatic until the very end. I heard it on a new site I've been following called Holy Warbles [सølγ שаябlɛş]. The site is quite prolific, it'll take me a while, if I ever get to it, to uncover all this fantastic music hidden in their archives.

Monday, September 12, 2011

A sixteen inch Beth Orton head on the wall

Beth Orton
16" x 20"
oil on canvas, 2011

Just as with Cat Power (see previous) I'm also waiting on Beth Orton's new album to come out. Both their last releases date back to 2006. Maybe not as anxiously anticipated as Cat Power's new one, Beth Orton's sure will make a splash in my rankings. Orton's last album Comfort of Strangers now tops the albums' list for the second year running, while for the time being the track Shopping Trolley from it resides at #1 in this year's counting. While awaiting her new one I've been listening to some of her older ones. Stolen Car from her 1999 release Central Reservation entered the list and as a consequence I picked up one of the many paintings I did of her last year and gave it a brand new look. Needless to say I wasn't too happy with the  painting's original look. Now it's good and I learned a lot about that particular painting, that particular photograph it is modeled after, and about portrait painting in general. Not that 16" is all that tall but when a portrait fills it up it is quite big, bigger than life size. I've made many much bigger top 100 portrait paintings but none ever larger than life. Now it's hanging on my wall and a face that big has quite some presence. More than ever before I'm confronted with the spirit of a painted portrait. The look of the eyes, the curve of the lips, every patch of hair, it all has to be just right or else... the painting will complain. I've never met Beth Orton, never seen her perform, just like the music, her videos, her humor, and I painted a dozen portraits of her.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Cat Power

Cat Power
20" x 10"
oil on canvas, 2011

If you're a Cat Power fan, like me, it has been a long time waiting for a new album. Occasionally a live performance shows up on YouTube or something with a song never recorded on any album before. Recently 4 new songs surfaced as a fan recorded a concert in San Francisco. These songs, all unnamed as of yet, are due to be part of Cat Power's new record. The 4 songs hold great promise for this much anticipated album. For the Top 100 this year I selected the last one from the San Francisco video, called New Song #4 for now. 
Cat Power has been the most painted musician in the Top 100's history and she's about, with or without new album, to take over the #3 spot, currently held by Captain Beefheart, in the 28 years of counting points awarded to musicians, right behind Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.