Friday Challenge - The Album Cover

[Aloysius16]

Something about this one - gun club and roll neck - looks like a very current SF approved look. Perhaps one for our Scandinavia contingent.

 

[am55]

View attachment 1051517

Something about this one - gun club and roll neck - looks like a very current SF approved look. Perhaps one for our Scandinavia contingent.

Go with the original!

 

[Purplelabel]

 

[Riva]

We dress up exactly like this every weekend. Too easy!

 

[EFV]

I'll probably go with one of these:

 

[DiplomaticTies]

I'll probably go with one of these:

View attachment 1051834
View attachment 1051833

Looking forward to see that!

 

[DiplomaticTies]

There has been a lot of interest for this challenge which is encouraging, but so far no one has contributed with an actual submission. So therefore I will submit a first attempt. A famous recording by one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. Milstein had a thing for using fancy scarves when he recorded or rehearsed, that gave me the idea. I couldn't get an orchestra to back me up, but I think it's important to make this challenge something that is possible to do. I fear that many might be put off because they have ambitions that are too high.

I might do another one in the pop genre later, but I thought I would get the ball rolling.

 

[cashchie]

If anything, I just want to say thanks for the OP. Some great inspo there, and some great albums. It's been a long long time since I listened to some Weezer, and I forgot just how great that first album is.

 

[EFV]

Not so obvious perhaps, but definitely the kinda mindset I've been in today. Dungen is a Swedish prog band, that for some reason (even though everything's in Swedish) made it big in Japan. It's colorful, sometimes melancholic, nostalgic and a bit out there.

 

[DiplomaticTies]

Not so obvious perhaps, but definitely the kinda mindset I've been in today. Dungen is a Swedish prog band, that for some reason (even though everything's in Swedish) made it big in Japan. It's colorful, sometimes melancholic, nostalgic and a bit out there.

View attachment 1052948
View attachment 1052949

Great interpretation. Great band too, not least Reine Fiske, one of the best guitarists in the world. For those SF members that don’t know Dungen here is a typical review of the album @EFV choose: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2573-ta-det-lugnt/

 

[am55]

Not so obvious perhaps, but definitely the kinda mindset I've been in today. Dungen is a Swedish prog band, that for some reason (even though everything's in Swedish) made it big in Japan. It's colorful, sometimes melancholic, nostalgic and a bit out there.

View attachment 1052948
View attachment 1052949

Channeling a younger, much better taste version of:

 

[am55]

My photoshop skills are abysmal, apologies in advance.



Emil Gilels is one of my favourite pianists. Against the all-encompassing, ice-cold mountain of Richter, his warmth, empathy, understanding but also the outbursts of furious passion and power, the hint of naughtiness and of course the fabulous hair always reminded me of a kookaburra.

I've updated the look to something Gilels would wear today, which I wore a few weeks ago. White tie is a little formal for the recital hall, at least outside the US and Austria; in any case a good set is out of the means of most pianists. I find long ties quite annoying when doing anything that involves leaning forward or carrying things, even with a tie clip.

Black and white because to like and promote the Russian piano school today is either obvious, or old fashioned.

@Clouseau was kind enough to point out the resemblance with Franju's Judex (1963), which I haven't seen, so, call it a Franco-French collaboration. The bird head idea came from a Debussy Suite Bergamasque and other piano works album from decades ago whose pianist had a cockerel's head superimposed. I unfortunately cannot find a photo of that (maybe @DiplomaticTies knows what I am talking about) so will instead insert a frame from Judex channeling Last Year at Marienbad:

The works: both the Liszt Sonata and the Shostakovich second sonata are amongst my favourite ever pieces, to play (hack through) and especially to listen; and it is Gilels that I choose almost every time. I've caught myself whistling parts of Shostakovich's second sonata many times, particularly the last movement; yet when I play it is lifeless, no matter what I do; like Richter with the Dvorak concerto, Gilels makes something come alive from the mundane. Original here.

I've inserted myself wearing a Hober and bespoke (look at that shoulder line!) in this Messiaen Quatuor cover, worn this week; you'll have to take my word for it:



It is more often talked about than performed or heard, but it is a work that had a profound effect on me as a composer and musician, and caused me to frantically check out Messiaen works from the library to study the rest. I think this, more than other works (e.g. Vingt Regards) transcends the religious to reach some higher human truth, or however you want to call it.

The work was composed, and premiered, when Messiaen was a prisoner of war in Germany in 1941, by prisoners using borrowed instruments living what must have felt like the end of times depicted in the Book of Revelation passage quoted at the beginning.

Almost a century later, in a world that has not known anything approaching that horror since, I "look back" because what I hear is an incredible message of hope being sculpted from the very bottom and most hopeless situation; in later works Messiaen's capacity for hope and joy (e.g. Turangalila) came through much more directly. Indeed we woke up from the end of times and built the future and now live in (comparative) paradise.

And of course Messaien's obsession with birds ties in with the first attempt.

