king ubu

Debussy: "Pelléas et Mélisande", Covent Garden/Boulez - from here:

Very sad news indeed - don't know much of his work, alas, but wherever his name pops up, I'm mighty interested!

Some great stuff lately ... trying to sum up some (for those who read German, go here for more detailed reports) Last night (May 21), at a friend's, it was Nicolas Masson "Parallels" with Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret and Lionel Friedli. Pure bliss to be in a small room (probably 60 or so people attending, some out in the corridor) and witness music making of such quality and intensity. Started out with a tune (all compositions by Masson) that reminded me slightly of Miles Davis' "second quintet" ... but Vallon (on upright, opened so he could tackle the strings with various little things) and Friedli are totally different from Hancock/Williams, and the music took other turns anyway. Masson (on tenor) was impressive, classic (and classy) storytelling that sounded perfectly organic and - that was the best part, I thought - still succeeded in integrating the quartet into one close-knit unit. The others all had their turns as soloists as well, and made great use of it. Pure bliss to be there and witness it, as I said. The two nights before were spent at Taktlos Festival, 33rd edition. The first night (May 19) started off with Matthew Shipp solo. I found it intriguing and pretty good, also quite amazing to watch him play (when he does that "rowing" thing with both his arms/shouldes, like: left hand at the piano, right pulled back, and then vice versa) - never saw him live, am somewhat ambivalent about his music, but always fascinated enough to keep listening to some of his output (which is way too huge for me to keep up, nonetheless). He was moody but clear, into it yet somewhat detached, letting things flow in a way that yet constantly interrupted everything again. And of course he harks back to all kinds of jazz, from Ellington to Tristano to Taylor. Not a great concert, but great to have finally seen him live! Second set was the low point of the entire festival (I skipped the third night, yesterday - another venue would have had Sheila Jordan at the same time ... can't these folks coordinate somewhat better please?!?), Tiptons Sax Quartet + Drums. I guess they meant well, but it boiled down to a so-so high school project of kids that are constantly being told by their parents how exceptional, how unique, how very special, how great they are. No. Jessica Lurie was the best soloist by far, Amy Denio not half bad (and she did one wonderful klezmer-like tune on clarinet, though after her solo Lurie followed on alto and was at least as great), but Sue Orfield on tenor was a constant nuisance, Tina Richardson on baritone just so-so, and Austrian drummer Robert Kainar, while clearly a very good musician, was busy accompanying and reacting, instead of every intruding and pushing and giving the occasional slap that might have helped. Too much singing, too (and not good singing, mind me). So, okay, I was quite pissed after that, tried to relax as it went on and got somewhat better. What about the final set? Well, that was some kind of ambient-y hommage to electric Miles, I guess, by Vallon-Michel-Götte-Chansorn, a quartet of Swiss musicians (the former two from the Romandie, the latter two from Zurich). Chansorn hit the simples of rock beats in a real hard way, while the others sort of merged into one, and that was the fascinating part of it. Michel, who's a great flugel and trumpet player (he was with the late Vienna Art Orchestra for a long time) had lots of delay and echo on his sound and merged with the Fender rhodes played by Vallon, as well as Götte's electric bass (which was sometimes played like a guitar, to pretty nice effect). Not a bad ending, but again, not outstanding either. We left a bit early, and Vallon told me yesterday that some ten or fifteen minutes later they had to end the concert because they had some severe feedback/sound issues. Second night at the Taktlos looked somewhat less promising to me on paper, but it turned out to be, as they sa, da shit! The opening set was by Ephrem Lüchinger, another local guy, keys player, composer, songwriter, producer of pop acts etc., and trained pianist, he learned with Simon Nabatov who tried to break him, as he mentioned in an interview ... but he refused to go into the jazz school grind, and I guess it pays off now, almost 20 years later. His triple album "Are You Prepared" which was released last year (I think) was based on recordings done in 2008 and then re-worked and treated in all kinds of ways. He had also, hence the title, worked with a prepared piano. How to do that