A Lark Ascending

I recently read the second edition and really enjoyed it. However, I'd not read the first edition so it's hard to comment. I will say I enjoyed the first 2/3rds more than the last 1/3. As often happens in these books he seemed to be racing through scores of names, unable to spend very long on any of them. The earlier part seemed more analytical. Then again, it might just be the fact that I'm more familiar with the more recent history so found less that was novel there.

Just noticed the two original Brotherhood of Breath albums and Chris McGregor's 'Very Urgent' there. From the Fledg'ling label which specialises in English folk but seems to be spreading its wings (ho! ho!).

Love Ravel - though I prefer Debussy in solo piano music. A bit more fluid and diaphanous to my ears. There's something a bit more straight backed about Ravel. The orchestral music is wonderful, especially 'Ma Mere L'Oye' and the two piano concertos. My absolute favourite is the Introduction and Allegro for small chamber group - perfect music for a verdant summer's day. The piano trio and string quartet are also superb. This set of Ravel songs is highly recommended (I have it in an earlier version): Includes a version of Scherazade.

That swingin' hymn book (schwinghym Buch). Man, could J.S. blow!

A delightful concert. Everyone got to do a few songs, a few voices were a bit worn (though I suspect some of the blokes had always had worn voices!), all the hits were there in full or in medleys. A year back I was reading about these mysterious people in Ruy Castro's book. And there they were on stage! Joyce was fabulous. Really must catch one of her full shows when she next crosses over.

I have to say Bev that it was (bar the Tyner) probably the weakest lineup I've seen at Bath for years - not helped by the big cutback in terms of numbers of concerts. Sadly, I guess the Olympics ( ) are starting to eat into subsidies for these things. Or maybe Bath and North Seast Somerset Council have cut back their subsidies? I overheard some of the locals in one of the record shops (they still have record shops in Bath! This one - Milsom/n - looks like they did in the 70s when they also sold musical instruments!) complaining about the opening festivities. I got the impression they'd been dotted round the locality instead of being just in the city. I think part of it might be Joanna McGregor being 'innovative'. Can lead to 'unfocussed'. I've alway been a big supporter of Bath's European centre of gravity and willingness to reach out beyond the comfort zones of the jazz listener. But in the last couple of years it seems to have gone so far into the 'World Music' direction that it's neglected the music nearer the centre. I could just do with a bit more blowing! 'World Music' seems to have a much bigger draw than jazz - it seems to pull in a colour supplement crowd. Well dressed, very loud, over-excited, applauding in an exaggerated way that seems to be as much about being noticed as responding. I noticed something similar at a Cuban concert at Cheltenham a few weeks back. These were people who knew their wine! (Apologies for the lower middle class inverted snobbery!)

I really enjoyed Moran in Bath on Saturday night. It was a chancer for me - I've heard little Moran and had him down as a bit of a hyped wunderkind. I was also a bit worried of a hip-hop beat overdose, in the even totally unfounded. Marvellous, fiery playing of the Monk pieces with some great solos - I expected it of Jason Yarde but Denys Baptiste pulled of a storming opener. The visuals didn't bother me - kept my attention, didn't distract. Moran did an interview prior, I assume for some later BBC broadcast. Came across a very nice chap. ************** I'd initially intended to skip Bath this year but was glad I went. Sylvie Courvosier did a great set with a quintet on Saturday afternoon (again, someone I'd not previously warmed to). Gilad Atzmon was in fine form on Sunday. The only slight disappointment was the the Richard Galliano quartet. Brilliant playing but all a bit slick with those party piece moments where the instrumentalists gets to show how fast they can play. Amazing what response you can get from an audience by coming out rom behind your rum kit and rattling some shakers!

It's up on e-music. Though, given the shortness of the tracks, not perhaps the best way to obtain it. You'd use an entire booster pack.

I think you can listen on the listen again facility (I'm sure I've read Statesiders comment about the programmes) - but only for 7 days after broadcast which is the same here. Podcasts are probably UK only.

I recall a BBC Jazz file series on Dolphy about ten years ago - about 5 30 minute programmes. I'm almost sure Morton did those. He's also done a more recent programme for Alyn Shipton's Jazz Library programme. He appears to be a strong enthusiast.