(original)

Quick one to finish:



I took the liberty to update tavaresh Sofronitsky's suit and tie to match the sensitivities of SF in 2018. Shantung monochrome tie, merino suit with a higher gorge and a dimple.

And I do nothing else, because Sofronitsky simply understands and presents Scriabin as it is meant to be. This legendary recording contains, amongst many other great works, Two Poems op. 32, one of the few late Romantic works that surprised me. And I must admit to having heard them for a decade and a half without understanding them, until I heard Sofronitsky.

If only we could update the recording methods and the piano used by the tavaresh. Unlike his admirers Sviatoslav and Emil, he did not travel much and recorded on old, broken pianos. One thing that every pianist eventually learns is that the instrument does not (much) matter; I had heard masterpieces take off on cheap clinky uprights, and conversely the uninspired student can make the best Steinway D sound dead (or like a John Cage work). Here we get not the piece but the spirit of the piece, the instrument serving as an abstraction divorcing us from the search for sound and allowing us to focus on what really matters, the philosophy of musicality.

(original)

 

[Thrift Vader]

not sure which one(s) are your entry. but it was thoroughly entertaining.

 

[Riva]

My photoshop skills are abysmal, apologies in advance.

View attachment 1053418

Emil Gilels is one of my favourite pianists. Against the all-encompassing, ice-cold mountain of Richter, his warmth, empathy, understanding but also the outbursts of furious passion and power, the hint of naughtiness and of course the fabulous hair always reminded me of a kookaburra.

I've updated the look to something Gilels would wear today, which I wore a few weeks ago. White tie is a little formal for the recital hall, at least outside the US and Austria; in any case a good set is out of the means of most pianists. I find long ties quite annoying when doing anything that involves leaning forward or carrying things, even with a tie clip.

Black and white because to like and promote the Russian piano school today is either obvious, or old fashioned.

@Clouseau was kind enough to point out the resemblance with Franju's Judex (1963), which I haven't seen, so, call it a Franco-French collaboration. The bird head idea came from a Debussy Suite Bergamasque and other piano works album from decades ago whose pianist had a cockerel's head superimposed. I unfortunately cannot find a photo of that (maybe @DiplomaticTies knows what I am talking about) so will instead insert a frame from Judex channeling Last Year at Marienbad:

The works: both the Liszt Sonata and the Shostakovich second sonata are amongst my favourite ever pieces, to play (hack through) and especially to listen; and it is Gilels that I choose almost every time. I've caught myself whistling parts of Shostakovich's second sonata many times, particularly the last movement; yet when I play it is lifeless, no matter what I do; like Richter with the Dvorak concerto, Gilels makes something come alive from the mundane. Original here.

I've inserted myself wearing a Hober and bespoke (look at that shoulder line!) in this Messiaen Quatuor cover, worn this week; you'll have to take my word for it:

View attachment 1053421

It is more often talked about than performed or heard, but it is a work that had a profound effect on me as a composer and musician, and caused me to frantically check out Messiaen works from the library to study the rest. I think this, more than other works (e.g. Vingt Regards) transcends the religious to reach some higher human truth, or however you want to call it.

The work was composed, and premiered, when Messiaen was a prisoner of war in Germany in 1941, by prisoners using borrowed instruments living what must have felt like the end of times depicted in the Book of Revelation passage quoted at the beginning.

Almost a century later, in a world that has not known anything approaching that horror since, I "look back" because what I hear is an incredible message of hope being sculpted from the very bottom and most hopeless situation; in later works Messiaen's capacity for hope and joy (e.g. Turangalila) came through much more directly. Indeed we woke up from the end of times and built the future and now live in (comparative) paradise.

And of course Messaien's obsession with birds ties in with the first attempt.

(original)

Quick one to finish:

View attachment 1053422

I took the liberty to update tavaresh Sofronitsky's suit and tie to match the sensitivities of SF in 2018. Shantung monochrome tie, merino suit with a higher gorge and a dimple.

And I do nothing else, because Sofronitsky simply understands and presents Scriabin as it is meant to be. This legendary recording contains, amongst many other great works, Two Poems op. 32, one of the few late Romantic works that surprised me. And I must admit to having heard them for a decade and a half without understanding them, until I heard Sofronitsky.

If only we could update the recording methods and the piano used by the tavaresh. Unlike his admirers Sviatoslav and Emil, he did not travel much and recorded on old, broken pianos. One thing that every pianist eventually learns is that the instrument does not (much) matter; I had heard masterpieces take off on cheap clinky uprights, and conversely the uninspired student can make the best Steinway D sound dead (or like a John Cage work). Here we get not the piece but the spirit of the piece, the instrument serving as an abstraction divorcing us from the search for sound and allowing us to focus on what really matters, the philosophy of musicality.

(original)

You just took us for a ride in an orchestra. A triumphant post most fitting of the thread. Bravo!

 

[Clouseau]

Jimmy got older…