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Jez Nelson presents a concert by the American jazz composer and bandleader Maria Schneider. In her first appearance in the UK with her regular New York big band, Schneider conducts music from her recent Grammy-winning album, Concert in the Garden. Recorded at the recent London Jazz Festival. Available for roughly 5 more days before it vanishes into the ether. Click on Radio 3 jazz to get it started. Real Player seems to be the only program that can stream this, but I could be wrong.

Norm Coleman is a Republican. I suspect most of the staffers on both sides of the aisle know about Wikipedia. While on the one hand, it is hard to imagine senior members of Congress knowing about blogs or Wikipedia, the one thing these guys care about is their public image. Many of them hire staff to track how they are represented in the media, and I imagine that has been extended to the Web.

Huh - you learn about something new everyday. I was looking over some set lists of BBC radio programs -- which I have been listen to a lot lately -- and they mentioned some improv collective called Children of the Drone. Here's their mission statement: Children of the Drone is an expanding collective of musicians based in and around Exeter, UK which meets fairly regularly in varying configurations to play entirely improvised music. We're attempting to gently break out of the usual constraints and formats which conventional 'bands' tend to get stuck with these days, and do something a bit different... It does seem clear this is sort of a hobby for them and they are not trying to become paid musicians. Anyway, they put together essentially all of their music on their website for download. Some is quite good and I will sample more later. Drone downloads

0 - I've been vegetarian for about 10 years. Even though you can technically order salads there, it seems to me to be a pointless exercise in masochism to go there. Now what I will do when my son is 5 is a different story, but I think I will take him other places and let his mother take him to Mickey Ds.

If I have the same problem and it is confined to just three tracks, I will just download them from emusic and burn replacement CDs. Not really the same, but less of a headache than trying to return the box set.

It's taking the best known works from that show, and adding different things as well. I heard that one at Pomidou was HUGE!!!! I vaguely remember a DADA show at the MOMA in the early 1990s (I think) but it wasn't the size of this show. I'll see if I can make it.

You scared me when you said you finished the Cezanne show -- I see you meant you finished putting it together and hanging it. I'm hoping to arrange a trip to DC soon to catch the Cezanne and DADA shows. For anyone in DC, the Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870–1910 show is worth seeing at the Phillips Collection (I saw it at the Tate). I'm glad I managed to catch the Sam Gilliam show at the Corcoran right before it closed, but it doesn't quite make my list.

By the way, I don't know about current New Yorkers, but I am really torn over the new MOMA. It is definitely larger and there is something to be said for the new layout with its feeling of verticality. However, I am nostalgic for the old cramped MOMA, particularly the exhibits in the basement. And somehow crowd control seems worse in the new MOMA, though there may have been overflow crowds due to the Pixar exhibit, which I skipped. If anything, however, the artists on display seem even whiter than ever before. They do show the cool Wilfredo Lam painting, but that's about it. Can anyone recall some exhibit from the 1990s where MOMA put on display all its art by Mexican, Latin American and South American artists? The MOMA website tells me it is Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century from 1993. After this show, they kept a handful of the paintings on display in the main collection - the Lam, a couple Diego Riveras and one cool painting with a baby's screaming head that kept getting bigger. All but the Lam have gone into storage. To make it even more ghettoized, in 2004, they set up this separate exhibit in at El Museo called Latin American and Caribbean Art from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art. I didn't see this show, though I suspect it is largely a repeat of the 1993 show. The catalogue does look pretty good, however, and I think I'll order it.