Has 'Harvest' ever had a decent reissue? I don't know what it sounded like in the 70s (I was too snooty to buy it, having concluded that Young had sold out to James Taylor/Carole King fans) but the mid 80s LP I bought was very muddy. The CD I bought a few years back was no improvement. It even preserved an ugly tape pitch shift in 'Words'. Has this been corrected? Or is the aim to transfer all the mud to Blue Ray?

One period of Neil's ever-changing chameleon persona involved him railing against industry, commerce and the like. Yet here he is locking himself into a new commercial product, helping out whoever is responsible for Blue Ray to widen their market penetration. I've been looking forward to hearing the 60s/70s material on this long promised project. I've no interest in Blue Ray technology as I watch so little in the way of TV/film and rarely watch music videos. I hope this will come out in an alternative way. Downloads perhaps? Though I suspect Neil will have a similar cranky attitude to downloads as he did to digital sound (the article suggests just that). Disappointing. Wouldn't they be better launching Blue Ray with a massive re-release of the Dire Straits catalogue!!!!!

I agree. I suspect that over at stitchingandcrotchet.com they regard the production of ornamental needlework as an essential expression of the human soul. Strange, this need we have to legitimise our pleaures by claiming some grand significance for them. I'd be distraught if music was lost to me (going deaf is something I'd really hate); but I suspect I'd adjust. Initially it would be dreadful, but I imagine I'd eventually find another way to fill my leisure time. Making 'Home Sweet Home' tapestries for the wall, perhaps?

Raced through this in two weeks. A superb collection of accounts from a wide range of witnesses to the Vietnam War. The account by the air stewardess who served on the planes running from California to Japan and then on to Vietnam brought tears to my eyes: 'Definitive' might be over-egging the pudding somewhat. At present hopping between:

I think you are probably right there. Though I wonder if its part of something wider - the human need to make patterns. Partly a reflection of things heard in nature - bird song, the rumbling of a river, the pulsing of our own blood, partly a need to feel that there is some order to things (thus paralleling the creation of religious belief). That fairly basic level of music serves MG's communal idea too - work songs in all their forms from field songs to Scottish waulking songs to sea shanties (often evolving into something far from basic). Why, even the BBC saw the value of using music to boost wartime production with 'Music While You Work.' Music is there - usually in quite straightforward forms - in all sorts of communal human activity. Weddings, dances, football games etc. When did you last see a film or a TV programme with no music? But once you start to move into greater complexity - the deliberate breaking up or hiding of the patterns - it seems to lose its communal aspect. In fact, once it becomes 'art' it seems to celebrate its exclusivity, its difficultly, its almost masonic need for insider knowledge. Maybe music is essential to everybody (as everybody does it or responds to it at an elemental level); but seeing the way music can be varied and the lengths to which it can be taken is only an imperative to some.

What, you don't sometimes tap a pencil in rhythm or sometimes find a little "glide" when you walk or sometimes speak with a melodic contour & cadence? Of cource not! I'm British. Unless you count the pulsations associated with forming the stiff upper lip.

Short of singing in the shower I don't do anything with regard to making music so it's hardly essential in that respect for me. Listening to what other do with music and seeking out new (to me) music is a central part of how I gain pleasure, however. Not essential, but life would be greatly diinished without it.

Jazz strikes me as one of the LEAST communal musics in audience terms...and sometimes in musician terms (I can think of a couple of concerts at Cheltenham two weeks back where the musicians were either so shy or so concentrated on what they were doing musically that they hardly spoke to the audience). Maybe it was once, back in the swing era or whatever. But my experience of jazz performances is of audiences made up of knots of people very much locked into their own groups, couples, singles. They might roar approval together, exchange the odd word, but how often does it become anything more? And as jazz boards seem to attest, most of us follow our jazz interests in isolation or with a few fellow travellers. The great appeal of the bulletin board is it gets you in touch with fellow jazz lovers that you don't meet in everyday life. So if community links make music essential, maybe jazz is one of the least essential musics! I've never come across anything like the 'mosh pit' at a jazz gig! Edit: something else that is common to most societies from the most primitive to the most technologically advanced is social dancing. Jazz all but gave up on social dancing decades ago. Another reason to question if it is 'essential'?

