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A Lark Ascending

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Everything posted by A Lark Ascending

  1. Yes, I check in every few albums but it's still there. Robs his music of much that I loved about it in the late-60s/early 70s. I've often found it hard to distinguish him from the keyboards.
  2. I enjoyed it. A tall tale in the 'secret cabal at the heart of government' genre with few too many twists to be believable. But very good entertainment. Authentic? No. Never once saw anyone eating chips with mayonnaise.
  3. Wonder what would happen if you put the same concert on in Doncaster, King's Lynn or Okehampton. I suspect the age of attendance in jazz concerts drops in proportion to the proximity of a major further education facility. There you have an audience educated into believing that they should seek out non-mainstream musics.
  4. Daniel Barenboim has just launched a download-only classical label. Part of his rational is to reach a younger audience. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/news/daniel-barenboim-launches-new-download-only-label-with-universal I'm not sure if he's considered the question "Why should young people click on a classical music site?" Starting off with the first three Bruckner symphonies seems like more of the same rather than a radical new departure. But I'm all for new download sites. Good luck to him.
  5. Did you never hear something randomly on the radio and go 'Wow!'? Or in a pub or a friend's house? Or read a description of something in a magazine or book or internet site which just piqued your curiosity even though you had no experience? I recognise totally what you mean by the 'Kind of Blue' generation thing - lots of my exploration has worked that way. But being blindsided out of left-field is just as exciting. Absolutely. I lived through the "Tull rool, Sabbath are crap" era.
  6. Not if you were 13 when she was at the peak of her popularity (well, the emotionally engaging bit!). It depends on context. I'd not dispute that there are qualitative differences in music. Gotterdammerung is a far more complex and revolutionary piece than 'Come On In My Kitchen'. But is it better? Do you improve by going from the latter to the former? Too often these judgement are not based on any defined criteria. Someone takes a liking to Evan Parker and then proceeds to assert they they are better than Branford Marsalis. Based on what criteria? The chances are that the person listening to the latter is doing so from a completely different context to the one listening to the former.
  7. Robert Johnson made records to give enjoyment, hopefully make some money, maybe even get rich. But it didn't happen (of course the Robert Johnson industry tells the story somewhat differently). If he had been a commercial success - quite possible, he recorded a few popular tunes and, by all reports, performed a lot more - would the music have lost its value? Is it only worthy of the 'discerning' listener because it was not a commercial success? When I were a lad we listened to our prog-rock records convinced that a new 'art' form was being born and sneered at those who skipped away to commercial dross like Tamla Motown. But look what history has done to those two genres! We are taught to believe that that which is uncommercial has greater 'depth'. This has the advantage of placing us in a small, discriminating elite who have the good taste to recognise the value of that which everyone else seems to dislike. It's how the middle and upper classes in western societies have distanced themselves from the 'riff-raff' for centuries. Those sort of attitudes are a major stumbling block to new audiences coming to jazz and classical music (apart from those looking for some social/cultural capital). They are nowhere near as prevalent as they were 40 years ago. I'm always amazed that they are still there at all.
  8. I recall being really taken by Mark Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur' - I was studying 19thC US history at the time. Might have been that I half-remembered the Bing Crosby / Danny Kaye film, though I don't think that was anywhere near as dark.
  9. I read MGs post as merely expressing how his journey took a different path.
  10. I did two terms of English at the start of my degree and had the same experience - Fitzgerald, Eliott and the like. Hated the course (though I got introduced to some great books by both Brits and them foreigners). Seemed to get told to read a book only to be informed in the follow up lecture why I shouldn't have enjoyed it. It was such a liberation to be able to just read novels and enjoy them. I can't believe how illiberal the current attempts to control both literature and history are.
  11. I don't think anyone was suggesting that exploring new things was not a good thing. Merely questioning the idea that some things are better to explore than others (the idea that you need to follow an approved list rather than following your own nose, informed by hints and suggestions you bump into). Any musical genre from opera to heavy metal can be made off-putting to a new, young (or old) enquirer when they are pounced on for expressing a liking for that which is not approved (God help the inquisitive soul who wants to know a bit more about jazz after hearing an 'awesome' Wynton Marsalis album). Doesn't mean that everything is of the same quality; but separating what is of high/low quality from the web of your own preferences and prejudices is much harder than those who like to judge would have us believe.
