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A Lark Ascending

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  1. He sold out his latest book and the copies of the Atzmon/Barnes CD he had in the interval. He seems to have a very loyal following. And I won the raffle (a Pete Hurt CD)! Bet they don't have raffles in New York clubs.
  2. No snow in Notts yet but the rest of the country is getting a visit: A lorry makes its way through a snow-covered landscape near Brough - Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA A robin perches on a fence as snow falls below the Pen y Fan mountain in Brecon, south Wales Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2017/jan/12/snowy-weather-hits-the-uk-in-pictures
  3. Gilad Atzmon Plays Coltrane (Bonington Theatre Nottingham) GILAD ATZMON (SAXES); FRANK HARRISON (PIANO); YARON STAVI (BASS); ASAF SIRKIS (DRUMS) Very enjoyable gig of famous Coltrane tunes. Mainly ballads but the band occasionally sped things up - took the roof off with 'Impressions'. Four superb musicians - particularly taken by Harrison. Atzmon was anxious that we knew that this particular theme was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Coltrane, not the 50th of the Six Day War or the centenary of The Balfour Declaration. Theatre packed to the gills.
  4. Dis 3: 153/58/65/123 - Sunday after New Year and Epiphany (a week late). Disc 3 of the first - not as engaging as the first two. One of those 'funny voices' pieces to start. No 3....and then 4.
  5. What a fabulous shot. Berlin, Germany - Snow falls in front of the Reichstag building Photograph: Felipe Trueba/EPA https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2017/jan/11/best-photos-of-the-day-czech-swans-and-a-thai-drill#img-20
  6. The first classical piece that clicked with me. I was initially captured by the tune in the last movement heard on the radio. A friend had a copy that I borrowed and played to death - then it was the brooding first movement that grabbed me. Up to that point my attempts at classical music - Mozart, Beethoven - had failed as it all seemed so dainty and appeared to come in kit form (obviously a complete misapprehension); there seemed to be something so organic in that opening Sibelius movement (equally misguided as it has a classical structure beneath the surface). Last Night Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Conductor - Nicholas Collon & Presenter - Stephen Johnson Not one of the Shosty pieces that you see round these parts regularly. Actually the piece that first connected me to him in the early CD era after six or seven years of completely failing to engage with the 5th and 10th on LP (the 8th opened me to them). Unusual format for a concert. You frequently get pre-talks in concerts here. But on this occasion the talk was built into the concert itself. Stephen Johnson spent 45 minutes explaining and examining the symphony with the orchestra illustrating his points. This is something he has done for years on Radio 3 but I've never come across it in a concert situation. Absolutely fascinating - especially good at tracing how the phrases of the first few seconds are used and transformed to build the whole edifice. All done in plain English without getting over-technical or degenerating into 'connoisseur' mysticism. Which made the full performance after the break even more engaging with plenty of sign posts to listen out for. Not how I'd like most concerts to be but something I'd certainly attend every now and then.
  7. Disc 2: Pleiades, Komboi. Especially enjoyed the first - I don't have any notes to go on but I assume this was heavily influenced by gamelan. Stockhausen: Gesang der Jünglinge & Kontakte - from Spotify. I think it's the original from the 1950s but is on one of those dubious labels that put out things like 'Xmas with Stockhausen' from older recordings. Clearly sounded mind-boggling at the time but I can't say either of the pieces really grabbed me. 'Electronic' music has come a long way since. In a similar vein: No 1...and the 2. I've never been a huge fan of the Bax symphonies but really enjoying these this morning.
  8. Ah. Dadaesque landscape! My Romanticism completely trumped. I saw that picture back in the autumn and can't remember for the life of me the context.
