mjzee

Curious about the opinions of our esteemed listeners here about Martha Argerich. Liked? Disliked? Strengths? Weaknesses? Accurate? Exuberant? Place in the pantheon? Best performances?

Only 3 of the 9 sold. See: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=&_sacat=0&_udlo=&_udhi=&_ftrt=901&_ftrv=1&_sabdlo=&_sabdhi=&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=15&_stpos=&_fss=1&_fsradio=%26LH_SpecificSeller%3D1&_saslop=1&_sasl=bluenotesound&_sop=12&_dmd=1&_ipg=50&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc

WSJ had a review: http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-billie-holiday-the-musician-and-the-myth-by-john-szwed-1428085956

Here's an interview with Jewel Brown. It touches on her career, her days with Louis Armstrong, and the Houston scene: Local Houston Magazine

Listening now to disc one of the Joe Pass Mosaic, and I'm struck by Clare Fischer's comping in the background. It's really interesting stuff to listen to. While it's very different from, say, Sonny Clark's comping, it's similar in that he takes what's essentially a support role and makes listening to a quartet a much richer experience. His solos, too: trenchant, never obtrusive, but lets you think there's a heavyweight mind behind those fingers. Really enjoyable (Pass is an MF too).

When I was in Manhattan in December, I found the December 2014 issue of Jazz Inside magazine. It had a long interview with Charles McPherson. Among other things, he talked about growing up in Detroit. This section about how he met Barry Harris when he was 15 really grabbed me: CM: Barry Harris would see me at the Blue Bird all the time, and I met him. Then I started going over to his house, and he started showing me about harmony and theory. JI: Did he show you things on piano? CM: Yeah. He showed me everything about two-five-one's - that whole thing: chords, scales, what it means. Then, I started listening to and transcribing music from records. He would write out little solos and say, "You should listen to this record...listen to that." He really just took me under his wing and would write out tunes—easy tunes at first, like blues, rhythm, "Perdido," and things without a bunch of [chord] changes. Then, he slowly brought me on to playing standards, and pretty soon, more complicated tunes that had a bunch of changes, like "All or Nothing at All." Then I got turned on to Bud Powell, Bird, Dizzy, Miles and those people. And another thing, too—this has nothing to do with music, but it's a very important part of my life. When I started going over to Barry's house, I was about fifteen. I was over his house every other day. I lived two minutes away, around the corner. One day, he said, "When do you get your report card, Charles?" I said, "Uh, well I'll get it this week or something." Report card day came, and I went over his house, and he said, "Did you get your report card?" I said, "Yeah." So, I gave him my report card. Now, this changed my life—from this moment on, other than the music part. He looked at the card and he said, "Oh, you're quite an average student, you know." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "I just see C's on here. I don't see the A's or B's." In those days, A's were great, B's were wonderful and C's were kind of average. And that was true of me. I just had C's—maybe a B somewhere, but mostly C's. Barry said, "Well, Charles, I must say to you, it's okay. At least it's average. But the kind of musicians and the people that you actually like—Charlie Parker—those people are not average at all. They're actually spectacular. I don't know if you'll really be able to play this kind of music, and actually be average in the brain." When he said that, my whole world changed about school, the importance of it. I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He told me about Bird because he knew I love Charlie Parker. Barry said: "I must say to you that Charlie Parker is probably a genius, man. And even though he's not a good boy in society— you know, with his habits—intellectually, Charlie Parker could sit down with anybody and talk about the planet; talk about anything." He's a book reader, and do you read?" I said, "No." Barry said, "Well, then I don't know if you're going to be able to play this music. This music is not real easy." And from that point on, my whole attitude about school, about getting good marks, totally changed. When I started reading about Bird, about how Bird was really a brilliant guy, then, all of a sudden, just to be in school and be average just to get along—I changed. From that point on, I started doing homework. I started to bring it over to Barry's house and he would look at it. Barry was very smart, you know, in terms of book-learning.

So how would a non-musician know what is the correct pitch? I have the software to do so (Amadeus), but if I were to buy, say, the new Japanese reissue of One Night At Birdland, how would I know where the correct pitch would lie? One could compare a track to its studio counterpart, but they might have played it differently live. It would be great if someone could give specific instructions: "on these tracks, make the pitch correction x.xx slower" or some such. Also, on the pitch-corrected version of the Rockland Palace material, Doug Pomeroy makes a point of saying that there can be speed variations within a track, so the remastered versions need to be corrected throughout each track. Sounds like a lot of work.