I'll list some of my favorite art exhibits here. I'll probably have to keep updating and correcting dates, places, etc. and add commentary as I feel up to it. This is far from a complete list of everything I have seen, for I have spent many, many, many afternoons in museums, but these are the ones that still stay with me. There is a bias towards larger shows, since I can't track down too much on smaller gallery showings or some of the really cool things I have seen in the Yates Gallery in the Chicago Cultural Center (an amazing resource for the city). Georgia O'Keefe - retrospective 1987 Chicago (show probably originated in DC) This is the first major exhibit I remember seeing - we drove to see the exhibit because my mom really wanted to see it (I was still in high school). So glad we did. Wasn't old enough to see the Picasso blockbuster show at MOMA and missed the big High/Low show by about 2 years. But I did see the Matisse blockbuster show at MOMA in 1992. I loved it. Only time I've ever seen scalpers working an art gallery. Stuart Davis - Met 1992 Magritte - Met 1992 "Rolyholyover: A Circus” travelling exhibition curated by John Cage and Julie Lazar This basically originated out of the Guggenheim in 1993, but I saw it in Philadelphia a year later Barnes Exhibit - DC and Toronto 1994 I know this completely violated the spirit (and the letter) of the charter of the Barnes Foundation, but I'm still glad I managed to catch it (twice in fact) Gustave Caillebotte - Chicago 1995 Time Dust, James Rosenquist, Complete Graphics : 1962 -1992. This traveled all over the place, and I happened to catch it in Madison, WI in 1995 Kandinsky: Compositions MOMA 1995 Edward Hopper and the American Imagination Whitney 1995 So I can be a bit of a sucker for Americana, but I really do like his empty urban landscapes and the quiet desperation of so many of his intimate portraits. Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology National Gallery of Art DC 1995 Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South. The Art Institute of Chicago, 2001 Chiefly memorable since it had both the MOMA and Musee D'Orsay versions of Starry Night in one room. Very nice for Midwesterners unable to travel. Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence Whitney 2001 Many good parts to this show, but best was the seeing the entire Migration Series in one place Andreas Gursky Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2002 Surrealism: Desire Unbound Met 2002 Giorgio de Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne Philadelphia 2003 The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints 2003 This exhibit was organized by the Worcester Art Museum, then traveled to Cleveland and I caught it in Evanston, IL actually. A really well-done exhibit with an excellent catalogue still kicking around Matisse Picasso MOMA Queens 2003 I was surprised that there were some paintings I hadn't seen, i.e. they weren't only drawing on paintings from New York museums I was already familiar with. Not nearly as amazing as the Matisse exhibit nor presumably the Picasso one. Max Beckmann MOMA Queens 2003 Probably the only time I've really gone out of my way to see an art exhibit - I actually scheduled a business trip at the same time as the show to ensure I saw it. I believe 5 of his triptychs were in the exhibit. Terrific. James Rosenquist: A Retrospective Guggenheim 2003 Finally a really effective use of the Guggenheim's interior. This is by far the most impressive show I've ever seen at the Guggenheim (though I don't go that frequently). Sebastiao Salgado Migrations 2003 I managed to see this in New York and again in Chicago. Some very moving images, particularly the teeming masses in Far Eastern megacities. In its last 18 months of existence, the Terra Museum (in Chicago) put on some terrific small shows. I think my favorite was called Chicago Modern: Pursuit of the New (2004). I feel considerably melancholy over its passing, however. Romare Bearden 2004 SF MOMA I managed to get to see this in San Francisco and I think I just missed it at the Whitney and in DC. (I'm a little disappointed the Met is no longer currently showing The Block, but it will probably come back pretty soon.) Art of Gunther Gerzso - Mexican Fine Arts Center, Chicago 2004 I was only introduced to Gerzso through a fine show "DIEGO, FRIDA AND THE MEXICAN SCHOOL" I had seen the previous year. I was fascinated by the idea that this abstractionist was working in Mexico at the same time as most Mexican artists were doing more figurative work. Very good show - very nice catalogue. Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2004 Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist’s Eye Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2005 In some ways, the catalogue is more unified and coherent than the show was. Some of the individual pieces were really lame (and perhaps I could have lived without the room that combined an Egytian tomb with hardcore pornography). However, I was completely blown away by the installation by video artist Doug Aitken and went back to see it three times. Frida Kahlo Tate Modern 2005 Robert Rauschenberg: Combines Met 2006 As always, there are a few that got away. I'm bummed I couldn't get to the Guston show at the Met a few years back. But I have certainly managed to get to most of the exhibits I wanted to see, provided I was on the same continent.

I probably also didn't make it quite clear enough that in my examples 1-6 those were not necessarily artists I disliked personally. I actually really like De Chirico in particular. For me, one bad phase doesn't negate an artist's career. It's really only #4-6 that get me going.

I think in a couple of hours I'll post the far more positive thread about great art exhibits. However, the one I was most excited about seeing (rather than the BEST) was the Max Beckmann at MOMA Queens with the Matisse blockbuster show a bit behind that. An artist that does very little for me is Gerhart Richter.

I like a lot of that kind of work - Bacon, Guston - but maybe not right for a hospital room.

I think in the end it works out to 5 CDs of Duke's material and 3 of Ella. There are probably a few performances of her singing with his group but not too many. Here's a promotional blurb -- maybe she sings more with Duke than I remember. Anyway, some really nice music. The price is a little high - can't remember what I paid - but when you figure in shipping a used copy, it works out about the same.

