The journeys of my quest for musical transformation: through a November snowstorm and a cool spring evening to hear Andreas Schärer at the Klavierwerkstatt in Liestal

Sometimes, my quest for musical transformation involves an actual journey. On 21 November 2024, I went through the dark and white night of a snowstorm to the Klavierwerkstatt in Liestal to hear the trio of vocalist Andreas Schärer, guitarist Kalle Kalima, and bassist Tim Lefebvre. Last night, exactly four months later, I went to the same venue on a cool, dry spring evening to hear Schärer and pianist Daniel García. Even without the storm, the trip there felt like a magical quest, with two buses, a train, a third bus, and a walk through the night alongside a stream to get to the venue, where Schärer and García cast their spells. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 March 2025)

Working "against those determined to score political points at the expense of an incredibly vulnerable population” (John Oliver, “ICE Detention”, “Last Week Tonight”, 9 March 2025)

At the end of the story on ICE Detention on the 9 March 2025 episode of "Last Week Tonight", John Oliver calls for resistance at lower levels of goverment to the federal policies of President Donald Trump's administration: “We’re going to have to find ways to push back hard at the state and local level against those determined to score political points at the expense of an incredibly vulnerable population.” While Oliver is specifically discussing immigrants subject to detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his point can also be applied to the scoring of political points with cruelty to all vulnerable populations—especially, with Trump, cruelty to transgender and non-binary people. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 March 2025)

“This dress bugs me”: Eszter Balint in Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” (1984)

In Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise" (1984), Eva (Eszter Balint), a young Hungarian who is moving to Cleveland to live with her aunt, stops in Brooklyn to visit her cousin Willie (John Lurie) and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson). Although Willie first dislikes her and refuses to speak Hungarian with her, he eventually gives her a dress as a present. But later, in a scene that has stuck with my wife Andrea and me, Eva throws the dress away and mutters to herself, in her Hungarian accent, "This dress bugs me." That phrase, with Balint's pronunciation, has long since become part of our private language when we find small things annoying. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 March 2025)

A day with Ishiguro, Morrison, Dickens, and Joyce

My day: first Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2005), "My name is Kathy H"; then, Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" (1970), "The pieces of Cholly’s life could become coherent only in the head of a musician"; then Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" (1854), "Mrs. Sparsit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and heard him then and there, within her (Mrs. Sparsit’s) greedy hearing, tell her how he loved her, and how she was the stake for which he ardently desired to play away all that he had in life"; and then James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1939): "What Barbaras Done to a Barrel Organ Before the Rank, Tank and Bonnbtail." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 March 2025) 

From Adrienne Rich and Emily Dickinson to Johann Jakob Bachofen, “Mutterrecht”, and Basel

For this week's session in my course on Adrienne Rich's poetry, we discussed Rich's poems "I Am in Danger—Sir—" from her 1966 collection "Necessities of Life", along with a chapter on Rich and Emily Dickinson from Betsy Erkkila's 1992 book "The Wicked Sisters: Women Poets, Literary History, and Discord." While discussing Rich's changing understandings of Dickinson from the 1950s to the 1980s, Erkkila also touches on many other milestones in Rich's writing, including her 1976 study "Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience And Institution". Erkkila's list of influences on that book refers to Johann Jakob Bachofen's 1861 book "Mutterrecht"—which made me smile, as Bachofen (1815-1887) was from Basel. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 March 2025)

Sixteen concerts so far this year

With the Skyjack concert on Saturday, I'm up to sixteen concerts this calendar year. But I count double bills as two concerts, so it's not sixteen nights out. Saturday was the nineteenth time I've seen trombonist Andreas Tschopp (who's in the band Hildegard Lernt Fliegen, which I've seen fourteen times). The two solo performances by pianist Brad Mehldau I saw in January were at least the tenth and eleventh time I've seen him. I know I saw two or three more Mehldau shows in about 2000-2005, but I don't have the exact dates. And since my first concert in 1978 (Linda Ronstadt), I'm up to 703 where I know the date. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 March 2025)

The social and communal experience of musical transformation at the Bird’s Eye concert by Swiss-South African band Skyjack, 15 March 2025

As I wrote two years ago, inspired by Ted Gioia's "Music to Raise the Dead", I am on a quest for musical transformation. And as I wrote last May, following Vinnie Sperrazza's "Chronicles" on Substack, the interplay of musicians in jazz (the primary idiom of my quest) offers a model of community to the world. Last night's wonderful concert at the Bird's Eye in Basel by Skyjack (with Swiss musicians Marc Stucki, saxophones, and Andreas Tschopp, trombone, and South African musicians Kyle Shepherd, piano, Shane Cooper, bass, and Jonno Sweetman, drums) brought those points together: when the interplay expands to include band and audience, the musical transformation becomes social and communal. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 March 2025)

Marc Stucki, Shane Cooper, Andreas Tschopp, and Jonno Sweetman of Skyjack