So true! A side issue to MG's main theme but Ian Anderson's editorial for the 300th issue of Froots picks up the same point: http://www.frootsmag.com/content/issue/edsbox/ I can never identify with those who feel the musical sky is falling in.

Caught no sight of this until the new Froots fell through the door: Fortunately a few tickets left so I grabbed one. I'm at Bath for the weekend so I'll return via London. Inevitably it'll be something of a revue but it'll be great to see some of this legends, even if they are well on in years and only performing a few songs each. Joyce is 'curating' it.

I can see that one use of music is to bind communities together and carry tradition. But (perhaps in post-industrial societies with lengthy communications links) it can do the opposite. I don't think I ever used music as a means to bind me into my community (I've never really been part of one, having moved about as a kid and then settled in a place I've never thought of as home) - if anything, I've always used it to travel somewhere else, outside of the immediate and everyday. The attraction of American music as a kid was that it was so other. Classical music was a world right outside my experience. Even English folk music was followed not to reinforce a sense of tradition because there was no English folk music in my upbringing - it was taking me somewhere other. Exploring Scandinavian folk music, Brazilian music and (to a lesser extent) African music has been for the same reasons. Is music essential? I don't think so. If I never heard another note I could still live and find other ways of finding pleasure. But I'd rather not. Music isn't essential, but it's one of those things, after you've dealt with the essentials, that makes life a rich experience. To the point that, through all of my life, I've scaled back on many of the other things in life - fine foods, distant holidays, a big house - in order to hear more and more of it. If we're talking binding communities together then I suspect football or baseball are far more 'essential'! Though I live without those!

norma has a stunning new album She certainly has....and in the last couple of years has done great albums with Stan Tracey/Bobby Wellins and Colin Towns. I believe Maria played in New York recently. I got to see her finally at last year's Appleby and she was marvellous, especially in a quiet piano and voice concert. Definitely a million miles from the usual 'GAS' singers. Very interesting album of vocalese from this New Zealand singer a couple of years back: (had the same sort of impact on me that Karrin Allyson's Coltrane album had a while back. Edit: Turns out she was born in Guildford in England, moving to Australia. So much for NZ! On the Brazilian jazz front, this has been one of my favourites from recent months: Really marvellous songs with a couple of great Robert Wyatt duets. Monica is originally from Sao Paolo but has been living in Britain for some years, putting out a sequence of great albums under her own name and her band Nois. Worth spending a few e-music credits on.

I had the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, In Rock and Fireball albums as a kid but sold them off fairly early. I ended up rebuying them as cheap CDs a couple of years back and found them very enjoyable. Interestingly, I also bought Machine Head which I never owned at the time and have not played it more than a couple of times. I doubt if anyone coming new to the music will be all that interested; but if it excited you at the time, then there's pleasure to be had. I also love those first three Chicago albums (which I've played regularly over the last 35 years). Nothing afterwards took my fancy.

Equally true of jazz. European festivals (with honourable exceptions) will still have 'names' from the 50s/60s/70s at the top of their bills, even though their current music gives little indication of why they became so revered. There are very few rock bands from my youth I'd bother going out to see. But I love to listen to the original albums, as part of a balanced diet. Nostalgia should not be sniffed it as a powerful way of gaining pleasure. KC have certainly not rested on their laurels - though I do find the 'metal' element of recent bands something I can only take in small doses.

I thought Moonchild was influenced by the Derek Bailey/Evan Parker/Jon Stevens scene...Jamie Muir did join the band a few years alater. I'm sure you are right - and Sid Smith's book refers to Michael Giles attending the Little Theatre and being influenced by that scene. But amidst the free form sections of 'Moonchild' there are some very soft, melodic guitar sequences (plus a more animated abstract of 'Surrey With The Fringe On Top'!). When listening to Giuffre's 'Western Suite' a few weeks back I was trying to think what parts of it reminded me of. It was 'Moonchild'. Pure speculation on my part - I might be totally wrong!