I've barely watched any of Season 1 and 2. It's good news, but I think I'll hold off until I've caught up with past purchases. Maybe I missed it in the thread but Looney Tunes vol. 3 came out and is excellent. There's a DVD of all the Hollywood parodies, including The House that Jack Built (Jack Benny) and The Honeymousers.

I'm with you on Koons. He's a case where at least I can respect the idea but the art is so (purposely) mundane. While I don't like all of Wall's work, I do like his photo based on Invisible Man and a fairly recent photo taken/constructed of an apartment in Japan (I think). I do like some of Rauschenberg and Johns work quite a bit. I like John's work in the 1990s, particularly a series based around the Four Seasons theme (ironically the same theme found in some of the only Cy Twombly work I enjoy). Rauschenberg does make ugly color choices for his constructs, but some of them are still very interesting -- and quite witty in an inside art kind of way. I would recommend getting to the Met in New York to see a show of dozens of his constructs. Seeing them all together helped me appreciate them more. I think I will put together a list of major art exhibits I really liked, but it will take a while.

Thinking of Allen's list, I thought this might be the place to discuss visual artists you dislike. I should say up front that I like a lot of art, even much contemporary art, but there is also much I can't stand. (Maybe I will make the more positive artists I like list at some other point, though that would be sort of blog-gy given how long it would be.) For me, bad artists potentially fall into several categories: 1) Artists who make some piece so hideous it overshadows the rest of their work 2) Artists who go through an extremely bad phase and may or may not recover from it (De Chirico) 3) Artists who become extremely successful/over-exposed and in turn start cranking out inferior work (Dali, Warhol) or carbon copies of past work (Frank Gehry - ok so he's an architect) 4) Artists who appear to have no technical abilities whatsoever but are expressing some idea 5) Artists who have no ability and their idea is so lame that I could have come up with it 6) Artists who make ugly, trivial or boring work I think #4 is a tricky category and it depends on whether I find the idea reasonably interesting and the trade-off with how poor the art is. I can see the point behind most of Cy Twombly's work (taking schoolboy scribbles and turning them into canvases), but I still dislike most of his work intensely except for a few pieces hanging in the MOMA. Not a fan of Tracey Emin either. I was seriously disappointed when I finally saw Ad Reinhardt's work, but I don't hate him. I was also really disappointed with how trivial most of Richard Tuttle's work was at the Whitney show, but again it doesn't rise to disliking the artist. I suppose the artists I dislike the most fall into #5 and #6. Dan Flavin - boring and pretentious - absolutely the worst show of 2004 Jean Dubuffet - ugly art - yes I know it is art brut but I still find it so ugly. There are only a handful of street scenes I find tolerable. Ed Rushcha's starting to bore me, and will probably move higher on the list of disliked artists. Well, it's late, and that's all I can think of for the moment.

Am now about 1/2 through At Lady Molly's, which is the 4th novel in Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time. I think this is where the series really picks up some momentum. That's not to say it is a chore reading the earlier books. I started to appreciate them about 25 pages into book 1. There is a detached wit in the observations of characters. What is interesting, and clearly part of the construction of the series, that friends fall away and return with the ebb and flow of time. This seems particularly true of this class of English (educated at Oxbridge) and living in London, so they do still run into each other from time to time. The interweaving of people through marriage and other alliances/dalliances seems almost suffocating at times. I wonder a few things. Are there contemporary settings that have the same layeredness, either in the US or UK? The places that strike me the most likely are still London or New York, since people who have made it some scene in either place are extremely reluctant to leave. Also, academic communities have considerable continuity (among the professors at any rate) that one doesn't seem to find in other settings. Some of the old tropes of fiction (long-standing grudges in particular) just don't seem as relevant in contemporary US where there is still such mobility. I suppose I am a bit of an exception, but I've made 4 or 5 moves of over 500 miles, depending on how you count them, and make smaller moves almost every year. Almost none of my old friends are living where I originally met them. And yet virtually all sitcoms depend on the same crowd showing up and dealing with the same things, year in year out. Would it be possible to create a tv program that really reflected this unrootedness or would that just be emotionally unsatisfying? In some small way, Seinfeld approaches this, with George's many jobs and the transitory nature of all relationships outside the core four plus familiy (and Newmann). I suppose most of the non-sitcom shows have shake-ups among the staff. I suppose it comes down to television comedy requiring familiarity not required by comic or semi-comic novels. But maybe I am simply expecting an unreasonable amount of uprootedness -- most sitcoms that go past five years have some personnel changes (for spinoffs if nothing else) -- MASH, Taxi, All in the Family, LA Law, Barney Miller -- and that may be a much more representative example of how frequently most people move than expecting changes every few episodes. Anyway, to get back to the book, there are a few really amusing characters, particularly this titled character who has adopted radical politics but still can't go the last step and turn his estate over to the masses. I'm still feeling that this is closest to a modernized version of Trollope's The Pallisers.

