current listening/reading

by paul, on 10.12.2007

I am listening to the fabulous 1960 recording of the miles davis quintet live in copenhagen. this is the famous 50's quintet with coltrane, wynton kelly, paul chambers and philly joe. most of this quintet recorded the most famous jazz album ever, "kind of blue", and the playing (and recording quality) is fantastic. all the tunes are quintet staples, with "so what" being taken way uptempo. it's very cool to hear wynton kelly playing on this, since bill evans was the pianist on the studio version. kelly's harmonies are less expansive than evans, but man does he swing his ass off the whole time.

today I picked up A.J Liebling's "The Sweet Science" from the library. it's a collection of essays about boxing, sports illustrated called it one of the all time great sports books, so I am really looking forward to it. of course, since I posted my last books entry my reading time has been cut way down by my very short commute, so I haven't finished "mr. norrell and jonathan strange" yet, although I am really enjoying it.