on stage? Well, he had two pianos, one mostly left as it comes, the other heavily prepared, he had an Akai synth on top of one of them, a notebook and various other stuff ... and he succeeded superbly in creating a flowing set of sounds that was quite gorgeous indeed! So yeah, off to a great start! Second set was Poing + Maja S. K. Ratjke, doing their traditional programme for workers day (they seem to play this kind of concert yearly in Norway on April 30th) - a mix of songs by Brecht/Weill, Eisler, Norwegian stuff, for starters Lennon's "Working Class Hero", and they also did a Bowie song, "Rock'n'Roll Suicide" ("this is not on one of our records, we're not that commercial"). Great on all counts, Ratkje's singing and vocalising paired with her amazing stage presence was terrific to witness (first time I saw her live, alas!), and musically, the guys (Frode Haltli on accordion, Rolf-Erik Nystrom on alto and sopranino, sometimes simultaneously, and Hakon Thelin on double bass) were great, too. I was totally floored after that. (As an aside: they were so much more adventurous and musically so much better than the Tiptons, yet they had perfect stage presence all the time ... and they even watched the clock and stopped in due time - alas, as I could have gone on listening to them for another hour or two, easily!) The final set of the night was to be Ken Vandermark-Nate Wooley, and I was ambivalent about it as I heard about a failed concert in Berlin a few days ago (and could relate to the reasons the guy who told me about it mentioned), which was in a quartet setting though. So let's relax and be open-minded about it, okay? It turned out a pretty fine set, Wooley was quite okay most of the time, and Vandermark played clarinet for about half of the time. They did pieces by John Carter as well as originals, and to close things, a wonderful version of Ornette Coleman's "I Heard It on the Radio" (an outtake from the first session for "This Is Our Music"). The music was hardcore jazz after the very different two acts before, and it was kind of difficult to get into it, after all a clarinet/trumpet duo isn't the most attractive sonic combination (which made VDMK's good tanor and baritone contributions more welcome than they would have been in a band setting - I like him best on clarinet, by a clear margin), but after two or three tunes, they really caught on with me. Also, a few days before, on Tuesday (May 17), I had the immense pleasure of finally catching Kris Davis live, finally. Again, this was in a private setting, but much bigger-scale than the concert yesterday. She did an amazing solo set first, which displayed plenty of character, while harking back to Tristano quite regularly it seemed to me. She piled waves of sound on top of each other, played tiny little variations and combined melody and sheer power in a great way. Will truly have to check out more of her music (I started by buying "Save Your Breath" from her, the only disc she had with her). The week before that (May 13), I went to the tiny WIM in Zurich. First set was Jacob Wick on solo trumpet, doing a set of minimal breath-music, not one actual "tone", and permanent circular breathing ("Has anybody seen LaMonte Young?", he asked before he started), which was pretty fascinating, if somewhat hard to focus on ... but eventually it turned out quite interesting as sounds started ot appear about which I really couldn't tell if they were just in my head or actually in the room. It was this kind of experience that throws you back into yourself, into your own head and brain. Then he was joined for the second half by Christian Weber on double bass, and off they went, both using their instruments to produce any kind of amazing sounds, including, now, conventional trumpet tones (but lots of quarter/microtones, too). The second set that night was by a trio of Bertrand Denzler (ts), Axel Dörner (t) and Antonin Gerbal (perc). This turned out to be a rather typical free improv set, but a pretty fine one at that! Denzler has a gorgeous sound and just as Dörner used circular breathing and all kinds of unconventional ways to produce a broad sonic palette. Gerbal had a very basic set of drums, just a few toms and one cymbal which was barely used for a long time, but he allowed the others to follow their path(s) and he joined in most of the time, not being content to just manage time. Dörner played a trumpet with valves plus a slide added, allowing him to adapt his tone seemlessly, and he made good use of that. Too long since I cauht him live (12 years, I think?), and actually this was - finally! - the first time I caught Denzler. No photos, btw, as I left my stupid phone in my pocket this time.