I have maybe 1/3 of my core collection backed up (the Mosaics and a few other box sets (including Jazz in Paris) and my favorite artists), but there is a long way to go. And I've filled up a 250 Gig hard drive! Partly I simply save at too high a sample rate, partly I have a lot of music. Could I live with just the music on the hard drive? Probably, though that is not exactly in the spirit of the question. This quickly leads us back to the morality issue of CDRs, dubs, etc. What would I do if I had to sell off my collection and not keep back-up copies? A much, much harder question. The pieces I would be most interested in keeping until the bitter end are the Mosaics, and they're about the only thing with any resale value. I'd probably get rid of the rest of my vinyl first, then CDs I haven't listened to in the last two or three years. I think I'd probably do better selling off my book collection, which is mostly social science and urban studies books, and probably has a slightly higher resale value.

I see it has been released in the US and a UK release is scheduled for March. It's amazing how studios can settle their legal differences when there is money to be made. The Pink Panther cartoons are also finally being released in the US now that the Steve Martin movie tie-in is ready. (Unfortunately, it will probably suck like all post-Sellers Panther movies.) In some respects The Party and the Pink Panther films (particularly the later ones) are quite similar. Mayhem, funny accents, etc. Maybe I find just enough of a plot in the Pink Panther movies that I am not bored they way I was with The Party. Anyway, I do like much of Sellers' work with Dr. Strangelove at the very top of the list. He's also in Kubrick's Lolita. I like the idea of Being There a bit more than the actual movie, but I was young when I saw it and should give it another chance. For these roles alone, he would be considered as a great comic actor, though I suppose he wouldn't have become a legend without the Inspector Clouseau role. What I find interesting about Sellers' roles is that he moved from a fairly restrained lunacy in the British movies (I'm All Right, Jack; Ladykillers; Carlton-Browne of the F.O.) to over-the-top silliness and crazy outfits after the success of Shot in the Dark/The Pink Panther. This could be effective but sometimes was just too much and his talents might have been served better if he had been reigned in a bit (I'm thinking of The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu in particular). I'm realizing as I look at his movies that I really haven't seen most of his work from the 1970s, so I don't know if I would like it or not.

I must be one of the few people to really hate The Party.* Just thought it dragged on and on and on. Oh look at Sellars' character create mayhem, oh there he breaks another lamp, then he gets people to fall in the pool. What little plot there was was so cliched. * As long as I am being contrary, I also hate The Stunt Man (and Rope) for plots that lack conviction. They are supposed to be so daring and yet have completely conventional endings. Dr. Strangelove and Harold and Maud are so much better for not ending with typical Hollywood happy endings.

Shoot, I want one of these. I bought all four of those JiP boxes, but I guess I bought them too early.

I hear you, but I am still not sure that Columbia would have marketed Monk or Mingus to the same extent, to try to push them to #1 jazz icon. They filled other niches well -- the eccentric genius niche, for example, as well as the Angry Black musician (of course Miles had a piece of this too). Maybe I am attributing too much cleverness to the marketeers. Maybe they just gave Miles a bit of an extra push, but he spoke to a vast audience (everything up to Bitches Brew) and did the rest on his own and it became a self-perpetuating machine. It would be interesting to rerun history to see who the labels would have promoted in the absence of Miles and whether it would have worked, but I'm certainly glad we have his music.

Maybe already mentioned, but Henry Grimes Trio (on ESP) is available as well as two ESP discs by Burton Greene (who apparently could have been the next Miles Davis if he had just gotten the same marketing push, according to another thread ) and three Sonny Simmons CDs (two on ESP).

That's cool. Many Naxos Jazz Cds are available as well. International shipping is available but quite steep. I used to put in a big order with Daedalus every few months but haven't in a long time now.

I'm so frigging sick of trademarks and protecting slogans. Anything that a 12 year old can think of (like 3peat or 12th man) is way too common to be granted a trademark. I think I heard the other day that Paris Hilton is trying to trademark "It's Hot." We're literally carving up the English language and giving it away to corporate entities for no good reason whatsoever (so what else is new).