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Last Sat. I saw Kronos Quartet (for the second time). They are doing even more touring than usual, since this is their 40th Anniversary year. While I enjoyed the first time around (2009) a bit more, it was an interesting show and it was the world premiere of Philip Glass's 6th String Quartet. I am sorely tempted to go down to LA on March 14 when they are playing Black Angels. (They are also doing this in Berkeley on Dec. 7.) I honestly don't know how often they play Black Angels in concert, but I wouldn't think they do it that often (I might be completely off about that.) I have delved a bit more into their recent back catalog and was quite intrigued that they commissioned a piece for 2 cellos and that Joan Jeanrenaud performed on the recording (and a handful of concerts). I went ahead and ordered the CD on which this performs (and am waiting for the download to complete...).

I'm in (not to the party, however). Just under 3 days left to go.

I am so intrigued by Speak No Evil and Out to Lunch and these potential alternates. However, I think I will hold off until someone can actually report back with some details, such as whether they were unjustly suppressed or indeed if they are true alternates and not something like false starts.

Frankly it all seems rather unlikely. "American Jazz Classics" certainly appears to be yet another name for the hydra that is Fresh Sounds. Paying extra for a SACD of what is most likely ripped source material really exemplifies what Barnum said all those years ago.

So one unissued session (It features the 6 outstanding unreleased tracks, by Ed Blackwell with a drum ensemble and a quartet featuring Don Cherry) but apparently no alt. takes. Am I missing something? It seems like this would fit onto 5 CDs easily. If they are going for an original album approach, then we might at least get the cover art...

Have gotten totally sidelined from Proust (to the point I am seriously questioning whether I will finish this). Read Barbara Comyns's The Vet's Daughter, which was also odd, like a precursor to Angela Carter's work. Didn't really like it that much. I think Comyns is an acquired taste. I have also been reading a lot of poetry: George Bowering (of which my favorite collections have been Delayed Mercy and Vermeer's Light), George Stanley (I liked Vancouver: A poem quite a bit), Constance Urdang, Maureen Seaton and Denise Duhamel.

I actually saw that 5-6 weeks ago. It was a nice exhibit. I was kind of floored to see this large painting from the AGO (in Toronto), since it is one that I have burned into my memory from repeated visits. Then they had a very similar black dress nearby. It was Tissot's The Shop Girl:

Looks like a fairly interesting photography exhibit (Edward Burtynsky) is supposed to land at the Vancouver Art Gallery this spring, but it is too early for them to confirm anything (still hush hush). I hope it does happen -- right now the VAG is in a phase where there is nothing of interest (to me) on display. I did see some core paintings from the University of Iowa on display at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA. I enjoyed that, though it was only two galleries. The absolute highlight for me was Beckmann's triptych Carnival. Has anyone made it to the Tate to see the Klee exhibit? It looks pretty nice, though I wouldn't fly in just for that... I have quite a few books on Klee, but the catalog may still be worth getting.

This looks pretty amazing. I may actually hold off and put it on my Xmas wish list, since I generally have so little impulse control there is not much left to get me when the holidays roll around...

Looks like they added a $20 for international music lovers with the CD shipped overseas (and presumably to Canada ) and full concert download. A little tempting. I'll ponder it just a bit longer (13 days to go).

Kind of odd that nearly all the other Szeryng Mozart concertos made it onto CD (many in this box) but K364 has never made it onto CD (unless I am just really missing something). If I was in Europe, I definitely would have gone for the Amazon.de offer, but I was able to scarf up one of the last new copies from Newberry, and that worked out pretty well. Anyway, the De Leeuw is quite tempting. I saw that Amazon.de will possibly carry the De Leeuw in the future, but you can't order it there now. As it happens I have the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time with De Leeuw (in a different pairing). That makes it a harder decision to be sure.

Not sure about that. If you go through Amazon, they report that it is a repacking of this set (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Mozart-Edition-Vol-Violin-Concertos/dp/B00004YSBF/ref=cm_cr_dp_asin_lnk) and if you poke around long enough you get a back cover that indicates the Sinfonia concertante (KV 364) is Szeryng, Iona Brown and Nobuko Imai. I imagine this is the one you mean. Generally, these sets go for $25-30 used, so this is a good but not jaw-dropping deal. Something I will consider seriously, nonetheless. Actually, that doesn't make much sense -- the cover is very confusing, perhaps even deliberately misleading, but it is true it is unlikely there would be two violins on KV 364. Oh well.

I thought it was very amusing, and I agree with him in a lot of his assessments, including recent Wayne Shorter recordings. I guess it depends on where you stand on "progress" in jazz. And whether the young lions of today should be treated with kid gloves.

I've been reading a few books out on Virago lately, or attempting to. I really didn't care for E.H. Young's Chatterton Square and have abandoned it. I am about 1/3 through Barbara Comyns' Our Spoons Came From Woolworths. It is definitely a curiousity. Comyns has a quirky "voice". In Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, she strikes me as a precursor to Angela Carter. A slightly breezier tone that covers some really dark stuff. Apparently The Vet's Daughter is along similar lines. Our Spoons Came From Woolworths is a bit more grounded in reality, but describes two very young and very feckless artists that marry (I believe this is fairly autobiographical). Reading it, you see that things weren't really different than today, and that the world probably would be better off if you needed a permit in order to reproduce. I find myself pretty alienated from the woman (who is also the narrative voice) as she not only makes mistake after mistake but doesn't seem to even feel the need to go to someone who is more worldly to find out anything -- how to use the bus system for example. Life just happens to her and she sits back and lets it roll over her. Her husband is even worse -- a totally failed artist who won't make any effort to support his growing family. I can't relate to such people and am finding myself annoyed with the book. Fortunately, it is short.

I note that the ranting on this issue as well as that of European copyright seems to be coming from the wealthiest musicians. Risk of losing a million or two? What sickens me is that the jazz musicians of consummate artistry whom I turn out to see are paid £100 - £300 per gig, while I read that a lesser light in the pop/rock world can expect £75,000. Dunno why it should sicken you, Bill. That IS part of the natural order of things. This ain't the thirties and they're not Cab Calloway. MG It's regrettable that this is the natural order of things. I guess that it's easy to accept "the natural order of things" if you're not a musician trying to make a living. I'm not really sure what the alternatives are. It's already questionable that governments, particularly in Europe, support opera and classical concerts when this is clearly an elite interest. Should they really do the same for gigging jazz musicians? And what would be a reasonable cut-off point? Of course it sounds harsh because it is something we care about, but should the governments of the 1910s and 1920s have kept blacksmiths in business (after horse-drawn conveyances fell by the wayside) or the proverbial buggy-whip manufacturers? Almost nobody cares about jazz anymore, certainly not enough to support these musicians in any reasonable fashion. What would be nice is if the U.S. had a decent safety net, but it really never did, and it certainly doesn't now.

Not a blues fan, but I might listen to a side put out by Big Spider Beck, esp. with Halloween around the corner.

I haven't watched Dexter since season 4. I read a spoiler-heavy review of the finale that said it was so bad it invalidated the entire series -- and that they now regretted watching any Dexter episodes at all. Harsh...

So I have done a bit more investigation into the Reiner set. There are 17 CDs largely dedicated to him in the RCA Living Stereo box that duplicate the material in the new 63 CD box set. Another 5 or 6 CDs were fairly easy to track down. Someone has indicated that about 20 CDs worth of material was remastered in the new box, but it was available previously in one form or another. I would guess I have 35-45% of the material in the box, mostly depending on how they spread it out. Given that it is essentially an original jacket collection, many of these 63 CDs will be awfully short. At the moment, Amazon.ca has it for about $30-35 less than Amazon.com, though that is without shipping to U.S. Probably is still a good deal for Americans (compared to the Amazon.com pre-order), with shipping but without tax and the US dollar up just a bit against $Can. Definitely worth considering if one is north of the border.

I didn't realise there was a book. It was/is a very good exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery where I obviously didn't visit the shop on the way out That does sound interesting, though I don't think I'll make the exhibit There are a bunch of decent books on the Group of 7, but this book is quite interesting for a much later, lesser-known Canadian group, the Painters 11. (I tend to gravitate towards abstract art, so I was glad to read up on this group.)

Sometimes it is worth asking if you increase the donation a bit will they at least ship the CD internationally. (That's what happened for me with the Harrison Bankhead.) I might look into this.

After some consideration, I decided to go for the Paavo Berglund set. No question some reviewers are unhappy that it is not a complete Bournemouth set (missing essentially all of the Sibelius symphonies -- available in a different box that then has a lot of overlap with CDs 12/13 here -- and Shostakovich's chamber music). However, I thought that having the Shostakovich symphonies as well as some slightly off-the-beaten track repetoire (CDs 7 & 9-11) made it worth it for me. I found an Amazon reseller offering it at a pretty good price. Should have it next week. Actually, the overlap with this set of the symphonies (http://www.amazon.ca/Sibelius-Symphonies-Paavo-Berglund/dp/B0091JQH2Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1380213268&sr=1-1&keywords=berglund+sibelius) is confined to CD12 (of this set). Kullervo is included in this EMI set, but not the Sibelius symphony set. That actually makes it a bit easier to swallow. If I like what I hear, I probably will get the Sibelius symphony set next.

F. I completely disagree with the notion of ranking jazz musicians... nonetheless this is a scandal and Ω was robbed. (Omega has way more cred than Z.)

Imo, Roscoe Mitchell has more music ahead of him - no matter how much longer he lives - than Vijay Iyer ever will. So I don't think that the "investment in the future" concept is valid. You don't but others don't see it that way. I am not very interested in Roscoe Mitchell's work and generally am intrigued by what Iyer is up to. Certainly, the odds are that Vijay will be creating a lot longer than Roscoe at this point. It comes down to taste, and there is no point in getting too steamed over it.

You can agree or not but the current steering committee certainly seems to be looking at this as an investment in the future, i.e. giving money to much younger artists who presumably are at an earlier point in their careers, rather than going to established artists and validating a career that is mostly behind them, a la the Nobel prizes.

It sounds interesting, but I'm uncertain... See I'm afraid that I would order it, and it would sit there in the box from Amazon. I wouldn't know whether I had already read it or not until I opened the --- Ok, I'll stop there. On a recent trip to Chicago, I read Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection. It starts with a lot of promise, but then by the end basically devolves into Inception-lite (even though it came out a year or so ahead of that movie). More than anything it reminds me of a mash-up of Dark City, Borges and Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Not a bad book, but just beware that you will probably feel a bit let down by the end.