What albums did you listen to today?

I've gotten to where I like Satie's work because it feels as if he was a classical pop-song writer with all those cycles barely stretching past four or five minutes.

Mingus...oh boy...jazz is something I've never been able to get into for some reason. It isn't for lack of trying. I've played alto sax for over a decade I've played in a jazz-type band I've forced myself to listen to hundreds of albums from Mingus and Miles to Coltrane and Monk. I've listened to hundreds of Ellington tunes and several Ella Fitzgerald songbook collections. I've heard Love Supreme and Kind of Blue and Mingus Ah Uhm and The Ink Spots and Billie Holiday compilations and while I do really enjoy some of it (mostly the vocal jazz/ jazz pop sort - and I've grown to revere Django Reinhardt's playing ability), putting on any single Miles Davis record immediately makes my head hurt. In a Sentimental mood, though, I could listen to ten different versions of that in a row.

So far my three main introductions into classical have been most of Tchaikovsky's work, Erik Satie and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

I haven't heard them, nope. But I'm really, erm, 'green' when it comes to music composed before 1930. Every couple months I'll dive back into it in hopes of coming out with a better understanding of the music. I've done some basic background research on the most famous fellows, but as for telling you which Beethoven symphonies I like and which I don't and which I have the patience for and why...well I just couldn't say at this juncture.

But today, by friendly recommendation, I'm listening to:

Ludwig Van Beethoven - Piano Sonata 32

And a bunch of random Chopin with no real forethought.