Introducing Music to Students

At the end of every semester, I provide links to some of the music that I listen to while grading my students' quizzes, discussion posts, and essays. My writing class is taught entirely online.

This fall semester, one student responded to Jasmine Myra's "Rising." Attracted to Jasmine Myra's saxophone, having played saxophone herself while in high school, my student says that she plans on buying the complete album, especially after I mentioned having the album in my CD alarm clock for the past month or so.

One student responded to Vassilis Tsabropoulos' "Gift of Dreams," which is taken from the Melos album. She said that she found the music "enchanting."

One student responded positively to "Jeg er træt og går til ro," one of the songs taken from Soren Bebe's Echoes album. She found the music "relaxing," she said.

Another student liked both Yuri Honing's "Paperbag" and selections by Matthew Halsall, particularly "Together," "I Have Been Here Before," and "Samatha." The student said he bought one of Matthew Halsall's albums as a result, but he didn't say which one.

What I enjoy is introducing my students to music that they probably had not heard before although I have to admit that one student said that she has heard some of this music when visiting the homes of  family members. The student, however, didn't name anything in particular.

A Favorite Post of Mine

One of my end-of-the-year music posts from 2019 has been getting a lot of attention. This post reviews Matthew Halsall's Oneness, Bagland's Cirkel, and Soren Bebe's Echoes. Since its day of publication, this post of mine has gotten clicked on 430 times, thirteen of them in the last seven days and sixty-four in the last thirty days.

I wish I knew what attracts people to this particular post. I admit that I am much more specific in this post than I have been in some of my other ones about music. Perhaps it is the specificity and the brief excerpts from Bandcamp that attract people.

I guess I know what I need to do in upcoming posts.

Autumn in Northeast Kansas 2024

Although the drought we were experiencing in October reduced the the number of colorful trees, I still found delight in our autumn colors. The pictures appearing below were taken over a period of a week's time. Clicking on each picture will enlarge it.

Ravages of Time

One of the places I enjoy walking is located at the Veterans Administration in Leavenworth. A building located near Lake Jeanette has been deteriorating a little more each year. I don't know whether the Veterans Administration plans on demolishing the building at some point. The overgrown vegetation has at least been removed recently.

 

Sunflowers 2024

Every year around Labor Day, I make a point of visiting the sunflower field at Grinter Farms, which is located between Tonganoxie and Lawrence off of highway 24. This year I got something like 150 pictures in about thirty or forty-five minutes. One of the photographers that morning had been there for three hours and even took pictures with a drone.

I should have returned to this field when the heads matured. The flowers had only recently opened up in the pictures appearing below. 

One my poems about visiting a sunflower field will be published soon. 

Missouri River & Clouds

I have slowly started to take more pictures. My fall last October when I was taking pictures, stepped wrong on a hillside, and ended up making a complete flip backwards while still holding my camera made me reluctant to take many other excursions with my camera. My camera, fortunately, survived the fall. 

The fourth picture here is one of my favorites. It currently serves as the wallpaper on my computer. Clicking on each picture here will make it larger.

Listening for Low Tide_Eric Hoffer Award

Listening for Low Tide, my chapbook, has been awarded an honorable mention in the poetry chapbook category by the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

I'm pleasantly surprised and very happy at seeing the recognition given to my poems.

The commentary on my chapbook reads,

"Listening for Low Tide, James P. Cooper, Choeofpleirn Press - In these metaphysical yet modern poems, the boundaries between dreaming and waking blur, and so do the borders incurred on maps and within human existence. These verses remind readers about the value of solitude and silence in this ever busy and confusing world. This collection asks for a moment to "hear / the wintering geese before eight / of them glide onto the far shore." Place is deeply important, presenting deep reflections about cities, roadsides, rural spaces, and personal ranges that gently evoke remembrance of how even the darkest train track can shape a person's life."

Poem in Slant, Spring 2024

A poem of mine appears in the Spring, 2024 issue of Slant. Click on the following link to read my poem titled "With No Life Preserver Within Reach." 

My parents, by the way, moved to Northern Ireland, my mother's home, when my father retired after spending thirty years in the U.S. Navy.

Ernie Miller Nature Center

I recently visited the Ernie Miller Nature Center, which is located on the edge of the Kansas City metro area. It's a place that I hope to visit again soon, despite being able to hear the city traffic in the distance. The picture appearing below appeals to me because the dead tree in the foreground seems to resemble a dragon or an alien creature of some kind. It helps to enlarge the picture by clicking on it.

Spring Color

A few pictures of spring along the Missouri River appear below. I missed getting more pictures of the pear trees when they were in bloom. After my fall last autumn, something that I described in a previous post, I had not started to take pictures again until recently.

