A Lark Ascending

I'd echo John Hollenbeck - some of the most interesting large group jazz I've heard in recent years. And don't miss Bob Brookmeyer's later orchestral works - they have a beautiful, almost Mahlerian feeling of weltschmerz. Can't recall if they got an earlier mention but Barry Guy's orchestras - the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the New Orchestra are tremendous though perhaps not for all tastes. I know they have a big following here. And a marvellous occasional orchestra who I'm looking forward to seeing next month - The Dedication Orchestra with Louis Moholo at the helm and a host of friends and inheritors of the Blue Notes.

Possibly - they seemed to have a thing for wrinkled old greyhairs. Kept hearing them getting excited by the Sheffield Jazz programme - a flurry of indecipherable Italian interspersed by a highly accented 'Beets and Peeces Beeg Band'. Makes a change from "Ee by gum, and to think I skipped t'whippet monthly club for this bollocks."

Noticed this in this month's fRoots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._Srinivas I'm only an occasional listener in the musical area he worked in but remember him making a big stir outside the world of Indian classical music in the 90s and playing his CD a great deal. He was also in Remember Shakti with John McLaughlin at one stage. Only in his mid-40s; way too young. R.I.P.

'Trending' Think this must be Twitterspeak or something. Noticed it on a very rare visit into a record shop yesterday evening (I managed 3 minutes!). Huge display under the heading 'What's Trending?' Presume it helps you make sure you are buying what everyone else is buying. As annoying as 'Awesome'.

Enrico Pieranunzi Trio (w. Pete Turner (bass), Dave Walsh (drums)) in Sheffield. Excellent evening, as expected, of nicely reshaped standards plus some originals. Had some very excited Italian ladies behind me.

To me, an example of where box sets make sense. Music you can't otherwise get easily (or at all in this case) with a common theme. Packaging was eccentric but that's easily solved.

I've always thought it would be interesting to put an electronic tracker in many of these things (especially the instant-connoisseur classical ones). See how many of the discs get opened, never mind played. In the end the key thing is that the maestro's name is in large letters on the side of the box. So our visitors are well aware of our highbrow tastes. You've got to hand it to the marketing departments of the record companies. They've got our number just as much as any teenage boy band fan.

Changed my mind on Webern since 2005. Still not whistling Six Piece for Orchestra in the shower, but... I found the Boulez 'complete' box a way in (ludicrously cheap as a download) - more 'conventional' late-Romantic song there which gives the authorised music a context. I have that 'Lulu' (Petibon etc). Superb - lurid but utterly gripping with very creative staging (with the performers sometimes in the audience). I've often thought the suite from Lulu a good way into Berg.

The Egg albums - two original, one from the Hatfield years - have been reissued. Also a very nice album of radio broadcasts (some of which I recall hearing on the radio when first broadcast):

On a different tack (though prompted by noticing Dave Stewart's appearance on the Opeth), anyone else keen on this: Dave Stewart Barbara Gaskin - The Big Idea Stewart was one of those musicians left beached by the punk revolution in Britain in the late 70s. Kept going with National Health for a while but then seemed to turn to writing for a keyboard magazine. During the 80s/90s along with his partner Barbara Gaskin (a Northette on the Hatfield albums) he put out a string of singles (often covers...one got to No. 1 in the UK charts during the New Romantic era!) and several albums. Although he'd switched from his trademark organ/piano/electric piano to synths, the records were superbly arranged, again having that deft ability to use key changes to colour the music; and Barbara's multi-tracked vocals gave a lovely choral feel to the music. Anyway, this one came out around 1991 - I played it endlessly at that time as I was packing from my last flat and moving to my new house. To my mind, stands head and shoulders above their other LPs. Great songwriting, superb instrumental passages. And a strange disquiet and dissatisfaction about Britain - these were the days after over a decade of Thatcher, following the late 80s crash, before the Blair boom. Highly recommended to Porcupine Tree/XTC fans. [Read the review here - I am not alone: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Idea-Dave-Stewart-Barbara-Gaskin/dp/B000026YMB/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1413223417&sr=1-5&keywords=dave+stewart+and+barbara+gaskin] Edit: Just noticed he's been doing a fair bit of arranging for PT and like bands

Will keep listening. I've rediscovered a taste for well played, well arranged, aspiring rock music. I've had my socks blown off today by something else in this area (I'll babble about it elsewhere).

