king ubu

The record is "FREE JAZZ" (yep, just like the Coleman's one). Recorded in 1965, it's the pionneering record of the french avant-garde scene. And it's a stunning one, Dan Warburton is right about. FRANÇOIS TUSQUE is a strange person who still makes (beautiful) records time to time but who has been marginalized (is this word existing in english?) by the establishment but also by his on will (he never went into the "jazz bussiness" of any kind by choice.) It's far to be as much "outside" than KARYOBIN or MACHINE GUN, but it's a powerfull record with most of the names who will be the crucial actors of the French modern scene to come (MICHEL PORTAL, FRANÇOIS JANNEAU, BERNARD VITET, BEB GUERIN). The funny story of this session it's than he has been directed by a musician who did'nt know very well to play piano at that time when all the others was first conservatory prices! There has been discussion of Tusques in this thread: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=4704 ubu

Still owe Nate a short write up on this one: Fredi Lüscher & Nat Su - "Smada" A beautiful disc! Dedicated to Ellington compositions, Su with his fragile, dry tone (he owes a lot, if not all, to Lee Konitz), and Lüscher create beautiful improvisations. The opening tune, "Azalea," is one of personal Ellington favourites (the version Duke did with Louis Armstrong is sublime, nothing less). They also play "African Flower," "Come Sunday," "The Mooche," "Serenade to Sweden," and of course the title tune. Recording is beautiful, fitting the beauty of the music. It has been done by Martin Pearson (who did several Keith Jarrett live recordings for ECM, in most perfect sound, as well). The album, as a whole, is a very quiet affair, but it has depth and purity of sound and melody. Now if that makes you want to buy the disc, here's a link to the Altisuoni website, but I think you could locate it for a cheaper price, maybe. Right now back to Hank Jones again (the VME, this time). ubu

Columbia, released 1992. Musicians include Art Baron (tb etc), Bill Frisell, Greg Cohen, Marc Ribot, Henry Threadgill, Don Alias, Don Byron, Vernon Reid, Henry Rollis (!), Chuck D (!), Bobby Previte and others. Some rap (presumably on the track with Chuck D, but I didn't look at the cover or tracklist while listening) - doesn't really fit in, I think. There are 19 tracks on the disc, with lectures from "Beneath the Underdog" during some tunes (all incorporated in the music). Pretty good, I think. ubu

Let's revive this thread a bit! Thanks to some recommendations in the Jones birthday thread I picked up two CDs (strangely, a title search for "Hank Jones" did not bring that up! Only with searching all posts option I could locate it, here it is): The Talented Touch / Porgy & Bess (Okra-Tone 2004) This couples two quartet albums, the first one with Barry Galbraith, Mint Hinton and Osie Johnson, the second with Kenny Burrell and Elvin Jones in for Galbraith and Johnson. Glorious music! Highly recommended to all fans of piano jazz, and everybody attracted by style and taste. The second one is the Concord 2CD set, "The Touch," reissuing "Lazy Afternoon" (a late Eighties recording with Dave Holland, Keith Copeland, and Ken Peplowski), and "Rockin' In Rhythm," an album from 1977, with Ray Brown and Jimmie Smith, and Jones playing the Fender rhodes piano on half of the tracks. Both are great albums, in my opinion! Then this one might be the favourite among my relatively few Jones holdings, so far: An album dedicated to Thad Jones compositions, with George Mraz and Elvin. Great stuff! ubu

mlm? I know what M.D.M. stays for, but who would be "l"? Welcome! On Burton, I can't say too much, as I hardly know his work. The Rhino twofer starting off with the Jarrett/Burton album, however, is excellent! I think I like the Burton album that follows, "Throb," even better! ubu

