Category Archives: Music

Uilleann Pipes

Landesschau Baden-Württemberg: Handwerkskunst! Wie man einen Dudelsack baut. (YouTube, 45min)

“Der irische Dudelsack gilt als der Rolls Royce unter den Sackpfeifen: Schwierig zu spielen, schwierig zu bauen – aber eben besonders edel, weil sein Klang der menschlichen Stimme so nahekommt. Wie kommt so ein exotisches Instrument nach Wendelsheim in die schwäbische Provinz? Und wie wird es hergestellt?”

Sehr beeindruckend, wie Dudelsackbauer Andreas Rogge und sein Team diese Instrumente in höchster Vollendung bauen.

Wie es klingt, wenn man Uilleann Pipes in Vollendung spielt, kann man z. B. hier hören und sehen:

Catherine Ashcroft & Maurice Dickson (Mochara): Táimse im’ Chodladh/King of the Pipers. (YouTube, 7min)

Ein bisschen mehr über die Geschichte des Instruments und der Musik erfährt man in diesem Video zum immateriellen Kulturerbe: Uilleann piping (YouTube, 10min, in English).

“Aretha, will you do it — but you’ve got to do it in Pavarotti’s key?”

The Washington Post: Aretha: Her story was in her songs. “Six songs tell you as much about Aretha Franklin as any memoir ever could. The Queen of Soul was not much for talking about her life, so with the help of Oprah Winfrey, Paul Simon, Questlove and others, we peel back the layers of emotion, technique and lived experience she packed into these key performances.”

Link via MetaFilter.

“[I]t’s a universal dream state”

NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert: Penguin Cafe. (YouTube, 15:55min)

“The music of Penguin Cafe is like no other. Its origins date back to the early ’70s, within fever dreams Simon Jeffes had that were brought on by food poisoning. In those dreams he imagined a dispassionate world “where everyone lived in big concrete blocks and spent their lives looking into screens. In one room, there was a couple making love lovelessly. In another there was a musician sat at a vast array of equipment, but with headphones on, so there was no actual music in the room.” Eerily accurate. But he also imagined a place, the Penguin Cafe, where folks could gather, for pleasure, cheer and music. He wanted to hear what that music would sound like, and so created the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. I was always a huge fan of that original music; listeners of NPR may have heard it often in-between news stories during the many years I directed All Things Considered. While Simon Jeffes died in 1997, his son Arthur has been creating new music infused with his father’s original inspiration. He calls his group, simply, Penguin Cafe. You can hear Brazilian sounds in the rhythms, classical and minimalism in the strings, Asia in its harmonium, African sounds in the kalimbas. But honestly, it’s none of these; it’s a universal dream state.”

Penguincafe.com is their official website.

One of the pieces by The Penguin Cafe Orchestra you’ve probably heard is Perpetuum Mobile (YouTube, 4:29min, audio only)