Glacial Hills Review: A Call for Submissions

Glacial Hills Review is looking for nonfiction, poetry, and art. The deadline is May 26. For more information, go to https://www.choeofpleirnpress.com/home

Calling for Chapbooks

 

 

Choeofpleirn Press is calling for submissions to our annual chapbook contest. More details appear below and at our website.

Poem in Stone Poetry Journal

A recent poem of mine appears in Stone Poetry Journal. Use the following link to read my poem, which is titled "Forgetting Everything But Regrets." It took a little while before this poem of mine found a home. 

The act of making peanut butter, which is something that appears in the poem, is described in an earlier blog post of mine. 

Poems can be found in everyday activities. That discovery is something that I wish I knew when I was much younger. It would have been so much easier to come up with poems for those poetry workshops that I enrolled in as an undergraduate and graduate student if I had examined my everyday activities more closely.

Poem in Flint Hills Review

One of my poems appears in the recently released edition of Flint Hills Review. Normally, the annual issue is released during the summer; the recent issue was delayed because of moving the offices at Emporia State University, among other things.

"A Seam of Coal,"  my poem, references Northern Ireland, particularly Belfast, where my mother was born and raised, and where my family often returned for visits when I was younger. The Short Strand is a working class section of Belfast. USDB, by the way, is an abbreviation for the United States Disciplinary Barracks, aka military prison, located at Fort Leavenworth. I taught a writing class there one semester ten or more years ago.

Because the picture is hard to read, I am adding another copy of the poem. 

A Seam of Coal

Leavenworth, Kansas

Every few minutes 
the horns of the coal trains hauling 
empty hoppers to Wyoming interrupt 
a Saturday night. My computer digests 
what appears on my screen 
thanks to the plant matter from millions 
of years ago. The smell from coal fires 

reminds me of the smoke-filled air of Belfast
that greeted us when our ferry entered the lough.
My grandfather once shouldered bags of coal 
he delivered to the row houses of the Short Strand. 
My sister and I brought in a bucketful 
for our aunt and sat in front of the fireplace,
rubbing in its heat. One uncle, not having
a hot water heater, kept a fire burning
through the year, his own Burning Mountain.

What punctuates my night offers hope
to the inmates of the USDB, their prison
located next to the train tracks. They dream 
of clutching the ladder at the end of a hopper
and, despite their freezing in the January air,
jumping off somewhere in Nebraska.

Jazz Recommendations for 2023

 

My jazz recommendations for 2023 appear below in no particular order. 

Jan Harbeck Quartet, Balanced. One jazz recording that I overlooked in 2022 is Jan Harbeck Quartet’s Balanced, which wasn’t released until late November of that year. Unlike previous recordings by Harbeck, where he plays standards like “Harlem Nocturne” or “I Love Paris,” this new album contains original music written by Harbeck and, with the exception of the opening track, “Balanced,” the album creates a dominant mood that conjures late nights in an urban jazz club. A fan of his music since 2011, I look forward to hearing upcoming albums by the Jan Harbeck Quartet.

Eriksen Quartet, As Good As It Gets. This new album reflects the close working relationship that the Espen Eriksen Trio and Andy Sheppard have established from having created two previous albums--Perfectly Unhappy and In the Mountains. The interplay between saxophone and piano is particularly strong on the tracks “Sticks and Stones,” “Pressure,” and “Drifting Clouds.” The entire album has gotten a lot of airplay in my house and car.
 

Helge Lien Trio, with Tore Brunborg, Funeral Dance. With this album, Helge Lien has included Tore Brunborg on saxophone.  Although Tore Brunborg has composed some of the tracks, the entire album has more of an atmospheric feel, in that the saxophone, instead of engaging in gymnastics, aids in creating a dominant mood. There are still individual tracks worthy of attention, such as “Apres Un Reve,” “Riss,” and “Kaldanuten.”

Soren Bebe Trio, Here Now. Contemplative, reflective, introspective, comforting—these adjectives describe much of Soren Bebe’s most recent album containing his trio, the first album of theirs to be released since Echoes (2019). My wife says she can imagine herself sitting outside watching the sunset while listening to this album. Although I would prefer much longer tracks because many of them are four minutes or less, I still find pleasure in such tracks as “Here Now,” “Tangeri,” "Winter," “Folksy (To Jan),” “Summer,” and “On and On.”

Matthew Halsall, An Ever Changing View. Finding inspiration in nature, in sculpture, and in the cityscape in Manchester, Matthew Halsall has created music that brings together the percussion pieces that he has collected over the years. Although there are many memorable tracks, one in particular that I like is titled “Calder Shapes.” It’s Gavin Barras’ bass that originally caught my attention. For a full appreciation of the album, I recommend listening to Matthew Halsall’s three-part podcast, which is available at YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpql41trSHs&t=37s&ab_channel=GondwanaRecords).