  9. Finished this superb four parter. Each episode focused on four or five lesser known figures to try to tell a story of the black experience in Britain (though Leslie 'Hutch' Hutchinson was one in the last episode known to followers of early British jazz and light music). About a year ago David Cameron was using the abolition of the slave trade as an example of British exceptionalism to wave about, desperately trying to out-chauvinise UKIP - episode three here really brought home the role of the British cotton industry in sustaining slavery in the States after abolition. The series did use some of the annoying 'popularising' habits that can really jar - David Olusoga (the presenter) weeping over the place he'd been driven out of by racist intimidation in his teens (he had every reason to weep but we've seen too many celebrities weeping over their great, great half-uncle twice removed to remain uncynical about such scenes), a little bit too much of the plaque celebrations (nice idea but gets repetitive) and those godawful recaps (now you may have forgotten what we told you five minutes ago...). But this was powerful TV. Hopefully we'll see more of Olusoga (and rather less of Lucy Worsley telling us about Tudor handbags). A timely series. A couple of other series have returned - 'The Unforgotten' (interesting but the first episode hasn't yet got things airborne) and 'Endeavour' (the latter as creaky and mushy as ever but makes for undemanding Sunday night watching). Finally into the last series of 'The Good Wife' which I wasn't too excited by to start with but it's starting to grip; and Series 3 of 'Cheers' which is priceless.
  10. The daily tree: The stump could be a heavy metal axe hero. Morning sun shines through the fog behind a dead tree in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany.Photograph: Frank Rumpenhorst/AFP/Getty Images And further murmurations: A black kite flies under a murmuration of migrating starlings near the city of Beer Sheva, southern Israel. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2017/jan/06/the-week-in-wildlife-in-pictures
  11. Disc 1 of the Xenakis - Persephassa, Psappha, Dmaathen. I was a bit ginger about a set of percussion music but this was remarkably entertaining. Some absolutely beautiful textures at work. I suspect the percussion piece on Pink Floyd's 'Umma Gumma' and the various King Crimson percussion passages had Xenaxis as an inspiration. Pli Selon Pli off second which still largely escapes me.
  12. Beautiful photo essay documenting a year in the life of an oak tree (November and Feb/March above): https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jan/09/the-old-oak-a-year-in-the-life-of-a-tree-in-pictures
  13. Some nice Kurtag on the first disc too. Disc 1 of the Handel.
  14. The North Sea at the first weekend in January. A bit of a post-truth photo....loads of people on the beach in reality (and Whitby town was full of people). A chance photo out of the train window...or maybe one of Whitby's more famous inhabitants was making his presence felt.
  15. Wonderful weekend, sadly without Norma Waterson who was too ill to attend. Eliza Carthy did a brilliant job of leading proceedings in her stead. The Waterson family did their thing in two concerts - a wonderful ten piece of family members and friends singing some of the unaccompanied hits with great gusto; and the Gift Band covering the more standard/music hall/popular music side represented on Norma's solo albums. A couple of good films - an amazing one filmed in the mid-60s just as The Watersons had hit their peak as one of the biggest draws in the folk clubs, living out of an ordinary house in Hull. Only 50 years ago but, with the Hull docks still busy, a different world. A fascinating interview with Martin Carthy too, explaining how his tuning approach evolved from firstly adopting Davy Graham's DADGAD and then amending it because he wanted to play 'Lovely Joan' which appears in a Vaughan Williams piece and he couldn't quite finger using Graham's approach. I do hope someone is documenting Carthy's reminiscences - there's a brilliant book waiting there. Some of the best of the current crop of young folky groups - Stick in the Wheel, The Furrow Collective and Lynched. Third time I've seen the latter in five months and once again they triumphed. Other bands must despair when they see they have to share a bill with them. And Peggy Seeger, who I've never seen before. A sprightly 81, still full of political passion and decidedly irreverent. No prizes for guessing who was on the receiving end of most of her withering comments. An amazing link back to the original folk revival (well, the 1950s one!) and another dark political time. A perfect way to take the sting out of mid-winter.
