Low notes, Wayne's VW, orgies, etc.

The increasingly indispensable ffolks at trrill drew my attention to this riveting Dutch page about the extreme highs and lows of the human voice. Viktor Wichniakov singing a double low G is one of the hair-raisingest things I've ever heard. The noises that Mariah Carey makes don't strike me as being actual notes, but Jonathan emphatically disagrees.

I meant to link promptly to Ben Ratliff's Times interview with jazz composer Wayne Shorter just before Christmas, but I tarried, and the story now seems to have disappeared into the abyss of the paper's pay-per-view archive. If you missed it, take my word that it was fascinating; Ratliff asked Shorter to listen and comment on a favorite CD, which, semi-surprisingly, turned out to be the complete Vaughan Williams symphonies. Puts me in mind of the fact that the ghostly jazz-like sections of Vaughan Williams' Sixth Symphony — his greatest, one of the great works of the century — was inspired by the death of an entire jazz band at the Café de Paris during the London Blitz.

Like Marion Rosenberg, I enjoy a good orgy. From 5 PM Wednesday to 7 PM Friday, you can listen, via the miracle of internet radio, to the complete works of Bartok, with an Ol' Dirty Bastard retrospective in the middle.

Addendum: Felix Salmon has ventured into the greyest murk of the Timesian abyss and uncovered a permanent link to the Wayne Shorter interview. Obrigado! Happy new year!