David Ayers

I suppose part of what I was trying to work out when I was trying to think about this thread is what the audience of jazz means. To be interested in jazz of a previous period means to be an audience of records. As you say, the audience of improv really is different. Improv has a vast recorded archive, but is still seen as a living practice. Is jazz a living practice with a dedicated audience? Or is the audience basically record collectors plus aspirant jazz musicians? Folk I take your word for it, but I know exactly what you mean, and there seem to be a host of cool new artists. So-called classical music which is aways said to be dying has huge audiences, despite the prevalence of the recorded archive. On Saturday there was an almost full house at the Festival Hall for Enescu. Enescu! But they were most certainly right to be there. I think what you are getting at is that, once you take out improv, the jazz audience consists of seniors who mostly look down on current jazz artists, and are far more likely to hoover up a Joe Harriott reissue (to stick to the British dimension) than become Byron Wallen completists. There is something strange - across the board - about the notion of a 'jazz audience' and its dynamic vis-a-vis current practice, that seems to set jazz apart from other fields.

Do it. Do it.

Hm. Interesting.

That's it!

A pity the Schein and Rosenmüller we're not included, but wasn't there a Cantus Köln box...?

I don't know about West Coast, but a white East Coast bassist told me he felt he was excluded from work by labels who wanted homogeneously black bands. I believe him in the sense that as a musician he was (and still is) better than some of the people who were commonly called. He was at least called for some famous records with white musicians. It is pretty clear that at that time race was a big feature of image and marketing of recorded music.

People want these boxes they do. For me I guess there is more fun in following the living practice live and in recordings. That is especially true of HIP (yuck, hate the term) where getting in to how things might be sounded is much more to the point than accumulating the repertoire. Which is in any case not a real repertoire, beyond a few peaks, just stuff that can be drawn on by folks thinking about that. It doesn't add up to a boxable history. To my way of thinking. I also don't get it on Living Stereo and other early dinosaurs. I guess to me it is like buying a box of Fifties beermats for folks who were not around in the Fifties to pick them up. Or who were. Anyhoo, got a tombstone myself, the DG Strauss,but for me it's a kind of existential thing...

More of a 'new reissue' than a bargain by the standards of you tightwads, but a handy collection nonetheless: http://www.mdt.co.uk/boulez-pierre-le-domaine-musical-1956-1967-decca-10cds.html

So I picked up three Frode Gjerstad titles from Rays. That was three out of a dozen or more, and that dozen did not include titles I already knew about, including Chuck's offering. So I checked on Gjerstad's website and did some counting. He released 25 CDs from 2010-2014 - five a year - and so far one this year. It seems everybody is releasing oceans of material but you just might never hear of it or see it. Case in point, I bought a John Butcher/Matthew Shipp CD on the Fataka label. Yes, the Fataka label, which I had never heard of, but which I am told is a popular label. All relative, I suspect. It was their second release, in an edition of 500, played at OTO but not the OTO label. In what sense is it a label? Only just, it seems, but - possibly - very select. But you know what, I like this world of numerous short-run, not-even-sure-that-is-really-a-label label things that are there and gone at the same time. Often vinyl only. Pick them up at gigs, stumble across them randomly in the racks in an actual store. But order them over the internet? Or download them? What would be the point of that?

More music than I can write up at the moment, except to mention that I just heard rare outing of Enescu's Symphony No. 3. One thing to 'spin a disk', another thing to see people actually set up and do it. I won't expand, though if you ever get a chance to hear this symphony...nah, just kidding. You never will.

Spotify has the Fresh Sound version.

Each of Salonen's Philharmonia concerts is 100% Stravinsky. Maybe as close as you'll get.

Of course he didn't write one. But maybe he should? If we can cobble together a fake Elgar 3 based on not much, surely we can come up with a Mahler Violin Concerto based on, well, nothing. It would be a lot of work for one person so the way ahead is crowd-sourcing. A chain of composers writing four bars each, do it like speed chess so you get one day for your four bars or lose them. Only rule is it has to sound like Mahler. We could start with some given themes, but I think it would be better to just start. This idea has legs. It does.

3rd Violin Concerto in the performance by Kremer. Like it.

Magnus Lindberg by contrast does not quote Petrushka, but it was his Feria which prompted my thoughts. Feria means holiday, in the sense of market-day, and Petrushka open with an evocation of a market day. Lindberg's piece is based on a fanfare which vaguely put me in mind of the trumpet entry in Petrushka. Not even close, really, but that was the line of thought. A terrific Lindberg piece...

Though I have sat through many Rites, and have two more to look forward to this year, it is usually by accident. Firebird in full is my actual favorite... [good link, btw]

It seems so rarely to get played. Lots of recordings. But. For example, Salonen has a Stravinsky series in 2015-6. 17 pieces in five concerts. But no Petruchka. No Firebird either, but that is a staple here in London and like the Rite you can hear it twice or more a year (and sometimes do). Boulez conducts it and I think I remember hearing him do it, but otherwise it comes up very little. I know it well from record and for that reason I've always thought of it as a staple. But is it?

That's commitment! On another note - and this belongs on the thread on next season which I can't find at the moment - women conductors. Talk about a glass ceiling. At the Barbican next season there is precisely one orchestral performance with a woman conducting. That's Marin Alsop who has conducted here a few times and is of all women conductors the best known from recordings. That Barbican season also features compositions by four women excluding the odd song by Alma Mahler), the established Judith Bingham and three commissions from names not yet familiar to me. Hardly an avalanche. Anyway, what I am actually looking forward to next season is an LPO concert at the Festival Hall with Susanna Mälkki. She'll be conducting Liadov, Prokofiev and Sibelius 1, so hardly the modern repertoire in which she is expert, not least from a long stint with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. I don't know her records which are all über-modern...but anyway she has a growing profile, is yet another product of the Sibelius Academy, is Principal Conductor designate of the Helsinki PO, and, while this is not her first time on a London stage, will be my first time. British orchestras now are full if women but we need to see more on the podium.

Time (and money!) well spent, my friend. Thanks for the write up. I could write you a page or two on where to sit in the London concert halls. The Barbican can be bad; more than half of the Royal Festival Hall is hopeless. The story is that Simon Rattle has asked for a new concert hall in London to meet modern standards, as a condition for signing up as Principal Conductor for the LSO. I hope we get it.

The third series has some whacky hippy stuff going on.

For his 90th birthday. Yikes.

Not to be missed. Half an hour well spent of anybody's time.

The return of the politics forum.

For breakfast I've had the Concerto for Piano and Strings, followed by the (highly contrasting!) Requiem, in recordings conducted by Polyansky on Chandos. Who is Polyansky anyway? He seemed to do a job lot of recordings for Chandos but is otherwise nowhere to be seen.

Next year. The Lawrence Power is playing the Viola Concerto with the BBCSO on January 30th next year. So I got the date, orchestra and conductor wrong. But Jurowksi does conduct Schnittke. He does. I know he does. In fact I do know he does, as he has a recording of the fourth symphony coming out on Pentatone.