A Lark Ascending

On the 'Who to look out for in 2010' page in this month's Jazzwise, four different reviewers mention Alexander Hawkins - John Fordham, BBC Jazz on 3, Duncan Heining, Oliver Weindling. In each case they don't mention anyone else. (26 critics asked in all). Well done, Alex!

They've always had an obsession with Oasis too! Yes, the constant Beatles issues are tiresome...but you have to sell copy. And look how much excitement the recent remasters caused in even distant outposts like this site! To be honest, I buy it to find out what's being reissued and for the walks down memory lane. The introduction before the album survey emphasises how Eicher deliberately set out to provide something different to the main jazz tradition - one more in keeping with his liking for chamber music. If you grew into music beyond rock with ECM then it all sounds quite natural. If I'm honest, ECM was my jazz mainstream in the mid to late 70s. I don't think I owned a Blue Note record until the early 80s and was very slow to start to explore there because, from my listening perspective at the time, they 'all sounded the same'. ECM had a much more powerful punch to a listener besotted with Sibelius at the time! Did a quick check to discover I had 288 ECMs!!!!! At a glance I'd say these are the ones that I return to again and again: Abercrombie John November Azimuth Azimuth Bley Paul Open, to Love Bley Paul/Parker/Phillips Sankt Gerold Burton Gary Passengers Burton Gary Ring Giuffre Jimmy Fusion/Thesis (not real an ECM but on ECM) Haden Charlie The Ballad of the Fallen Jarrett Keith Facing You Jarrett Keith Solo Concerts Jarrett Keith Survivors Suite Jarrett Keith My Song Metheny Pat 80/81 Metheny Pat Watercolours Old and New Dreams Old and New Dreams Orchestra National de Jazz Charmediterranean Stanko Tomasz Litania Surman John Stranger than Fiction Towner Ralph Solstice Vituous Miroslav Journey's End Weber Eberhard Yellow Fields Weber Eberhard Little Movements Weber Eberhard Silent Feet Wheeler Kenny Music for Large and Small Ensembles Wheeler Kenny Double, Double You Wheeler Kenny The Widow in the Window Winstone/Taylor Somewhere called Home

I'm sure I would have liked that too at the time. And I certainly don't begrudge the set to those who are getting this music for the first time now. But I'm actually glad I was able to pick up the various records the way I did (in isolated purchases from 1976 through to 2009, in a completely bizarre order!). There's always a certain thrill at going out (or online!) to purchase a specific album. With this you get that thrill once! Irrelevant to the music, of course. But there are all sorts of extraneous factors that affect our enjoyment of music. [i've just downloaded a few Sun Ra albums to supplement the dozen or so I already have. Would I bite on a 'Complete Evidence' Sun Ra with glossy box and packaging? I don't think I would. I prefer the slower route. I'm much the same with these gargantuan classical boxes - the complete Bach cantatas for example. Pick them off slowly is my preference. I'm guilty of buying more recordings than I can realistically process (like most of us here, I suspect) - but the megalopabox just seems a step too far for me].

Box sets that put together a bunch of albums can be great if you are late to the party. They'll never replace the thrill of exploring the individual albums one by one as they were released (not an option anymore!!!) or even piecing them together as individual records in retrospect. Sometimes (as with Mosaics) it's the only way to acquire the music. It's the sheer scale of this behemoth that puzzles me. A very inexpensive way for someone new to Miles to get a great chunk of his most significant music in one go. But I'm not convinced it's the best way to do it. I liked the way Columbia put out those themed boxes - Silent Way, Bitches Brew etc. Would have suited me to have kept them in circulation and maybe tidied up the missing recordings in a few similar smaller boxes. Just when I got curious about the complete 'On the Corner' it vanished! This strikes me as something of an exercise in packaging; from the comments above, not a very successful one. Personally, I'd be happier to just see it all available to download (the 'complete' boxes + the other material, that is).

Yes, utterly meaningless but interesting to see how things fall out in one poll. Mojo is a UK rock mag that has a broader reach than most into jazz, blues, folk etc - aimed at greyhairs like me, though even I find most of the bands/performers it covers a mystery these days. 1. Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert 2. Arvo Part - Alina 3. Jan Garbarek Bobo Stenson - Witchi-Tai-To 4. Kenny Wheeler - Music for Large and Small Ensembles 5. Dave Holland - Conference of the Birds 6. Valetin Silvestrom - Silent Songs 7. Anouar Brahem - Le Pas Du Chat Noir 8. Christian Wallumrod - A Year from Easter 9. Barre Phillips - Mountainscapes 10. David Torn - Prezens I suspect only the Kenny Wheeler would make it into my list of favourites/most played. Don't know the Part, Silvestrom or Torn; and am left totally cold by Wallumrod. Which probably goes to show just how broad the label is, how varied the range of listeners who latch on to it in some way or another. Right, how many posts before some one feels the need to remind the world of their disdain for ECM (an affliction now medically recognised as Internet-Reflex-Marsalis-Syndrome)?

36/38 - wasted time trying different spellings of John McLaughlin. Didn't know Michael Brecker.

typing on an unfamiliar, ancient computer. typos galore.

I bought 22 inch last week (my existing set stopped working) - I use it so rarely I can't justify anything bigger. Sound is tinny - but, as on my old set, I connect it through the headphone socket to my aufio amplifier. Sounds fine. I have a set of second speakers connected in the kitchen to the amp. So if my cooking preparation doesn't quite complete in time for the start of a programme I can always hear it. I do like the slimeline nature of these new TVs. The last one was like a tank even though it was 22 inch.