Will have to look for the two Portals, P.L.M.! On Sclavis, I think you're a bit too harsh - I don't really know what music that "Napoli's Walls" project is, what "etiquette" fits best. Not sure it's got much to do with jazz, and I sure wouldn't compare it to the Sclavis-Texier-Romano trio too much. The character of the Napoli's Walls group is thoroughly european, or better: mediterranean. I do like it. In Saalfelden, last year, Sclavis also sat in with Portal. I've only heard two tracks from that concert, however, they're as good as the 1997 Willisau recording that some of you have gotten a copy of (please spread it on yourselves, I'm still facing some hard work with the Brötzel Tentet...) I listened to this one this morning: I rather like it, I must say. Solal is great, as usual. He sounds very monk-ish at moments! Now spinning: GREAT! Friends, get this! (Well, I didn't exactly get it, just burned it from the library) Really like it, really! ubu

Ubu, you want reaction? I'm joining in on praising those Johnny Hodges sides. I have these on an earlier Vogue Lp reissue. Jeez, if I had to post reactions on albums I like every time they're mentioned on this Board, I would have more posts than the honourable JSngry! And I'ld be out of a job Brownie, I almost got the feeling that maybe I'm the only one who likes that disc (and thus I'd have been in for a new pair of ears...) ubu -_-

Is Collignon doing a lot of vocal stuff? I saw him live, and he devoted a lot of time to vocal thing (with a lot of electronics invovled) -and he was good in it. He alse has quite a stage presense - looking more like an aggressive punk-rocker, very animated... An excellent trumpeter, of course. Vincent Courtois is a great cellist! I saw him live as well. Beautiful sound and phenomenal technique. I would be intrerested in eharing his own projects. ------------------------- Yup, quite some vocal things! And I like him a lot, too. Agree on Courtois as well. I have the live concert of the Napoli's Wall project from Jazzfest Berlin 2003 - quite good stuff! The CD I only burned from the library. (That library has an almost torn-apart copy of.... guess what?..... "Rara Avis"!!! Bastards! I'm sure they got the last copy lying around in Zurich, a day before I was aware of it being OOP...) ubu

Listening to Louis Sclavis' "Napoli's Walls" right now. Like it pretty well! Médéric Collignon, heard on trumpet, percussion, voice and electronics, adds some spice to the music. Besides him and Sclavis, the group consists of Hasse Poulsen (g), and Vincent Courtois (cello, electronics). A rather unusual line-up! ubu

Listening to "The Talented Touch / Porgy And Bess" now - marvellous! Thanks for the recommendation! Never heard of that Okra-Tone label! The photos are indeed beautiful. And it's always a pleasure to hear Barry Galbraith! What a forgotten master he is! ubu

I hear ya, P.D.! Just wanted to advertise a bit for the Vogue disc - did that several times on this board, already, and NEVER had any reaction, so far. Now it's OOP, I think, but I got mine fairly recently. Glorious music! I'll go for the Blue Moon's, some fine day. No need to have Mosaic Vinyl (in fact, I have the Pepper and Brooks on vinyl, and have never been too enthusiastic about sound quality. The Clayton though, my third and last vinyl Mosaic, is great, but then the other two were not Q-LPs or what they call that.) ubu

MP3.com has now added the possibility to search for track names. That's a cool site. Of late, my Opera browser would go down around ten seconds after hitting the AMG-page... Design is much better on the MP3 site, too! You don't have those appearing and discappearing covers and all that crap. ubu

I found the old HatArt of the Taylor and had one chance so far for a complete listen. Absolutely fascinating music! And I liked it better than the two New World releases of the same band. I guess "It is in the brewing luminous" remains my favourite of that period, though. ubu

If you go to this link, you can hear some of the radio programmes I did: http://www.lora.ch/sendungen.php?list=Sonu...spr%26auml%3Bch The one on top (Sonntag 15. August) is the first of a two part programme we did with Stephan Wittwer (I did post some). It has excerpts from his albums "Sicht.04/etc." (domizil), "Streams" (Grob), "World of Strings" (Intakt). The second programme (to follow on August 29), will have excerpts from "Werther/Wittwer" (Grob), "Doran/Studer/Wittwer" (ECM), and from a live concert we recorded ourselves in a jazzclub at Zurich, March of this year. There are lenghty interview-passages in between, you'll have to fast-forward them, as it's all in swiss german, and I suppose there aren't that many funny-rat-alumni that do understand that. Enjoy! ubu