  16. Been reading about six books at once over the last couple of months (not recommended!) and finally brought three to completion: Longest novel I've read in a long time. Absolutely superb. Set in the period leading up to and just after the Russian counter-offensive at Stalingrad. Like War and Peace, there are a dozen or more scenarios with interlocking characters - Stalingrad itself, prisoner of war camps, the Lubyanka, Auschwitz, scientific laboratories, etc. Can get hard to to keep tabs on who is who, not helped by using surnames at some points, first name and patronym at others and then nicknames (there's a helpful dramatis personae at the end). A stunning evocation of the survival of the human spirit within both the maelstrom of war and the iron grip of totalitarianism. The way the main character, a nuclear scientist, is gradually trapped into betraying his fundamental beliefs by the oppressive system is brilliantly handled. I read a lot of Russian novels a few decades back - this has reignited my interest. A fairly run of the mill Scandi-noir. Enjoyed this very much. A book that pulls in two directions - you can sense that Toop's heart lies in the non-linear and he can give this free rein when describing music; but he's also writing a sort of chronological history which requires a degree of conventional narrative (the parts a square like myself like best). Fascinating accounts of early attempts at playing 'free' going right back to Percy Grainger - I particularly enjoyed the section on Derek Bailey playing in theatre and variety bands and then going off to The Little Theatre to play solo. A bit po-faced and prone to take itself too seriously (I think that goes with the territory in the genre) but it did what all good music books do - had me re-listening to records and seeking out new ones to hear. Two more volume to follow taking the story into the 70s.
  17. Dinosaur are marvellous - their CD is good but is a bit on the short side, under-representing the live kick. Also seeing them later in the month in Nottingham. Laura's also in Sheffield with Jasper Høiby's band later in the year. I don't think I have a week without a concert of some flavour until April! Live music is very much alive and well (and, as folky Chris Wood regularly says, being kept afloat by the pension funds!).
  18. Curbar Edge in Derbyshire yesterday. On a classic high pressure, mid-week, winter's day, turns into a pensioner superhighway. Had to fend them off with my stick.
  19. The real story is the boom in streaming. I've read some reports that triumph the rise of vinyl sales against the fall in download sales as if there's some correlation - what seems to be happening is that an increasing number of people are finding the streaming sites more reliable, comprehensive and convenient for their purposes. The owning of physical product in whatever form seems to be restricted to the music obsessive (that would be me!) and people lured in by the contemporary 'cool' of playing vinyl on a record player. Interesting that the fall in vinyl sales predated the arrival of CD by a few years. Arrival of the home computer, perhaps?
  20. Dave Manington's Riff-Raff (Lescar, Sheffield) Dave Manington (bass), Brigitte Beraha (vocals), Tom Challenger (tenor sax), Rob Updegraff (guitar), Tim Giles (drums) [Ivo Neame (keyboards) was meant to be present but was otherwise engaged). Bunch of musicians associated with London's 'Loop Collective' who you see shuffled amongst endless jazz groupings in the UK. One of those gigs where I found myself drifting at times only to be suddenly jolted into full attention by a particularly arresting passage. There was a great bass/drums/tenor section towards the end that entered Ornettish territory - really benefited from the other two voices dropping out (in the sense of allowing those three to be heard more clearly). Start of a tour, instrumental balance a bit off (drums tended to overwhelm the other instruments), missing an expected player, Beraha a bit wayward in the pitching at times so I'm sure we didn't hear them at their best. But worth it for the really exciting bits. Especially impressed by Tim Giles (not just because he was the easiest to hear). £7 a ticket at the Lescar - cheaper than the cinema!
  21. The North Nottinghamshire Everglades on a crisp mid-Winter day.
  22. I read Vanity Fair about thirty years back and enjoyed it thoroughly (and I have a bad habit of giving up on very long, canonised tomes [probably as much for the canonised as the long] - didn't have any problem with this one. I was probably sustained by the prospect of the Battle of Waterloo turning up at some point.). There was a very good BBC TV adaptation in 1998 with Natasha Little as a very fetching Becky Sharp. Out there on DVD somewhere. Won't get you culture vulture points but it's very entertaining.
  23. More camels. Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesMen walk their camels during the Liwa Moreeb Dune festival - Photograph: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty And more shepherdesses: Muş, TurkeyA shepherdess walks her goats - Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2017/jan/02/best-photographs-of-the-day-hollyweed-in-los-angeles-and-afghan-gamblers#img-15
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