GA Russell

Happy Birthday 2011 HG!

I've been meaning to submit this lady for some time, and I keep forgetting.

Edmonton Eskimos 24....Winnipeg Blue Bombers 10 http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=sportsnetwork&page=cfl/news/news.aspx?id=4443449 The Eskimos controlled the whole game.

ECM will release three new albums in the US Tuesday - two jazz and one world music. Stefano Battaglia Trio The River of Anyder Stefano Battaglia: piano Salvatore Maiore: double-bass Roberto Dani: drums U.S. Release date: October 18, 2011 ECM CD: B0016065-02 UPC: 6025 276 8055 2 The pure water of the Anyder River flowed through Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. Italian pianist Stefano Battaglia celebrates it here, in music uncontaminated by jazz trends: “I set myself the task of writing songs and dances uninfluenced by the sophistication of contemporary musical languages, striving to shape pieces that might have been played on archaic instruments a thousand years ago. I think of it as a kind of music before the idioms.” If the piano trio remains a modern institution and the improvisational group understanding shared by Battaglia, Maiore and Dani cannot help but be of-the-moment, the musicians have nonetheless made an album that feels “timeless”. The compositions here are mostly named after mythical and legendary locations, each of them conferring specific atmospheres. Fictional and real-world place names are interspersed. From Minas Tirith, Tolkien’s White City, the players travel, via the Utopian river, to the sacred mountain of Ararat and onward to Bensalem, mythical island in Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, somewhere to the West of Peru, where an enlightened citizenry labors to improve man’s understanding: “We have twelve that sail into foreign countries under the names of other nations (for our own we conceal), who bring us the books and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts.” In his selection of literary and philosophical quotes for the CD booklet, Battaglia casts a net that similarly brings far-flung traditions into juxtaposition, referencing Rumi and Rimbaud, Hildegard von Bingen and Black Elk of the Oglala Sioux: these are just some of the names that fire the composer’s imagination. Yet it is not a musical patchwork that he has created from such influences but an original concept that seems to spring from a strong, organic center. The trio has its own deep pulses and its own methodology. There is a robust lyricism at work as modal improvisations unfold. *** Battaglia (born 1965 in Milan) first made waves as a classical pianist, playing music from baroque and early music to 20th century composition, touring the European festivals in this capacity, before making the transition to music that incorporated improvisation. A strong feeling for structure, a legacy from the ‘classical’ years, continues to inform all his work, however ostensibly free the context. He has been an ECM artist since 2003, when the double album Raccolto was recorded. Subsequent releases have included Re: Pasolini a tribute to the Italian filmmaker and polymath, which includes contributions from Salvatore Maiore and Roberto Dani, and Pastorale, an album of duets with Michele Rabbia. Salvatore Maiore was born in Sassari in 1965, and studied double bass at the Cagliari conservatory. He has played with numerous Italian configurations and worked with visiting musicians including Lee Konitz, Billy Cobham, Joseph Jarman, Steve Grossman, Cedar Walton, Oliver Lake, and David Liebman. His discography includes recordings with Glauco Venier, Klaus Gesing, Al DiMeola and many others. Roberto Dani was born in Vicenza, Italy in 1969 and began playing drums at the age of 7. He has specialized in small ensemble work, exploring the borders between improvised and written music. His own bands and projects have included Norma Winstone, Louis Sclavis, Michel Godard and others. He has also played with Annette Peacock, Ralph Alessi, Ben Monder, Mick Goodrick and many more. Current affiliations include, in addition to the Battaglia group, the trio of Giorgio Gaslini. He has played numerous solo concerts and also issued solo drum albums, recent releases include Lontano, for prepared drums, on the Stella Nera label. The River of Anyder was recorded in November 2009 in the exceptional acoustic of Lugano’s Auditorio Radiotelevisione Svizzera, with Manfred Eicher producing. Marilyn Mazur Celestial Circle Josefine Cronholm: voice John Taylor: piano Anders Jormin: double-bass Marilyn Mazur: percussion, drums, voice U.S. Release date: October 18, 2011 ECM CD: B0015988-02 UPC: 6025 276 8056 9 Celestial Circle is the recording debut of the band of the same name. First assembled for Marilyn Mazur’s season as artist-in-residence at Norway’s Molde Jazz Festival in 2008, the group has since become a popular institution on the concert circuit, and the present disc was recorded in Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in 2010. It’s a band of diverse strengths and changing moods, song-oriented but also instrumentally expressive. Organically percussive, too, with Mazur’s panoply of drums and gongs and cymbals and bells a source of natural melody and evocative texture. Pianist John Taylor, in his first ECM session in several years, is keyed at all times to the inflections of Josefine Cronholm’s voice, framing it with his characteristic harmonic sophistication and elegant lyricism. Anders Jormin’s bass provides a dark undertow, anchors the music, moves freely in the improvised sections... Even in its quietest moments the group conveys a great deal of musical information. Mazur’s work has always expressed a free-spiritedness beyond idioms and borders. Born in New York, raised in Denmark, she has contributed powerfully to improvisation on both sides of the Atlantic, and her resume has included well-documented stints with Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Gil