My conclusion is One Night In Birdland is not, see post #41. Yeah judging by the track times. Would love to hear an A/B comparison to see how much difference it makes. Slightly disappointing but at the same time that's how i've heard it and fallen in love with it. hmv.co.jp has sound samples of the new reissue. Can someone who has a previous issue compare and tell us if they corrected the speed? http://www.hmv.co.jp/en/artist_Charlie-Parker_000000000003816/item_One-Night-In-Birdland_5620291

There was a recent posting on an Art Pepper thread here about how Laurie had a chance to buy the masters for Charlie Parker Records but couldn't afford it then. This leads me to believe that this box was made from the original master tapes. I haven't heard anything that sounds like a needle-drop.

Today's the release date. Amazon Resellers are already offering it for $15.29 plus shipping; see http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B00RVD8DBM/ref=tmm_other_meta_binding_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new&sr=&qid= Has anyone heard these and can comment on how they sound compared to the Wounded Bird reissues? Those Sony OAC and WEA OAS sets have never had new remasters, they are pure budget sets. The Sony's at least tend to have any previously released bonus cuts, where the WEA's are the original album content only. Pretty encouraging to see that Farrell set, though, both for what it is itself and for what it portends on the possibility of other CTI sets. What's interesting about the "old remastering vs. new remastering" thing is that many are now criticizing newer remasterings (in general) as being too loud. So some might actually prefer the older versions.

There's also a Joe Farrell set coming from Sony:

What is VBR Q1 ? I'm not sure I have choices other than bit rate when ripping with iTunes. I have explore other ripping programs that verified rips but these too a very long time to do their thing. From the Amadeus manual: Saving Mp3 files is achieved through the tool lame. (See also Section 16 below.) It supports a variety of settings (the meaning of the most important one, the bitrate, was explained above). In order to achieve a given file size, it is recommended to use the ABR (Average Bit Rate – simple parts of the sound will be compressed more than complex parts, achieving a better overall quality) setting, rather than CBR (Constant Bit Rate – all parts of the sound have the same compression rate) in order to achieve maximum qual- ity, but note that some Mp3 players may not support ABR files. The VBR (Variable Bit Rate) setting is more flexible and allows you to specify a target quality rather than a tar- get file size. This usually results in better sounding files, but you have less control over the resulting file size (‘complex’ sounds will produce larger files than ‘simple’ sounds for a given quality). Note also that as with ABR files, not every Mp3 player supports VBR files. The screenshot next to this paragraph shows a popular setting that represents a good trade-off between file size and sound quality. Note that the use of id3v2.4 tags is discouraged since their support is broken in iTunes (this is true as of iTunes 7). Note: the screenshot showed CBR, encoding quality 2. When I rip using Amadeus, I've been using VBR, encoding quality 2. But lately I've been ripping using Apple Lossless. But as for iTunes, if you choose the following settings, I believe they're equal to VBR 2: When you click on Import CD, in the box Import Settings, click on Setting: Custom... In the MP3 Encoder box that follows, underneath Stereo Bit Rate, check the box Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR), and choose Quality: Highest.

There was a 16-page booklet. It reprinted the original covers and liner notes.

My shipment arrived today, in good condition. It's funny, the associations you make with certain releases. I saw The 3 Sounds "Babe's Blues" at the Borders in the World Trade Center. It looked interesting, and I made a mental note to maybe get it someday. So when I see Babe's Blues, I think of that Borders and of the WTC.

In one of the Amazon customer reviews for the Philippe Entremont box, in which there was a defective disc, a customer posted the following: If you need a replacement, contact your dealer or contact: ines.kindlmann@sonymusic.com

https://youtu.be/WfeXvvQ98y8

Perhaps not jazz, but a fine, fine guitarist. The Guardian.

Article on Melford in today's WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/review-of-snowy-egret-by-myra-melford-unusual-background-unusually-good-1427146956?KEYWORDS=melford

PM sent on: The Three Sounds "Babe's Blues" Duke Pearson "Tender Feelin's" (Japanese) Duke Pearson "Profile" (Japanese) Wynton Kelly "It's All Right" Milt Jackson "Bags' Opus" Paul Chambers "Chambers' Music" Kenny Burrell "Guitar Forms" Art Blakey "Paris 1958" Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane "At Carnegie Hall" ($4) Miles Davis "Birdland 1951" ($4) Ray Brown "Bass Hit" ($5)

We wish them well, collectively and individually.

Release date April 21:

Interesting...the copy shown on Amazon also has 11 tracks:

I liked it.

I've had this happen many times with LPs I've CD-rd on a stand alone machine. When I transfer to the PC the record is often identified. I think the programme that tries to identify tracks can work things out by the number of tracks and the track length. Very few records can be exactly the same. Perhaps but I just slipped into the disc drive Greg Hatza's CD In My Pocket from 1995 - pre-tags, I do believe - and VLC Media player identified it as something called Float Away With the Friday Night Gods. I guess the ten tracks match perfectly, but this ain't that. I just looked up both In My Pocket and Float Away With The Friday Night Gods (the group's name is Marah) on Amazon. They both have 10 tracks each. It would be wild if the timings match up!

Release date March 17: