Happy Thursday Friends,

I’m doing swell and I hope you are too. After the very recent, very exciting event of being mentioned on

As we’re making the transition from summer to fall, things are undeniably changing. The days are getting shorter, the earliest parts of the morning have the slightest hint of cool air, and if you’re anything like me, you’re starting to slow yourself down from the heat of summer.

I’ve been spending a lot of time at home lately, which is of course not at all unusual, but I’ve been steadily (and slowly) crafting things to provide myself (and my guests) more comfort in the coming months while we huddle together inside and out. As a result of this, I’ve spent less time writing and more time painting things, more time creating sawdust, and more time with my hands in the dirt while playing in the garden. And that’s not a bad thing at all.

So now that we’re all here (all three hundred?!? of us), let’s chirp.

Film of the week: Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro)

Black Orpheus is a film that has lived on my to-watch list for quite some time. The 1959 film, directed by French filmmaker Marcel Camus, was the winner of the 1959 Palme d’Or at Cannes and also went on to win the 1960 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film itself takes place in and around Rio De Janeiro, during the week of Carnival, and mimics the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The film stars Breno Mello as Orfeu, a handsome trolley conductor who, legend has it, can make the sun rise by playing his guitar, and Marpessa Dawn as Eurydice. A beautiful, timid stranger traveling to town to visit her cousin. Escaping from a mysterious man that she believes wants her dead. As someone who is Afro-Latino, the opening scenes of the jubilant cast (overwhelmingly made up of Afro-Brazilians) dancing in their favela brought on an immediate sense of joy. It’s the kind of joy I always get when I travel to places like Central America, South America, or the Caribbean. It’s the kind of joy I always get when I travel to places where it’s normal (and openly celebrated) to be black. It’s beautiful, it’s exciting, it’s blasted with color and it’s as lively as anything I’ve ever watched on a screen.

The film has another side that progressively becomes darker as the characters quite literally encounter Death. The sense of the occult becomes ever present and while watching, I was so amused thinking that Clarice Lispector was in the same city, writing in her unique, hauntingly seductive style. And while the film is beautiful, and alluring, and very much worth watching, it has faced plenty of criticism for the way it exoticizes the lives of poor black Brazilians. While I think it’s fair to question the cultural sensitivity of a white, French director in the 1950s (especially one who is making a film about people of color), in the end, the film is a fantasy. A fact is not hidden at all. And like many good things in art or in life, controversy exists.

What is up for less debate is the impact that this film had on the music world. The film features original music by Brazilian composers Luis Bonfá and Antônio Carlos Jobim, and because of this, the film played a large role in the coming boom of Bossa Nova that spread throughout the world for the next several decades. As someone who is a jazz (and likewise Bossa Nova) nerd, I know the impact this music had on jazz musicians across the globe. Look around and you will find covers of Black Orpheus songs by the likes of Paul Desmond, Quincy Jones, Vince Guaraldi, and Gerry Mulligan to name a few.

But anyway, give the film a watch. You can find it on HBO Max, Mubi, or Criterion.

Home of the week: The Burkhardt-Cohen Residence, Paul Rudolph (1956)

I spend a lot of time watching home tours, but it’s not often that I stumble across such a fantastic home that’s close enough to me that I could drive there and back home on one tank of gas. In my mind, I don’t often think about great architecture existing in Florida, but thanks to Open Space, I recently learned about the American architect Paul Rudolph, who designed several residential and commercial buildings in the Sarasota area in the 1950s and 60s. This particular home, owned by Philadelphia attorneys and investors Betsy and Ed Cohen since 1981, was built in 1956 on Sarasota’s Casey Key. Just steps from the beach, the home tucks itself between an incredibly intoxicating (but familiar to any Floridian) bundle of winding Oak trees.

What I love about this home the most, apart from the obvious successes in its design, is the emphasis that it places on one of my favorite aspects of architecture: context. When you look through this home from inside, or even while looking at it from an aerial view (as seen in the full home tour here), you can see that it takes nothing away from it’s surroundings. The natural draw of your eye is outward. To the trees, the water, and through them both, the sky. When seen from above, there is a very stark contrast between this house and the towering, pastel figures that sit above the manicured tree line next door. And although this style of home seems somewhat inhabitable for the type of life I live day to day (i.e. someone who isn’t entirely clutter averse and likes to make piles in the corner of rooms, i.e. someone who has a dangerous affinity for a trinket or twenty, i.e. I am a cozy, cluttered, cottage type) I have to admire its beauty and its seamlessness.

“Architecture is a personal effort, and the fewer people coming between you and your work - the better.”

Paul Rudolph

In 1996, the couple purchased the adjacent lot (if only we were all multi-million dollar investors we too could start our own Mid-Century Modernist compounds) which allowed them to build another home for their visiting children and grandchildren that was designed by Japanese architect Toshiko Mori. The addition blends wonderfully into the space, still placing great emphasis on the context of the nature around it, while still being in sync with the original home next door.

Watch the full home tour here. See more photos of the home here.

Album(s) of the week:

• Kenny Drew And His Progressive Piano by Kenny Drew (1954)

By now I know that you know: I like jazz. Okay, I love jazz. But the only thing I love more than jazz, is finding a new jazz artist to dive into. I recently stumbled across Kenny Drew, and as a diehard fan of jazz pianists like Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson, and Erroll Garner (to name a few), I was quickly struck by the liveliness of Drew’s style. Drew began recording in the 1950s, but after a decade of recording in the states he decided to move to Europe. This move is likely the reason he wasn’t ultimately as popular as his some of his other American counterparts. It was a decision he later spoke about his gratitude for, as he felt it gave him a more unique creative path as a musician as opposed to if he had stayed in his hometown of New York. Drew passed away in 1993 in Copenhagen, where he had lived since 1961, and where he recorded decades of music with legendary Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.

Favorite tracks: “Bluesville”, “Many Miles Away”, “Chartruse”

• Livin’ Love by The Feminine Complex (1969)

Sometimes we have to bow down to our streaming overloads, and thanks to Spotify, I found The Feminine Complex. Founded in Nashville, Tennessee in 1966, the group was an all-female garage band who only released one studio album, Livin’ Love. When I first stumbled across the song “Are You Lonesome Like Me”, I knew that it was going to be something I came back to over and over again, and I’m glad to say that I have. The album has a funky, punky, soulful, and slightly psychedelic mixture of songs that I’ve loved listening to while remodeling my kitchen. There are moments in the album that feel as gentle as silk, some that feel as sharp as a knife, and some that simply say “I’m just a girl.”

Favorite tracks: “Are You Lonesome Like Me?”, “Six O’clock in the Morning”, “I’ve Been Workin’ On You”, “Love Love Love”, “Is This a Dream?”

• This unbelievable video of Nina Simone from thejazzestate (via IG), performing “The Sounds of Silence” at the Montreux Jazz Festival (1968)

thejazzestate

A post shared by @thejazzestate

Well you’re here so thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Talk again soon.

Tenderly,

-Zach