Evans in the late 1980s as well as 14 years on the road with the Jan Garbarek Group (an association referenced on Mazur’s Elixir recording of 2005). Alongside such high-profile engagements, Mazur has maintained her own bands and projects; ECM recorded her Future Song ensemble in 1994. One such project was Percussion Paradise which included singer Josefine Cronholm – the combination of Cronholm’s and Mazur’s voices is further developed in Celestial Circle. Mazur has received a number of awards for her music, most recently the First International EuroCore - JTI Jazz Award: Celestial Circle played at the prize-giving ceremony in Trier’s Kurfürstliches Palais last December. Other prizes have included the JazzPar Prize (Europe’s biggest jazz award), the Ben Webster Prize and the Django D’Or. Celestial Circle marks an ECM debut for Swedish singer Cronholm. Since the mid-1990s, when she collaborated with Django Bates’s Human Chain group, she has been consistently singled out as one of the most original European jazz vocalists of her generation. John Taylor’s elegant and resourceful piano playing has had a role to play in many ECM contexts including discs with Jan Garbarek, John Surman, Kenny Wheeler, Miroslav Vitous and Peter Erskine as well as Azimuth, the trio he co-founded with Wheeler and Norma Winstone, and his own ‘New York Trio’ with Marc Johnson and Joey Baron (album: Rosslyn). Taylor’s rapport with bassist Anders Jormin was previously confirmed on Mark Feldman’s 2006 recording What Exit. Anders Jormin also records as a leader for ECM, with recordings including Xieyi and In winds, in light (a new album is in preparation). He is a long-term member of the Bobo Stenson Trio, and appears on ECM discs by Charles Lloyd, Don Cherry, Tomasz Stanko, Mark Feldman, Jon Balke and Sinikka Langeland. Marilyn Mazur can also be seen in the documentary film Sounds and Silence by Peter Guyer and Norbert, released in September 2011 on DVD and Blu-Ray formats. The Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff Levon Eskenian Emmanuel Hovhannisyan: duduk Avag Margaryan: blul Armen Ayvazyan: kamancha Aram Nikoghosyan: oud Meri Vardanyan: kanon Vladimir Papikyan: santur Davit Avagyan: tar Mesrop khalatyan: dap Armen Yeganyan: saz Reza Nesimi: tombak Harutyun Chkolyan: duduk Tigran Karapetyan: duduk Artur Atoyan: dum duduk Levon Eskenian: director U.S. Release date: October 18, 2011 ECM CD: B0015991-02 UPC: 6025 277 1913 9 “What appeals most to me in Levon Eskenian's instrumentation is the extremely meticulous, clear cut work approach without unnecessary ‘composing’ and ‘cleverness’ – when in the wilderness of silence the tiniest intervention is done with sound, which is very characteristic of Gurdjieff's works. There is deep silence at the core of Gurdjieff’s music that relates us to the Ecclesiastes chapter of the Bible, or to the truth told of deep silences from faraway lands, a stillness that has not been darkened at all, and has the degree of density that leaves the Gurdjieffian silence immaculate.” Tigran Mansurian ECM has had a long involvement with Gurdieff’s compositions, starting with Keith Jarrett’s recording in 1980 of the Sacred Hymns, which brought about an international revival of interest in the music. Now this fascinating project by Levon Eskenian and his ensemble returns the Gurdjieff music to its inspirational sources. To date Gurdjieff’s compositions have been studied, in the West, largely via the piano transcriptions of his gifted amanuensis, the Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann. Now, however, Levon Eskenian goes beyond the printed notes to look at the musical traditions that Gurdjieff encountered during his travels, and rearranges the compositions from this perspective. This revelatory recording gives the listener the experience of hearing Gurdjieff in full color and in close-up, as it were Gurdjieff from the source, rather than filtered through western classical interpretation, Gurdjieff with the instruments of the East. Eskenian draws attention to the roots of the pieces in folk and spiritual music, aided by Armenia’s leading practitioners of traditional music, with whom he founded the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble in 2008. G. I. Gurdjieff, philosopher, spiritual leader, author and composer, was born in Armenia, but his work and particularly his music is just being rediscovered there. Performances of his music, considered a double threat because of its progressive and religious implications, were discouraged during the Soviet years. Levon Eskenian turned his attention to Gurdjieff while studying at Yerevan’s Komitas Consevatory. An encounter with ECM’s Chants, Hymns and Dances recording – the 2003 album with new Gurdjieff arrangements by Anja Lechner and Vassilis Tsabropoulos – also prompted him to think deeply about Gurdjieff’s sources, as he recognized a number of the tunes as clearly related to folk songs or sacred songs of the region, to songs he’d known since childhood. Eskenian’s liner notes to the present recording trace each of the pieces to specific geographical points of origin and/or inspiration: “Taking many facts into consideration, and seeking an objective understanding of Gurdjieff’s music, I found it necessary to choose from Gurdjieff’s repertoire pieces that have roots in Armenian, Greek, Arabic, Kurdish, Assyrian and Caucasian folk and spiritual music, and through a study of the instrumentation and performance practices of the musical traditions of the region, I have aimed to create ‘ethnographically authentic’ arrangements of Gurdjieff’s music for Eastern Instruments.“ The logical consequence of this work was the founding of the Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble in 2008. The group gave its first concerts in Gyumri (Alexandropol), Gurdjieff’s birthplace, and recorded its debut album in Yerevan in the winter of 2008. The recording was mastered by ECM in Munich in 2011.