I only worked that one out last week! Very useful. Quite - alot of these things have so many options that you can't work them out intuitively...well, not until you've been pointed to certain basics. If you find iTunes bewildering, don't go near Photoshop or Adobe Dreamweaver! I only started to work out the former in the summer - I had to be shown one-to-one. Dreamweaver still bewilders me.

I knew A but not I. Useful.

When you put in a CD and the window comes up asking 'Do you want to import the CD' click 'No'. Then uncheck the tracks you don't want. Then click the bottom right 'Import CD' button. It will only import checked tracks. Don't try and change anything until it is in your library. I initially got confused trying to rename the CD itself! You don't have to change every track individually. Highlight all common tracks - then if you right click over them anything you chance in the main box will change on all highlighted. It does not show the bar for track title if you highlight multiple tracks so there is no danger of relabelling everything 'So What?'

I disable auto-synching too. Advised, MG. I think you'll be better off doing this. Gives you more control. Quite a few of these left hand links only appear when connected to the iPod. When trying to re-label are you right clicking on the track/tracks? If you do this and click 'Get info' you get a window with several tabs. If you highlight several tracks the one you need jumps up instantly; if you click a single track you get one saying 'Summary' - go to the second ('Info'). You can change what you like in the bars below. If you've uploaded a track you've copied off a tape or LP the bars should be empty.

We celebrate it here in North Notts too. Lots of excessive drinking, jollity, sex etc. A bunch of the Pilgrim Fathers came from just up the road. So we celebrate the Puritans buggering off to annoy the New World.

Thanksgiving?

I usually kick off with 'The Messiah' (even though only about 1/3 of it is Xmas related). After that it's anything from Bach to The Roches to Kenny Burrell to Britten to The Watersons to...

You can edit the information in your iTunes library; or you can edit in iTunes on the iPod itself. When you link up the iPod you get an icon on the left telling you the iPod is connected. When you click music you get a window identical to the iTunes library which can be edited the same way. So if you mis-edit something and only discover it on the iPod itself you can always go back and change. Moving stuff from iTunes library to the iPod is dead simple. Highlight the tracks, drag and drop. I had an earlier mp3 player where this was all a nighmare. Tracks got stored in the most bizarre places. iTunes does it very sensibly. One thing to watch is those artist names. Sometimes the automatic system gives different names. Five tracks named Grant Green and three named Joe Henderson for example. This is why I always make sure the artist/album artist/composer titles are identical for an album. I think the system was set up with compilations in mind where artists might change from track to track.

MG, There are probably loads of ways of doing this. Here's what I do: 1. Give the album a genre title at the bottom of the tab - Jazz, Jazz Nordic, Jazz Soul etc. I find it easier to use my own labels - Classical English, Classical Germanic etc. 2. I always change Artist, Album Artist and Composer to the same name e.g. Grant Green or Bach. I'm not likely to care who the composer of each track is when using the iPod - can be found out later. I do both of these by highlighting all the tracks on the album and then they all get the same data. You only need to go wrong once - an e on the end of Green or even a space afterwards and it gets stored separately. This is why its best to change the genre/artist data all in one go. Lots quicker too! 3. I change the album name to something simple - Kind of Blue rather than Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (you get some oddities provided by the automatic system). Doing this all falls on the iPod logically. I tend to go to find things by going to Genre first, then look for the artist. I've had no problem with this in the last 15 months. *********** If you are assembling things into a new order you need to change the track number (and sometimes disc number). The only time I do this is if I assemble an album from several sources e.g. I built up some later Grant Green albums from three compilations and then added the missing tracks from iTunes. Obviously the compilation tracks had different numbers so a bit of editing was needed. But usually, this is unnecessary.

Two fantastic records - got them of e-music a few years back. Marvellous antidote to Slade and Wizzard.

24th December here ! I'll make an exception for Duke Pearson though.. I love Xmas music! I need a good month to get through some of Xmas CDs on the shelf. There's not much wonderful Xmas jazz but lots of magical classical stuff and the folky world does some very nice variations on the usual fare.

Just downloading this as I type - heard a bit of it on a BBC programme earlier in the Autumn. To he honest I've not heard a lot ot 'genuine inspiration' in her music for some time now - the angular, Weill-esque beauties of her 60s/70s music seemeed to have been smoothed over and replaced by a more generic big band sound (and things like the gutbucket trombone that sounded so fresh on those earlier records just seem to have become part of the house style). To be expected - we all drop into our comfort zones as we get on. I'm not expecting the tart, Central Europeanisms of the old days - but with keyboard, bass and brass quartet I'm hoping for something heartfelt but a little quirky. Won't get to listen until the end of next week as I have a ban on Xmas music before 25th November.

I recall seeing him c. 1975 with Carla Bley and Jack Bruce in a band that lasted a very short time.

Nice to read a well supported argument rather than the usual blanket assertions.

Interesting comment from a (clearly irritated) Bill Bruford on his blog: http://www.billbruford.com/blog.asp?DoActi...amp;EntryID=164

Hmm! Great records, all. But I'd describe them as 'more Americanised than usual' (which is not a criticism) rather than 'better than usual'.

Just the thing for this stormy recessionary weekend ! Quite! Despite the limited technology/budget of the time, there are some very evocative winter scenes in the first two episodes - the initial infatuation takes place whilst skating on a frozen Northamptonshire pond. Interesting to see a very young Jeremy Irons and Peter Davidson in supporting roles here, a bit before they found fame in 'Brideshead Revisited' and other things. Being set in the 1920s there's a nice popular jazz sountrack in places too - though, unlike most modern films, no filling of every moment with soundtrack.