Nate Dorward

I note that the identical message was just posted to JC too. Subtle, ain't it.

Plus the numbers "310" in the membername are a giveaway.

Unfortunately it turns out that indeed I've got two copies of disc 2 but none of disc 1....

Just received mine today--thanks! I'm a little worried though that the CDRs are BOTH labelled "CD2". I assume just a mistake? (I haven't listened to them yet.) -- In any case I'd be grateful to know how many tracks are on each disc (or some other means of i.d.ing them) in order to know which is which....!

No, please go ahead! My guess for one track of Bergin's SONG MOB is almost certainly wrong, incidentally. Corkestra's a better bet, surely.

That's an OK album, but I'm not sure I'd single it out. Though Hancock's presence is certainly memorably bizarre.

There are fans of McPhee here, definitely.

I should add a note here that though I'm down for the September BFT I've decided to hold off canvassing participants or sending out copies till at least the end of the month; I may simply delay things till mid-September to avoid crowding marcoliv's BFT.

Re: Minton's -- the ones I know are the ones with Christian, & those are the ones I'm pretty darn sure aren't Monk. No comment on the Don Byas material. Re: co-led stuff--there was also that failed attempt at a co-led session with Shelly Manne. The two surviving tracks are in the Riverside box, along with Keepnews' inimitable notes blaming the whole mess on Grauer.

Incorrect. Well, I may be misled by the various repackagings of the material. It's on Jackson's Wizard of the Vibes album (including the vocal tracks which seem to be absent from Genius of Modern Music Vol 2). Is it co-led, or what is it exactly? Never sounded like Monk to me on the Minton's material I've heard.

The Blue Note session with Milt Jackson--I think it's often released under Monk's name but Jackson was the leader. & I believe Monk's on a couple of the Dean Benedetti recordings of Bird.

Neuph is a bit of overkill but interesting.... still, I prefer Rutherford "solo" solo.

Aggggggggggggggggggh! That's dreadful news. The Iskra has gone out.

The Blue Note material is fine (& if that set is complete it'll include things like the album with Charles Lloyd, which is long o/p) but for a first acquaintance with Petrucciani I recommend the Village Vanguard set on Concord.

Not a surprise, but still very sad to hear. His last album, Thing-Ah-Majig shows him affected by his many ailments but still producing magic every time he touches the keys. The effect is rather like Tristano filtered through Monk, & with a wistful sense of humour that's strangely affecting.

Actually it's a pretty great date, I think, & it's also decently recorded for a change (by the standards of Ayler's oeuvre). Not his most important work, of course, but still sends plenty of chills down the spine.

I'd prefer a CDR, I think. -- I'll PM you with my address, if you don't still have it.

Pehraps you should rephrase that question minus the word "good". The question is whether there are any jazz dulcimer recordings. Someone, somewhere, has probably given it a try.

Wasn't it (judging by a websearch) actually by Clarence Williams (who was black)?

As probably just about every review of it mentions, Ornette's Sound Grammar includes a tune that quotes the opening notes of the Rite of Spring.