  12. Chacun à son goût. That's the sort of cultural relativism that has weakened our beloved isles. Expressed in Eurospeak too!
  13. Well here's a novel way of reaching a younger audience for classical music: http://www.classicfm.com/music-news/latest-news/colorado-symphony-orchestra-cannabis-concerts/ As we know, jazz audiences are all on drugs anyway.
  14. I did Middlemarch for 'A' Level. Fortunately I changed schools so didn't have to finish it. Read it in full many years later and really enjoyed it. Moby Dick defeated me.
  15. Indeed. See the link in the first post of this thread. Odd comment at the end about the problem being that opera is not taught in schools. Was it ever taught in schools? Certainly not in the state sector.
  16. Let us know if it is sold out. That seems more key than age. And nice to be free from the beery toe-tappers... Not quite but near as damn it. Semi-staged with a huge tripartite screen with vague visuals and the lyrics so we can sing along. Just finished the first leg. Very enjoyable - really good to hear an orchestra doing this stuff in the flesh. The only thing they missed was asking us to come dressed in role like those sing-a-long Sound of Music shows. No-one has died yet - on stage or in the audience. There's still time....lots of it...
  17. I'm currently in the foyer of Leeds Town Hall awaiting the start of Götterdämmerung. Believe me, if you thought jazz audiences were old....
  18. There's a difference between improving your French horn playing, which is a (far from simple) matter of improving certain skills (and the improvement can be clearly measured); and the suggestion that by going from listening to Son House to Beethoven you are improving. Some would have us believe that exchanging Uchida for Schnabel is a measure of improvement. I'd say it's a measure of one's desperation to be admitted into The Wine Club.
  19. There definitely used to be something in the education system about teaching you to 'improve yourself' in the sense of learning to 'appreciate' the 'finer things in life'. I can still recall an RE lesson taken by the head teacher ( who was a good bloke, very skilled at getting us expressing our opinions) where we were talking about our musical preferences. He listened to our views with interest but then informed us that in time we would forsake what we liked then and move on to the profundities and depth of Beethoven etc. I was sceptical then and time has justified that scepticism. I've added to my musical interests but, apart from a few pretentious years in my early 20's, have never seen the need to replace or to head in a direction of improvement whilst leaving 'childish things' behind. I'd like to think that today schools would encourage kids to explore beyond what is immediately available without suggesting that there is some sort of hierarchy of value that they should be moving up through.
  20. Yes, that's how I see it too. I've accumulated musicians and musical styles but I don't see it as progression. The only progress is that with each new discovery your context of listening broadens which both opens you up to further discovery and gives you new perspectives on what you've already heard.
  21. Possibly not in the top twenty sense. But jazz was still acting significantly on album rock (or whatever you want to call it) well into the 70s. Santana, Chicago, BS&T, Mahavishnu, Steely Dan, the US 'Fusion' bands all shifted a lot of product (and there were less successful bands like Soft Machine and the Canterbury chaps who still pulled in a substantial audience). They wore their jazz on their sleeves. That's where my curiosity was piqued.
  22. Just listening to the Spotify version. Leaving aside the legality/morality issues, sound seems very good to me, even if it's almost certainly from a vinyl copy (there are odd things that sound like clicks to me). Probably won't impress audiophiles but if you want to hear the music. And I've heard far, far worse re-masterings of old material from the Big Boys. Music sounds excellent - rhythmically much more flexible than the Indo-Fusion discs. Harriott sounds beautiful and D'Silva sounds like no other guitar player I can think of on the British jazz scene of the time. Might not be the Dead Sea Scrolls but it's a record that should be out there.
  23. Yes, I'm working through his albums currently - very enjoyable. You probably know this, but he's married to Monday Michiru. I didn't. Not someone whose music I know.
  24. No, not my cup of tea either. But there are plenty of festivals knocking about in Britain that do cater for that particular taste. You'll usually find Alan Barnes there!
  25. Yes, I'm working through his albums currently - very enjoyable.
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