There's this one, too: and here's its andorran pendant: some beautiful music! ubu

Friends, you might all be interested in the new Barney Wilen disc, discussed in this thread. The CD features Barney with the so-called Jazz Hip trio, which includes fine French bass and piano players, hitherto unknown to me, as well as the great swiss ex-pat, Daniel Humair on drums. Didier Lockwood sits in on violin for one lenghty tune. The opener is Ornette's "Lonely Woman." The recordings come from the years 1977-79, and it seems this disc (there's a big "1" on its cover) is the first in what is planned to be a series of discs containing music recorded by the artists, themselves (Wilen music, that is, only). Barney was hardly documented at that stage of his career, and he is playing GREAT! Sound is brittle, but good enough for such self-documented live recordings (this was the era before DAT and all those things made it easier to record in good quality). Check it out, if you feel like hearing some more Barney! I know he doesn't really belong into this thread, but then, the music on this new CD somehow does fit. For me, it shows a whole new side of Barney's, that I did not know anything about. If you don't feel like emailing your credit card no., I can give you the phone number of the fellow to contact. ubu

This one for mood And these for starters, if you're into some more swinging stuff, too: ubu

Thanks, P.D. - I was aware of the Blue Moons, but I never so far ordered from them. Will do some fine day, I guess... ubu

Sound indeed isn't perfect, but the music is very nice! Wilen is pretty much in a Coltrane mood, generally, no? About the credit card info: would you recommend to split up the number itself into several mails? I sent the number in one mail, and the cardholder and expiry info in another. Would have been better to break up the card-no. into two or three mails? Or even sending it from different mail addresses? I never did that before, and I did have a bit of a bad feeling. ubu

no real member of the ubu-family ever heard the term "good behaviour"! We miss you too, Tony! Where is that crying smiley when I need it? You have to accept this one, Tony: ubu

Actually, Verve France released five (or six?) LPs that had all - or nearly all - that was on the Mosaic box. They were released shortly before the Mosaic set. And me dumbass passed on the COMPLETE series of these LPs once!!! Unbelieveable! Never had another chance to get this music since, save for one Verve CD I found, an old one, from around 1990. ubu

Marcus, thanks a lot for this enjoyable disc! Again, apologies for not posting my guesses, but I'm simply too deep into the Basie work at the moment. (And then, I wouldn't have known any but the Schifrin, and maybe I would have gotten Golson right... after a few more listens...) ubu