1) I forget the name of the tune but I'm sure someone will clue me in soon enough.... Anyway, hard to tell who it is because of the general cat'n'mouse approach--the clunky, Monky waltztime reminds me of Irene Schweizer but this seems too calculated for her. Could be Aki Takase, I suppose. 2) The lyrics are familiar--it's an Edward Gorey poem. No idea who this is (the only Gorey adaptation I know of is Mike Mantler's The Hapless Child but I'm pretty sure this isn't him.....). 3) Probably Dutch guys just because of the bowed bass in place of the expected pizz (a strategy Wilbert de Joode uses a lot). Too brief a reading of "Thelonious" to really get a handle on who it might be. 4) Well I know this one well--it was one of my faves from a few years back (a different track from it is on my BFT 14) & it still sounds great, & this is one of my favourite tracks on the album. Not often you hear a young guy play this tune in such a heartfelt manner--you get the sense that the tune really means something to him, it's not just "a standard". I think this album will increasingly be seen as a small classic of contemporary jazz--it didn't get a lot of reviews at the time (though Ben Ratliff gave it a nice boost in the NYTimes) but I'm surprised how many people have latched onto it purely through word of mouth. 5) Probably Simon Nabatov (the treble figures circa 2:45 are a favourite lick of his, & there are few other pianists I can think of with a comparable technique)--it set me in mind of his solo disc on Leo, though I haven't checked it to see if this is off that one. I don't know, it's impressive but I don't know that I really enjoyed the performance that much. 6) Cutesy tune with a curious little interlude; pity the solos are so short but the tenor (whom I really should be able to i.d.) makes the most of his space. 7) Order-out-of-chaos opening & the Konitz/Desmond alto (Moore? Dijkstra?) suggest this is Dutch; & the drummer is surely Michael Vatcher. Maybe it's Available Jelly. 8) Nice Bley/Peacock style duet, though I'm pretty sure it's not them but just influenced by them. Could be that guy Russ Lossing, or Greg Burk (though the latter is probably too aggressive for this)? Anyway, it's a style of jazz I like a lot -- "free" but concentrating on concentrated, discrete ideas & letting them ring out. When you have nothing to say, don't say anything: a good philosophy. 9) Avant-Konitzian alto/piano/bass track. Maybe Gebbia? Quiet, thoughtful, musical. 10) I think this is too stiff, foursquare & predictable to be as exciting as the musicians are presumably aiming at. 11) I take it Monkish piano is going to be a theme of this compilation.... Oh, this tune ("Angelica" is it?) is a favourite of the Dutch guys (it was in the Clusone 3's book) so it could be we're back in Amsterdam again, though this is a far more conventionally swinging piano trio performance than I'd expect from that source. Wherever it's from, it's very enjoyable, with a nice sense of humour to buoy it up. 12) The au naturel sound made me think this was CIMP but the applause at the end suggest it's just a very raw concert document (CIMPs are studio discs). Love the wacky stoptime interruptions, & in general this has a great "what's going to happen next?" feeling that is lacking in track 10. If this is a commercial release, though, I'd say they could have sweetened the sound a little. 13) Hm, no idea. Out of the context of an album it's hard to make a lot of sense of this one: strings, rather battered trumpet, tuba, drums. 14) Nice mood music that made me wish it went somewhere more interesting. Instrumentation suggests the Great Uncles of the Revolution but it's not them surely. 15) Dutch group I wrote about not so long ago. MB is one of my favourite current players--stride-piano sprezzatura & a wicked sense of mayhem. I think this is from their newest disc. 16) Ummm... best intentions with this track, obviously, but I really didn't like it at all, especially the weirdly (deliberately??) tentative solos & untogether feel. (I know that "loose" is sometimes a good thing, but on this track it just seems to dissipate the energy rather than give expression to it, if you see what I mean.) Probably Sean Bergin's MOB. 17) oh, this is familiar: GG's album of Monk tunes, which is bookended by two solo versions of this. I prefer the other version (a ballad reading!). It's a great disc though (on the trio tracks) Vatcher plays too loud/clunkily. I wish GG would do more of this kind of stuff (what's happened to him lately anyway?). 18) Aha, the second version I mentioned. Lovely, isn't it, with those impressionist harmonies & tremolos. 