I haven't seen that photo of Marilyn before!

Jetman, if you read the slideshow you will see that that is all explained.

Here's a slideshow of the most unpopular players for each MLB team. Other than Richie Allen and Joe Morgan (who is a surprise to me), the players are pretty recent. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/870405-most-disliked-player-in-the-history-of-every-mlb-team/page/1

Toronto Argonauts 31....Calgary Stampeders 29 http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=sportsnetwork&page=cfl/news/news.aspx?id=4443232 Surprise! The Argos gave the game away, and the Stamps gave it right back. The Argos had a terrific first half, and led 28-9 at the break. They did absolutely nothing in the second half, Drew Tate got hot, and the Stamps pulled ahead late 29-28. In the final minute, twice the Argos drive was stalled, but penalties gave them new life. Noel Prefontaine kicked an 18 yard field goal on the last play of the game to win it.

Happy Birthday 2011 Bluerein!

Susan St. James?

Dave, is that Paul Newman?

Man! Some people you can't have fun with without their cheating!

Head Man, thanks for the recommendation of burrrn! I've never heard of it before. I too use Windows XP, and I'll give it a try.

Valerie, that photo does have a 1940s look to it, doesn't it? But I'm guessing that the photo was taken about 1963.

Hint: Born in 1941, I believe she was a contract player for Warner Bros. television in the early 60s.

Happy Birthday 2011, John! The Argos? Oh, well!

Gary Muledeer?

I'm really curious about that one! While we're waiting for Jim to give us another clue, let's see if anyone remembers this lady.

Globe Week 16 picks http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/football/cfl-week-16-preview/article2200591/

The Riders traded Hugh Charles to Edmonton today for a draft pick. http://www.tsn.ca/cfl/story/?id=377936

Thanks aloc! I'll plan to listen to the Heaths and Roy Hargrove first.

Is that Ally Sheedy?

The Argos have released Prechae Rodriguez to make room on the roster for Maurice Mann. I suspect that Rodriguez is through. I hadn't realized that the Ticats also let go of Marquay McDaniel, and that the Stamps had picked him up. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/football/mann-thrilled-to-be-an-argonaut/article2198824/

Dave Naylor Week 15 wrapup http://www.tsn.ca/cfl/story/?id=377907 ***** Greg Xenakes Week 16 picks http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=sportsnetwork&page=cfl/news/news.aspx?id=4442726

Jack, you were my last hope! So...It's Nita Talbot! Doesn't anyone remember her? She was on TV all the time.