Czeslaw Milosz, Poet and Nobelist Who Wrote of Modern Cruelties, Dies at 93 By RAYMOND H. ANDERSON Published: August 15, 2004 Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish émigré writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, in part for a powerful pre-mortem dissection of Communism, in part for tragic, ironic poetry that set a standard for the world, died Saturday at his home in Krakow, his assistant, Agnieszka Kosinska, told The Associated Press. He was 93 An artist of extraordinary intellectual energy, Mr. Milosz was also an essayist, literary translator and scholar of the first rank. Many of his fellow poets were in awe of his skills. When another Nobel poet and exile from totalitarianism, the Russian Joseph Brodsky, presented Mr. Milosz with the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1978, he said, "I have no hesitation whatsoever in stating that Czeslaw Milosz in one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps the greatest." Mr. Milosz was often described as a poet of memory and a poet of witness. Terrence Des Pres, writing in The Nation, said of him: "In exile from a world which no longer exists, a witness to the Nazi devastation of Poland and the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, Milosz deals in his poetry with the central issues of our time: the impact of history upon moral being, the search for ways to survive spiritual ruin in a ruined world." In 1951, he was in Paris, on duty there as a Polish cultural attaché following elite assignments in the United States at the consulate in New York and the embassy in Washington. An urbane man fluent in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, English and French, Mr. Milosz had established close associations with leading left-wing intellectuals in Paris. These diplomatic contacts were important to the Warsaw authorities, but Mr. Milosz, a skeptic about Marxist rule, was tipped off that he faced arrest and trial in the Stalinist purges then under way if he returned to Poland. So he denounced the Moscow-dominated system that was tightening its grip on his homeland and took political asylum in France. Formulating a New 'New Faith' In his youth, Mr. Milosz had been drawn to some of the idealized aspects of Marxism but he rejected dictatorship. In large measure, he defected, he explained later, because of damage he saw inflicted on spiritual values and intellect by Communist dogma, which he scorned as the "New Faith." For Mr. Milosz, faith was something else, as he made clear in a 1985 poem under that title: Faith is in you whenever you look At a dewdrop or a floating leaf And know that they are because they have to be. Even if you close your eyes and dream up things The world will remain as it has always been And the leaf will be carried by the waters of the river. Mr. Milosz detested Socialist Realism, the Soviet-contrived literary doctrine that distorted truth into propaganda to promote the political and ideological goals of the Communist Party. Two years after defecting, Czeslaw Milosz, (pronounced CHESS-wahf MEE-wosh) published "The Captive Mind," a searing analysis of Stalinist tactics and their numbing effect on intellectuals. "The Captive Mind" was translated and published in many countries, becoming itself a historical document. In it, Mr. Milosz wrote: "The philosophy of history emanating from Moscow is not just an abstract theory; it is a material force that uses guns, tanks, planes and all the machines of war and oppression. All the crushing might of an armed state is hurled against any man who refuses to accept the New Faith. "At the same time, Stalinism attacks him from within, saying his opposition is caused by his 'class consciousness,' just as psychoanalysts accuse their foes of wanting to preserve their complexes." "Still," he added, prophetically, "it is not hard to imagine the day when millions of obedient followers of the New Faith may suddenly turn against it." "The Captive Mind" was among a powerful group of books in the early 1950's that condemned Communist ideology and foreshadowed the downfall of Communist power. A similar book was "The New Class" by Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslav dissident, which deplored self-aggrandizement and moral rot in the Communist leadership. After his defection, Mr. Milosz explained in a speech: "I have rejected the New Faith because the practice of the lie is one of its principal commandments, and Socialist Realism is nothing more than a different name for a lie." In the same year "The Captive Mind" appeared, Mr. Milosz also published "The Seizure of Power," a fictionalized scrutiny of the relationship between Communism and intellectuals. By 1960, Mr. Milosz had tired of his life amid leftist intellectual squabbling in France. Years later he would speak with acerbity of those in Western Europe who continued to regard the Soviet Union as the hope of the future, particularly those "French intellectuals who considered that only a man who was insane could abandon his position of a writer in a people's democracy in order to choose the capitalistic, decadent West." He accepted a professorship in the Slavic Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He became an American citizen and lived in the Berkeley hills in a modest house with a stunning view of San Francisco Bay. He celebrated that vista in his poetry ("Views From San Francisco Bay" in 1972), but he also spoke of the alien remoteness of the California landscape. Mr. Milosz, with his bushy eyebrows, herringbone tweed jacket, wry humor and brilliant lectures was soon a popular figure on campus, especially in his seminars and lectures on Dostoyevsky. He continued to write verse, translated literary masterpieces