19) Pretty sure this is from a recent much-praised trio album by TM. It's half a great album, half a rather dull one; this track is from the great half, & is in fact the best track. I can't sort out my feelings about TM--sometimes he drives me nuts because he has a slick "soulful" (i.e. soulless) tricksiness rather like Chris Potter, & then you hear a track like this where he doesn't indulge in his more annoying mannerisms (like the use of Lovanoesque high register distortion) & he sounds incredible. 20) This sounds familiar, may be from the Corkestra disc. Sounds fine in its neo-John Lewis baroqueism, doesn't do much for me, but this may be my lingering disillusionment from a boring Corkestra gig I saw earlier this year (Anne LeBerge took possibly the worst flute solo I've ever heard--great tone but just terrible choice of notes, like she had never heard of a chord change in her life). 21) I think this is a Sun Ra tune, "Super Bronze". There are a couple solo albums out there with Sun Ra on them--Pandelis Karayorgis on Leo, Peter Madsen on Playscape. I think it's the former (have it here somewhere, can check later). 22) probably again PK's solo album. A little too pointedly discombobulated for my taste, but it's an interesting album. 23) No idea, could be Thomas Chapin I suppose but it doesn't quite reach the ecstatic heights I associate with TC. Still, pretty nice trio track. 24) Uhm....... I think this was intended as homage to Tristano but I think it's a ghastly parody. I can't imagine it's by anyone who was actually a Tristano student because LT was all against this kind of ludicrous show-off piece. 25) Sounds like EP in one channel anyway.... probably this is the duo with JMcP, which I haven't listened to for a while. I liked the album a lot, but this isn't my favourite track from it by a long shot. 26) Same disc. Again, not one of my faves--I guess I should return to that album & determine which tracks WERE my faves. 27) I am pretty sure this is latterday Andrew Hill, though I can't imagine what recording it's from. Not really my thing, & it kind of loses its way halfway though in all the clunky, half-choked repetitions. 28) Joachim Kuhn, surely. Not really my thing. Maybe I would have liked it more if Ornette was sitting in..... 29) I take it the linkage in this section of the BFT is the classical echoes..... No idea who this is. It's fun but I'm not quite sure what the point is of it all.... though I liked the straightforward ending. 30) OK, back to jazz homebase. Should I know this tune? Sounds like it's a standard I don't know. S'OK. 31) Well this one is a familiar one. Last track on a recently reissued cool school disc on Hat Art/ology. Back to the classics! 32) Sounds familiar but I can't place it. I liked it though I was left wondenig if it was a chunk of a longer performance. 33) Strange sound--piano, but treated in some way? Definitely a case of a pianist afflicted with "don't know when to stop" disease...... 34) Unmistakably Tony Oxley on drums. No idea who the pianist is, though I suppose this could be another track off the Battaglia duo album, or maybe AvS? Not Cecil, though obviously the pianist knows his Cecil. It's OK, not really doing a lot for me--I can't detect a lot of close interplay between piano & drums, is maybe the problem. 35) AvS is a good guess for this one too--is this from the same album? I found the opening too scattered to get a grip on, but when the pianist latches onto some stubborn Monkish block chords in the middle I got a lot more interested. Overlong but still worthwhile. 36) Like a Conlon Nancarrow gospel piece...!

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

You'd be surprised how frequently one can't place a track even if you've heard the album. Especially after having reviewed 1000s of CDs (literally!)......

Sure, I'm in. My track record on MP3 tests isn't so good as compared with the CD variety but I'll give it my best shot.....

Hm.... I don't know about that; indeed I suppose I was asking about music where the difficulty seems to be actually part of the music. Does this idea not make sense to you? (genuinely curious here). I think my sense of "intrinsic difficulty" is that it's often a matter of music where expressiveness is not the major point--where the music is instead more like an intensely worked object. You can like it or admire the obsessiveness and skill with which it's put together, but there's a certain "it's just there" element which you have to deal with. Two more instances of what I'm getting at: Evan Parker's solo album Monoceros--which is EXTREMELY different from the later EP solo discs, often matters of huge near-static slabs of fiercely held notes; and Ned Goold's March of the Malcontents, the new Smalls release. The latter is maybe an instance of what Shawn mentions as a frustratingly not-quite-there session--I really wanted it to be a great one as I liked The Flows and Backstabber's Ball a lot, but I dunno....