Welcome to Scratch My Brain.
There is a lot of very cool art in the world. Music. Literature. Visual Art. Theater. Unclassifiable weird stuff. A large portion of the most adventurous and moving art being made will never be written about in your local newspaper or most music magazines. News of this art spreads from person to person, and through local scenes of open minded people, and adventurous listeners, readers, and art fans.
I have invited several people with great taste and an enjoyment of art that pushes boundaries to post here and share the things that move them. Hopefully some of those things will move you too.
To get the ball rolling, I want to point you to an article written by Dave Taylor and published in the International Trombone Journal entitled “Risk.” I know a trombone journal article usually wouldn’t scratch many brains, but give this one a shot. Dave Taylor is a fascinating cat, and a wonderfully varied musician.
The first paragraph of “Risk”:
Gil Evans and I were walking in Venice one night. He told me that Duke Ellington told him: “If you keep yourself open, you never know who will come along, pull your coat, and take you left.” This article is a personal journal about how I have always believed in this principle.
A pdf of the entire article can be found here.
See you soon, and as Father Valente would say, “only listen to good music.”