into Polish and compiled a large volume, "History of Polish Literature," published in 1969. The hardships and dangers in Mr. Milosz's life, first under Nazi military terror and then under Communist oppression, followed by long years as an émigré in the West, clearly marked his writing. "In both an outward and inward sense he is an exile writer, a stranger for whom physical exile is really a reflection of a metaphysical - or even religious - spiritual exile applying to humanity in general," the Nobel Committee observed in 1980. "The world that Milosz depicts in his poetry, prose and essays is the world in which man lives after having been driven out of Paradise." A Multilingual Boyhood Czeslaw Milosz was born June 30, 1911, to a Polish-speaking family in Szetejnie, Lithuania, which together with Poland, Latvia and Estonia was part of the Russian empire at the time. The complex, multiethnic Baltic region was inhabited by communities of Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, Russians and others, all speaking their separate languages and living their own cultures. His family was not rich but it was distinguished and intellectual. He was only 3 when World War I broke out, and his father, a civil engineer, served in the czar's army, while his family was kept on the run from advancing German armies. From his childhood on, Mr. Milosz had a rich inner life, reading widely. He also had a challenging array of talents, interests and skills. As a schoolboy, he was fascinated by the scientific world of animals. But in the end, he enrolled in law school at the University of Vilnius, graduating at the age of 23. He worked several years in radio, and sometimes remarked in interviews that he felt guilty for having abandoned science. Mr. Milosz traced the distinctive imagery of his poetry to his boyhood experiences in the rural countryside of Lithuania; his childhood is evoked in an autobiographical novel published in the United States as "The Issa Valley" (1981) and in "Native Realm," an autobiography. In one of his essays he wrote: "If I were asked to say where my poetry comes from I would say that its roots are in my childhood in Christmas carols, in the liturgy of Marian and vesper offices, and in the Bible." The author Eva Hoffman, a native of Poland, said of him: "He has never been a provincial artist. His writing may bear the marks of his particular Lithuanian-Polish past, but the material of his own life is filtered through a fully cultivated intelligence and probed to those depths at which individual experience becomes universal." He attended high school in the city of Vilnius, which by then had been transferred from Lithuania to Poland, and later restored to Lithuania, and published his first poem at the age of 15, He studied Latin for seven years in school, and in his Nobel acceptance speech credited that underlying linguistic discipline and classroom translations of poems with helping him to develop his mastery. He also learned Hebrew and Greek well enough to later translate the Bible into Polish. Poetic Vision Born of War At the age of 22, while attending law school, Mr. Milosz published his first experimental verse, "Poem on Time Frozen." Favorable reaction helped him win a state scholarship to study literature in Paris after he was awarded a law degree in 1934. A relative there, Oscar Milosz, who worked in the Lithuanian legation and wrote poetry in French, helped broaden his world outlook and shape his poetic style. He returned to Vilnius after the publication of a second book of poems called "Three Winters" but was fired from his job at a local Polish radio station for being too liberal. Mr. Milosz was working in Warsaw for Polish Radio when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. During the Nazi occupation, he worked in the Warsaw University Library, wrote for the anti-Nazi underground, heard the screams and gunfire in 1943 as Germans killed or captured the remaining Jews in the walled Ghetto and witnessed the razing of nearly all Warsaw after the uprising in 1944. One of his most moving poems, "A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto" (1943), described the assault on the Jews: Bees build around red liver, Ants around black bone. It has begun: the tearing, the trampling on silks, It has begun: the breaking of glass, wood, copper, nickel, silver, foam Of gypsum, iron sheets, violin strings, trumpets, leaves, balls, crystals, Poof! Phosphorescent fire from yellow walls Engulfs animal and human hair. Bees build around the honeycomb of lungs, Ants build around white bone. Torn is paper, rubber, linen, leather, flax, Fiber, fabrics, cellulose, snakeskin, wire. The roof and the wall collapse in flame and heat seizes the foundations. Now there is only the earth, sandy, trodden down, With one leafless tree. Slowly, boring a tunnel, a guardian mole makes his way, With a small red lamp fastened to his forehead. He touches buried bodies, counts them, pushes on, He distinguishes human ashes by their luminous vapor, The ashes of each man by a different part of the spectrum. Bees build around a red trace. Ants build around the place left by my body. I am afraid, so afraid of the guardian mole. He has swollen eyelids, like a Patriarch Who has sat much in the light of candles Reading the great book of the species. What will I tell him, I, a Jew of the New Testament, Waiting two thousand years for the second coming of Jesus? My broken body will deliver me to his sight And he will count me among the helpers of death: The uncircumcised. After the war, a collection of poems called "Rescue," which showed the influence of T. S. Eliot, established him among Poland's pre-eminent writers. Although he was not a member of the Communist Party he was accepted into the diplomatic corps in 1946 and began the journey that ended with his defection in 1951 in Paris. Mr. Milosz chose throughout his life to compose his poetry in the complex but rich Polish language, even after he mastered French and English. Poetry can be true, he said, only if created in one's mother tongue. As his work won increasing attention and respect, Mr. Milosz developed close ties to many leading world intellectuals, writers, and political and religious leaders, especially to Pope John Paul II, his countryman and leader of his faith. When he consulted on his plan to break with Communism, it was with no less a figure than Albert Einstein, who advised him during a talk at Princeton University that he should go home to Poland, not defect to the West to join the sad fate of exiles. 