A Lark Ascending

Really interesting article. So much that he says fits with how I've always felt about the music of the 70s. This is exactly how I hear it. Not bloated pomp-rock but music with an incredible range of timbre. Please, please do! Because even in its third (?) remastering it still sounds muddy.

Excellent session, Alex. A real sense of moving through a wide range of textures and moods. Wrong to single out players but the drumming had my ear throughout (cymbals especially, maybe it was the car stereo!); and I loved the guitar playing. And that piano solo 2/3rds through was gorgeous. Really appreciated the explanations about the music before (and after!). Hopefully it won't be long before we hear these pieces on disc.

Just interested how people take to it, positively or negatively. There are a zillion reasons why it irritates me: 1. Associated (in the class-ridden UK at least) with toffs (apart from extracted arias and bleeding chunks which have always had much wider popularity). 2. Ridiculously expensive to attend (I'm going to two in the next couple of months and will sit somewhere close to the ozone layer as sensible seats cost a daft price). 3. Absorbs a disproportionate amount of public subsidy (in countries where public subsidy exists). 4. Gets preferential treatment by the BBC and regularly boots less worthy programmes (like Jazz Record Requests) into touch. 5. Generally has daft plots. 6. Has singers who insist on singing in broad 'toff' yet still can't make themselves comprehensible. 7. Conjours up images of Nils and Frasier Crane at their most preposterous. 8. Takes up vast amounts of your life to listen to. 9. Has very bad jokes that everyone has heard before yet still excites knowing titters. And yet... Back in the 70s, when I first started exploring classical music, I found myself smitten by certain composers who produced a lot of their music in opera - Strauss ®, Janacek, Britten - so got drawn in. And lying in those operas is some breathtaking music. I even did a course on The Ring in the early 90s that had me waking up hearing Wagner tubas!!!! So I find myself very uncomfortable with opera. Drawn to it, often excited and overwhelmed by it, yet essentially hating everything it seems to stands for. How does it get you? [Edit: intrigued to see Richard Strauss has trademarked his name. Does Johann know?)

I saw the BM Quartet a few years back and really enjoyed them. I wish they'd put out flyers to tell me I was supposed to dislike them for not being innovative enough. Thank god we have critics to lead us to the true path.

Little programme interviewing Robert Wyatt on BBC Radio 4 next Tuesday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n11cz

No human has invested labour and time into creating the sunset. Though there are places where you can see particularly spectacular sunsets. And many of those are owned. And they'll make you pay for the privilege of watching it there. You may not own what you hear at a gig; but the place you went to hear it is owned as is the equipment used. In most cases you pay for those. The library book is owned by the library who agreed to lend it to you; you paid for it out of your council tax and in other roundabout ways. I can see what Jim and others are getting at - how do you motivate musicians to make music, especially fringe music, if one of their key ways of being recompensed is vanishing before their eyes? It may be that the emphasis shifts to live performance with recordings becoming the calling card. I suspect that might balance things for some musicians but not be enough for others. But in the end these changes are happening. Leaving aside the economics, it's disrupting the way that most of us have traditionally absorbed music. Above all, what you might call the 'distinctive album fetish'. New listeners probably won't miss it. But I know I find it quite unsettling (whilst at the same time loving the new technology for its ability to let me catch up more easily with the 'albums' produced in the old model).

Puts my water butts to shame.

Great concert - quintet (reeds, guitar, piano, e-bass, drums). A mixture of well written band originals and everything from Steve Swallow tunes to Stomping at the Savoy and In the Bleak Midwinter (which seems to have evolved into a UK jazz standard in recent years). Mike Walker is undoubtedly one of Britain's best kept secrets - not being based round the London scenes he's even pretty invisible here. Can go from convoluted boppish lines to lovely lyrical solos and then onto funkier stuff (I'll be playing some latter-day Grant Green on the back of this gig).

I don't disagree. The economics of how this new world works quite escape me. Give or take a few 'internet is your friend' downloads of OOP albums from the net and a tiny number of things copied from friends, I've always expected to pay for my music. Having so much available for a small subscription is strange. And I agree that the value of music can be devalued. Equally the sheer enjoyment can be diminished when so much can be obtained so easily. Somehow being able to go to website of musician X, download all their albums at once plus a dozen live recordings isn't quite the same as eagerly awaiting that rare release which when it appears changes your perception of the performer; or slowly digging into the catalogue of a musician like Miles when and where the music can be afforded or where it is available (in the classical world, my experience was of building up an interest in a composer record by record over a lengthy period of time, gradually getting to know that sound world; now you can do it in one go via a 65 CD box (or digital equivalent). Something tells me the experience isn't quite the same). But these new ways of distributing music are there and I doubt if those just emerging into the world of listening will ever worry that they are missing anything. Like I never worried that I missed the intense listening experience you got with a Beethoven symphony when you were really focussed because you only listened for 3 minutes before you turned the 78 over.