Interesting responses. I regularly pick things up from Emanem, Intakt and would add Ogun (like Emanem, mixing long lost reissues with new releases). Also have a fair bit from some of the others. One I've started to access recently Catalytic Sound - not sure if that is a label or a shop but they keep a lot of Vandermark's recording there, available as dls. I'd also include Criss Cross - might not be cutting edge, but does a great job at making available music in a boppish/modal style played by current players. To my ears, that's new. The label that got me thinking of this was a classical one - NMC. They do an amazing job covering not just contemporary classical but British contemporary classical (two strikes against market place success!). Substantial catalogue, very encouraging of young composers alongside more established people and not afraid to experiment - themed discs, one work downloads etc. Very thoughtful.

Someone on the Hoffman board claimed to have inside information that some dates in Europe were going to happen next year. Personally, I wish they'd have had at least one date in Texas on the current tour. Sheffield City Hall, perhaps!!!!! They must have done that on their way up. *************** Finally capitulated to the Opeth enthusiasm and dl 'Pale Communion'. I tried them once before with the RAH album but have yet to get beyond disc 1 - the growling stopped me in my tracks. Shawn assured me that later albums lose this. Thankfully, none here. Enjoyed the record...with reservations. It really was a nice retro-fest - if there are synths in there they are well hidden. The dominant keyboard sounds are mellotronic and organ-led...just like the good old days. Some very fine guitar - in places reminded me of Wishbone Ash (who were never really a 'progressive' band, more blues based). Nice textures including some quaint medievalisms. Reservations: a) Something that disturbed me with too many bands of this ilk from the 70s - a tendency to play a theme for a couple of bars, then play it again, and again unaltered (this happens on many of the tracks). Maybe it's 40 years of jazz listening (or the impact of Debussy and Delius) but I always feel once you've put a phrase out there you need to alter it next time round (unless you are doing minimalism!). b) Structures are somewhat episodic - a few minutes in one section, then a change of gear, then something else. But no clear sense of evolution from a to b to c. Now that might be a first listen impression - with repeat listenings I might pick up on linking threads. c) Lyrics seem to be standard Prog-cod. They should have done the vocals in Swedish. Mystery level increased tenfold. [i appreciate that worldwide sales would correspondingly drop significantly]. Please don't take this as anything more than a personal reaction (I hate those diktat from Olympus posts that are so often used to dismiss music enjoyed by others). These chaps are very brave to be performing music in a syntax that is completely out of fashion. I have a feeling that on repeat listenings this will grow on me. In which case I'll explore further. Nice to see Dave Stewart still getting work.

Jazz, classical, rock, world....whatever. And by 'new' I obviously mean 'new' music but also music that might lie neglected by the larger labels (assumption there!). So can be archive stuff. Stick to current operators. Lyrita was great in the past but seems to have gone dormant again.

Changed my mind on this a bit. Still prefer orchestral music without a dominating instrument, but... Think I prefer violin to piano. In 'Romantic' music both can be a liability (for my ears) - all that heavy handed crashing around on the piano is counterbalanced by an extra-sugar feel to violin concertos (I'm much more comfortable when the extra sugar starts to go off and emit a rather peculiar odour in Late-Romantic music). However, in 20th C music I like the way the violin can sound like the bow has a serrated edge. It's harder to write for a piano against an orchestra without it getting all portentous. I'm probably talking bollox here but it's almost as if a violin can cut through a large orchestra and still remain agile where I piano needs to do a lumpy 'look I'm here' sort of thing to get heard (either that or the composer has to tone down the orchestra so more delicate piano writing can get through). I'm sure you can all list dozens of concertos to prove me wrong...I'll probably come across a few myself to explode my prejudices. I do like a lot of piano concertos. But when I'm exploring a composer I tend to leave the piano concertos until last unless I read a lot of enthusiasm for one.