So the auto-duplication bug isn't yet fixed, either.

Okay, too bad. But that sounds like a reasonable workaround - would be the moderator's duty then, though, to let you know right away. Okay, too bad. But that sounds like a reasonable workaround - would be the moderator's duty then, though, to let you know right away.

Same here - not just since last weekend, but for several weeks at least (sometimes worse than other times), but most of the times it works out (I had a few instances where an error page loaded, but when I opened the board in another tab of the browser, I saw the post did go through). And thanks Jim (S.) - I'm quite sure there could be a safety measure introduced for that. I'm a moderator on another site, and for starters, if your permanently logged in, whenever you take some moderation measures - moving posts, merging or deleting threads/post etc. - you are prompted for your password again. At least that interrupts the entire process and you don't get it done - rightly or wrongly - within one or two clicks and one second. And that alone helps, I'm sure! Also we have the option to delete w/restore option vs. permanently delete, and in general you only use the former function anyway.

Sorry, but wherever I mention it, it goes unnoticed or at least remains unreplied to: can't there be a pop-up installed, asking moderators if they really want to delete entire threads before they actually do so (assuming they delete one lone post)? As we lost some great threads, I feel like that's so much more important than the search engine or the odd quote function and whatever else minor bug around here.

Okay, I got the track again from someone else - no idea what happened, but I downloaded the whole thing as a RAR and then unpacked that RAR to my computer, and that one file turned out corrupt. Don't feel like wasting more time on this now, just wanted to mention it.

Haven't listened to that one yet. And of course some of this isn't new! There's more on mp3 it seems: http://www.live-in-paris.fr/live-in-paris-jazz/

I bought a few ... the Charles, Ella, Q, Sinatra ... they look pretty nice, probably the recordings come from the source. The booklets are pretty short though, but you get all info. The Miles Davis 1960 concerts have been reissued as well. Will skip the Basie as it's mostly stuff that has earlier been on Laserlight (and before that on whatever the label was called, that "Pour ceux qui aiment le jazz" series). Here's the list: Collection Live in Paris FA5451 MILES DAVIS 4 CDs FA5455 GEORGES BRASSENS 1 CD FA5460 QUINCY JONES 2 CDs FA5466 RAY CHARLES 3 CDs FA5470 FRANK SINATRA 1 CD FA5476 ELLA FITZGERALD 3 CDs FA5489 JOHNNY HALLYDAY 1 CD FA5494 NAT KING COLE & THE QUINCY JONES BIG BAND 1 CD FA5610 HENRI SALVADOR 1 CD FA5612 LOUIS ARMSTRONG 1 CD FA5614 AMERICAN FOLK BLUES FESTIVAL 3 CDs FA5617 ÉDITH PIAF 2 CDs FA5619 COUNT BASIE 2 CDs you can currently get the entire collection for 83€ from Frémeaux ... that's where I got the above listing from, hope the links to the individual volumes do work! here's the link to the offer, just in case: http://www.lalibrairiesonore.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=1686&Itemid=13

In Europe, Universal is distributing Concord ... all those cheapo "Prestige Albums", "Riverside Albums" etc. sets are produced by Universal Italy. Not sure how that looks in Japan though.

#29 of the FLAC version is totally corrupt. Just spent two hours trying and then forcing down my computer. Sucks. Big time. Will drop a note to Laurie ... possibly that it might play (it did open in WinAmp, but when I tried to fast forward, I had the next breakdown - same when I tried to copy the file, rename the file, decompress it in Trader's Little Helper etc.) Guess that's another reason why I hate wasting money on downloads ... you never have any guarantee those on the other end know what they're doing or how to do it properly or that they bother to really check everything before spreading things.

Same here, office computer, hit the button once ... board still misbehaves (was inaccessible for most of the morning over here - guess they ran some stuff during the night). But indeed, quite a story there! Another chapter is his guest stint (along with Monk Montgomery, Marshal Royal, Rudolph Johnson) in South Africa ... here's the backcover of an LP they made: Same here, office computer, hit the button once ... board still misbehaves (was inaccessible for most of the morning over here - guess they ran some stuff during the night). But indeed, quite a story there! Another chapter is his guest stint (along with Monk Montgomery, Marshal Royal, Rudolph Johnson) in South Africa ... here's the backcover of an LP they made: and again everything is duplicated ...

Wasn't even aware he was still around - quite a career indeed! Wasn't even aware he was still around - quite a career indeed!

The entire series is out, I assume, *except* for the Colbeck, which was pulled ... I got a shipping confirmation for my SME order a few minutes after my previous post, and then went on to order the McNair and Shaw discs - spending way too much again on CDs lately. But as this is the thread with discussion of the entire series, while the SME thread is only two or three posts short (actually the last one by me, linking to this thread - before the news got out that the Colbeck was pulled), I thought it makes more sense to bring this one back up. Someone could likely change the title (without deleting the entire thread, preferably )

the SME reissue seems to really come out now ... they hadn't cancelled that part of my pre-order, but I kinda gave up holding my breath still http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/UICY-77702

Got mine a few days ago, and am into disc four just now ... disc three had some glitches and stuff, but nothing really bad. The band is on fire throughout, including Joe Williams - ridiculously good music!

since my latest post: discs 3-4 of the Buchbinder (sonaas nos. 7-14)