'A Poet Remembers' Mr. Milosz also knew Lech Walesa, the electrician who led the anti-Communist Solidarity movement and went on to become president of Poland. Lines from a verse by Mr. Milosz were put on a memorial in Gdansk to honor Mr. Walesa's fellow shipyard workers who were shot by the police in the early 1970's: "You who harmed a simple man, do not feel secure: for a poet remembers." When Communism was smashed in Poland, Mr. Milosz returned to what he called "the country of my first immigration." Arriving in Warsaw after an absence of three decades, he received a hero's welcome. Mr. Milosz was regarded as one of the world's literary immortals. When he chose, he walked and talked with the great men of his time, but he remained humble. He also had a remarkable memory and could readily recall the names of his early teachers, companions and friends, and he remembered in vivid detail the first books he read, his adventures and mishaps. He demonstrated that acute memory in his 1968 book "Native Realm, A Search for Self-Definition," a compelling and mildly ironic account of his life, work and thoughts in the illuminating context of Baltic and family history. Mr. Milosz enjoyed pleasures of the body as well as of the mind, as he acknowledged in his 1985 poem, "A Confession," translated by himself and Robert Hass: My Lord, I loved strawberry jam And the dark sweetness of a woman's body. Also, well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil, Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves. So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit Have visited such a man? Many others Were justly called, and trustworthy. Who would have trusted me? For they saw How I empty glasses, throw myself on food, And glance greedily at the waitress's neck. Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness, Able to recognize greatness wherever it is, And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant, I know what was left for smaller men like me: A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud. A tournament of hunchbacks, literature. At times, Mr. Milosz fell into melancholy, but he firmly fended off any would-be therapists. His early poetry was in what was called the "Catastrophist" school of the 1930's, which foresaw the annihilation of the principal values of modern culture and a devastating war. His wartime ordeals tended in ways to bear out the forebodings. Mr. Milosz was a man of quiet manner but strong opinions and he expressed them, sometimes to the distress of his admirers. For example, in a PEN congress talk he reminded his fellow writers, "Innumerable millions of human beings were killed in this century in the name of utopia - either progressive or reactionary, and always there were writers who provided convincing justifications for massacre." Reacting to the atrocities in the struggle between Christians and Muslims in Bosnia in the 1990's, Mr. Milosz blamed intellectuals more than politicians and generals. "These people who had liberated themselves from Marxist doctrine very quickly became nationalists," he said in 1996. "And we see what happens now in Yugoslavia. In my opinion, intellectuals are responsible for the horrors in Bosnia, for they initiated the new nationalist tendencies there." Mr. Milosz was married twice. His first wife, Janina Dluska, shared his ordeals in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation and went into exile with him. She died in 1986. They had two sons, Anthony and John Peter, who survive him. In 1992, Mr. Milosz married Carol Thigpen, a historian. Ms. Thigpen died in 2003, The Associated Press said. After Mr. Milosz was awarded the Nobel, many of his books were translated into English and published in the United States. Ecco Press gathered a half-century of his work in "The Collected Poems 1931-1987." In it is a 1986 poem called "And Yet the Books," which contained these lines: I imagine the earth when I am no more: Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant, Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/15/obituari...d=all&position= ubu

David, that was a pretty good description of Breuker's music, in my opinion! What may be interesting is that many of his sidemen, of the Kollektief, have been with him since the beginning, among them the rhythm players, and both trumpet players. Some others have joined in recently, as I understand to sort of "refresh the blood" a bit, among them Hermine Doerlo, who is quite good. Anyone here knows Fred van Hove's larger bands? I only heard a twenty minute excerpt of a concert he did at an earlier Taktlos festival in Zurich, with his nonet. Might fit in here, too, stylistically, though I would need to hear more of him! ubu

Yes, the largest one, but you won't see it - it's in the fourth dimension. But it is there. Right next to the India stuff, right? Madonna's got to be in there, too: Or you rather have her this way? ubu