I feel the same. But I suspect we might soon be shown to be trapped in the last paradigm! The 'Spotify' model renders even the cloud unnecessary to those engaging with music for the first time. If you can guarantee 'The Shape of Jazz to Come' is there when you want it on such a site, why bother with owning a copy? You and I will probably never be comfortable with that. But as we are gradually edged aside... (I'm not referring to issues of payment etc which are aired elsewhere - just what is technically possible and will therefore be attractive to an audience unfamiliar with the way we grew up exploring music).

That only started last week. The reasoning behind it is that you have your music collection on the cloud (remember, most people don't have the enormous collection we saddos squirrel away) and can then access it anywhere. I tried it out last night - everything I've bought from Amazon is there and it played the one album I tried from my iPhone flawlessly. Places like Spotify are unlikely to ever have the range of music you collect. So storing your less well-known albums on the cloud means that you can play them when you are in Wales or in Paris. Or in the rest home you've alluded to in the past, without having to clutter up the single shelf you are given. Only time will tell how reliable or secure this is. Given my dreadful experiences with wireless at work I'm a bit sceptical. Wrong sort of storm and 'Pharaoh's Dance' cuts out half way. I'm sure it will work eventually but am a bit uncertain now. As someone who walks round with between 3 and 6 iPods in his pockets, I can see the appeal of cloud storage.

Not badly affected here but the north east is getting hit badly. This is York: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19725625

I wish they'd do requests. I'd go for a certain John Cage piece. 'Greesleeves' (a scherzo version) and 'Just One Cornetto'.

I think this is absolutely right. It's taking some of us a lot of time to adapt. I might have forsaken the physical disc/vinyl/packaging/liner notes etc obsession but I still feel a need for something that is 'mine' - be it files stored on an external hard disc or burnt CD-Rs. But I suspect that time will show this to be unnecessary. At present there's still that feeling of 'O.K., it's on Spotify or some Cloud now but what if they go bust?' In time we'll probably get past that. Interesting that Amazon UK has just changed the way it downloads. Everything is now cloud stored - you download from there if you want. In theory everything is available to play from anywhere you can access the cloud. I've not tried it yet but if you could reliably play in that way without losing a signal, the day of the iPod would be numbered. Why carry a little box with a finite number of tracks when your whole collection can be on a cloud to be accessed anywhere? Why have a collection when you can access from somewhere like Spotify? Ten years from now we'll be accessing music in ways that we haven't even dreamed of yet (and someone will be bemoaning the death of the download with it's infinitely superior sound quality when compared to whatever the new format is).

Says Asaf Sirkis (drums) and Youri Gouloubev (bass). Though I think things switch round. His recent records are very inside and contemplative. I missed him last year locally but recally a stunning performance in Bath some years back. Looking forward to hearing him again. He has quite a discography built up, given that he's a virtual unknown even in Britain: http://www.nday.co.uk/discography.html

As if this year hadn't been wet enough, it's hardly stopped raining since Sunday afternoon:

Haven't listened to him in a while but he's good. This anthology gathers a lot of fine stuff up to the 90s. Must have been superseded, I'd have thought: Must dig out a Prine or two.

Can't see those, alocispepraluger102. It's saying not available.

BBC2 Gardeners' World - finger on the pulse and all that. Well into series 3 now. The Tango episode between Niles and Daphne was priceless.

I thought Barry Guy's label was Maya. Does he run Intakt too? Both excellent labels. Babel, Basho and Edition are doing a great job at providing a platform for UK jazz. Emanem and PSI need a mention too.

It's not about 'following' labels. It's just that some labels you learn to trust to provide music that works for you (and other labels you know are not going to be your cup of PG Tips). Couldn't reduce to three (but then I'm never going to end up on a desert island as I rarely venture further than Cornwall). The Virgin label of its first couple of years, Harvest, Island always perked my interest back in the day. Ogun became an icon I could trust as I was tentatively exploring jazz. Topic has a stunning catalogue of British folk. Hyperion, Chandos and Lyrita (when active) do great things in classical. Thank god it can't be limited to three. Couldn't do it.

Not tonight, but I'm determined to get out to more live music after having heard so much wonderful stuff in the summer: Next Friday: Mike Walker (guitar) and Iain Dixon (sax) - two tremendous players who are hardly known in the UK let alone in the world jazz scene as they are based in't North. First saw them in the back room of a pub with a mid-sized Mike Gibbs band about 20 years back. Sheffield Jazz gig. Nov 17th: Egberto Gismonti/John Law Trio at the London Jazz Festival - really looking forward to that one. Haven't been to London for a good 6 or 7 years. Will use it to take in the Greenwich Maritime Museum as well - I'm keen to see the 18th/19thC paintings there.

Another good JRR tonight (Sept 21). Two big favourites of mine - Coleman Hawkins 'Crazy Rhythm' from the 30s and Ella's 'Stella By Starlight'.

I see Alex is on BBC Radio 3 again this Monday: Jazz on 3