I don't buy many box sets - prefer exploring more gradually. What I do look for in a box: a) It is dominated by music I don't already know (the Boulez and Henze boxes from last year). b) It has some sort of unifying concept - a performer/composer's complete works in a particular idiom or over a time period (most of the Mosaics I have). c) Very few alternative takes - I'm not a scholar so these will lie largely unplayed. d) The basic discographical information - who played what where. A good set of notes and some nice photos are fine, but I rarely look at them after the first few weeks of ownership. Hate all the extra bits of cardboard - concert posters, facsimile ticket stubs etc; and the oddball boxing - a standard LP sized box like Mosaics or one that will fit on a shelf alongside a standard CD is fine. The 'box' concept doesn't loom large with me - where the music is made up of discrete albums I very quickly CD-r them into original album format and listen that way. Ones that come to mind as especially welcome: King Crimson: The Great Deceiver - now being superseded by the more extensive box sets but at the time this brought the live band of 72-74 into the living room for the first time. The Ellington Mosaic sets - restored music that was completely missing from my collection. The RCA Ellington Centennial - although I had some of this on LP it put it all together in a coherent fashion. Though I still think they buggered up some of the Blanton-Webster tracks! Henry Cow box - acres of live and radio recordings never heard. Again, like the KC, allowed us to hear the live band which was only documented on the Concerts LP in extended performances. Like KC they were a very different band live from their studio records. The BBC radio archive series of Fairport, Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson. The succession of Miles boxes from the 90s onwards. The extra material there was usually very different music rather than alternative takes. I still reformatted it onto CD-r original albums with 'the other stuff' on CDrs of their own.

Like 'trope' I suspect it's a word only academics use. I was completely bewildered by 'trope' when I read it first in that George Lewis book about the Chicago jazz scene. He used it a lot.

Odd way to evaluate human beings. On their capacity to enjoy a minority music. I often wonder if the same sort of outrage is expressed on the International Crochet or Stamp Collector Appreciation websites.

I thought "The Age of Wonder" a gripping read throughout. Marvellous book. I'm 2/3rd through and utterly enthralled. I love that sense of a world where science and the 'artistic' spheres are still very close. People doing mad experiments (inhaling carbon monoxide to see what happens!) and then writing poems. Intrigued by Humphrey Davy - I know about his discovery of nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic and the invention of the miner's safety lamp but did not realise how important he was in general. That statue in Penzance is duly deserved.

Maybe he just knew in advance that the British were coming. Thanks

Was the name 'Paul Revere' a reference to the so-called British Invasion...or did it precede that?

Wish they'd play over here again - good, lord, Fripp lives here. I can never work out if it's the economics or the fact that Fripp can't be doing with the oh-so-hip English rock journalists.

Long Shadow: Programme 1 An analysis of the effects of WWI over the subsequent century. First programme examines the now familiar questioning of the 'Lions led by Donkeys' interpretation of WWI - how the view of the war changed over the century, influenced by contemporary events. Nicely presented. Good to see that view presented calmly after Michael Gove's attempt to hi-jack it for political ends earlier in the year.

And the word for a male who does the same? Bet there isn't one. ************************* And a word that is not new but seems to have changed its meaning in the UK over the last ten years. Guys. Used to mean blokes. Now is a collective term for people of any gender, usually used in order establish a mood of informality. I sat through an assembly this morning when the external provider (who was very good) must have used it ten + times. Mercifully she didn't describe the visit she was drumming up support for as 'awesome'! Usage well established by now. I first heard it on a visit to Canada in 1973, when a woman referred to her small daughters as "my guys". Did she sing it?

And the word for a male who does the same? Bet there isn't one. ************************* And a word that is not new but seems to have changed its meaning in the UK over the last ten years. Guys. Used to mean blokes. Now is a collective term for people of any gender, usually used in order establish a mood of informality. I sat through an assembly this morning when the external provider (who was very good) must have used it ten + times. Mercifully she didn't describe the visit she was drumming up support for as 'awesome'!