A Lark Ascending

Been using Chrome over the last week and it's doing fine. Thanks for the advice.

How did I miss Django Bates? Unfortunately the Loose Tubes albums from the 80s where he began have never got to CD (apart from the third which is the least interesting) - there is a recent live disc from the time that gives a nice snapshot. Also a marvellous - but being Bates, very eccentric - one with mainly Danish musicians called 'Spring is Here (Shall We Dance?)' Love Klein too. Very impressed by John Hollenbeck's larger groups too. I'd support the 'Music for Large and Small Ensembles' rec for Kenny W. (though half of disc 2 is for smaller groups from the main orchestra - equally wonderful). Wheeler can also be heard on the two Maritime Jazz Orchestra records - its essentially Azimuth (Wheeler, John Taylor, Norma Winstone) set against this Canadian orchestra. Try the recently reissued 'The Cortege' for Westbrook at his peak. If you search under Westbrook you'll find a recent discussion about it. And then there's Bob Brookmeyer - he's written a lot for larger forces in recent year. Very different from his 50s/60s music. Elegiac, almost Mahlerian in places. 'Spirit Music' is a gem. One I regularly recommend is Tiziano Tononi's 'We Did It! We did It!' - a 3CD celebration of Roland Kirk's music for large Italian forces but with lots of other references too - Hendrix, Bob Marley etc. Utterly thrilling. Great for very long car journeys (perhaps less great for your passengers!)! [Love that 1977 European band Carla Bley too - to my ears one of her last really distinctive albums. Very fond of Ballad of the Fallen with Charlie Haden too from a bit later)

Mike Westbrook's many orchestras. Mike Gibbs various ensembles Colin Towns - British and German orchestras/Big Bands Italian Instabile Orchestra Vienna Art Ensemble London Jazz Composers Orchestra Maria Schneider's orchestras Christine Jensen Keith Tippett's occasional larger groups Tiziano Tononi Orchestre National de Jazz Kenny Wheeler's larger groups Maritime Jazz Orchestra ... and many, many more

Dare I suggest Kate Westbrook? Or Irene Aebi. Maggie Nichols. Julie Tippetts. None come close to being your usual 'jazz' singer even though they sing in jazz contexts. Erika Stucky - American, I believe, but an emigre to Switzerland. Saw her a few years back with two alphorns! Must get a recording.

My favourite buy boxwise in recent months, taking cheapness into account: Currently £25 in the UK for 22CDs. Those interested in historic performances will have a field day (and with all but a few pieces, sound is very good). I bought it just as a way of getting a lot of lesser known Stravinsky; would have cost a fortune to assemble this from elsewhere.

The new Jazzwise dropped through the door today. Big interview piece with Alexander there. Will read later.

I'm not sure how. By 'I don't get poetry' I just mean it's not something I've ever warmed to. A result of my particular context; I wouldn't for a moment dispute its power as equal to other forms of entertainment like painting or music. And appreciate its enormous popularity. Nor would I rule out the possibility that one day I might 'get it' (as I frequently suddenly 'get' music that has left me cold for decades). I think I'm just too impatient to linger (not too keen on short stories either); prefer novels where I can enter a world that is sustained and developed for a lengthy period. There have been poems I've come to enjoy. Did Dylan Thomas at school and it went right over my head until just before the exams when it clicked. Often it's hearing them in a musical context that clicks them open for me. Despite having read widely on WWI I never connected with Owen, Sassoon etc until I heard things like the War Requiem. Idiosyncratic, I know. Might be connected with the fact that I come from the generation that was still forced to learn by heart and recite poems about things I didn't care about - one about the Battle of Lepanto springs to mind.

Tea...though preferably not stewed in Boston harbour water. A PG Tips tea bag in a cup with boiling water poured on it. Leave the tea bag in as I drink it. No milk or sugar (though I'm happy with a tiny splash of milk). Like coffee too but try to limit that.

Thanks for that, I'm pleased to know I don't have to join the queue. (That's in Worksopian pentameter).

Thanks all. Loaded Chrome and everything is whizzing.

Is their some requirement to have an interest in poetry that I'm unaware of?

Might have solved my own problem - might be a case of having too many tabs open!

In addition, responses to music often go well beyond what can be measured by objective criteria. I don't know why I'm still moved by 40 year old records by Matching Mole or Hatfield and the North but I am. Which suggests to me that it makes sense, purely out of politeness, to tread lightly when criticising music. It may annoy you or render you indifferent; but the joy that many people are getting from it is very real. What is to be gained by telling them they really should not be enjoying it or that their enjoyment suggests a shallowness or deficiency of 'character'? [Delius suggests just that about those who are 'taken in' by Stravinsky etc]

Yes, if you can establish what your criteria for being a "good composer" entail, why these are your criteria, and if you can show how Verdi's music fails those criteria. But that is what so rarely happens. Establishing the criteria. Assertions are made, a few crushing pieces of 'evidence' are deployed and the case is over. It isn't about constructing a rational case. Half the time it seems to be about establishing an artificial position - I've decided not to like Ashkenazy and will now make my dislike for Ashkenazy part of what defines me as a person. With Verdi, I have no problem in seeing that there is something in his music that just does not click with me (as with, say, most offal in food!). I leave the door open for the day when it might. Can't see I'd have a stronger 'character' if I was to convert my personal antipathy into a universal condemnation. But what mattered was not the strength by which they were held...but the logic, the reason, how far they accorded with what was (is) accepted as human morality (which I realise is a whole can of worms in itself).

I think you can have strong ideas, feelings, responses without needing to rubbish ideas that don't fit with them or those that don't share them. The strength comes from promoting what you think needs promoting rather than wasting energy decrying what you dislike. Of course some things do need standing up to and rubbishing - fascism, racism, sexism, out-of-tune playing, poorly prepared performances etc. Where I disagree on these 'strong opinions' is they often pretend an artistic performance falls into those latter categories. I'm not convinced a Keith Jarrett album or Emerson String Quartet performance is in the same league as those things that really do need resisting. Strong opinions? The Ku Klux Klan have strong opinions. It's the logic, the evidence base of those opinions that count, not their strength. (Incidentally...I hate Verdi. Does my opinion become more valid if I assert that he is an awful composer rather than one whose music gives me the willies!)

But they've already gone down a tunnel at that point, confusing what is personally 'right' for them with what should be 'right' for everyone else. It's a bit like the viewpoint of religious fundamentalists - this faith is not just for me; I have a duty to make you, an infidel, see it that way too. I've no problem with the expression of antipathy towards certain music. It's just the rationalising of a subjective response to become an objective diktat. Doesn't stop me enjoying the music of such outspoken people - Delius' complete wrongheadness about Stravinsky won't stop me adoring his own music (and if I was a poetry reader Larkin's views on 'modern jazz' would never prevent me enjoying his poems). Yes, I know the rubbishing of what one dislikes is a long and time-honoured tradition. I'm just surprised we still haven't got past it.

Yes, it must have been tough for them. By the time I got to university ('73) the welfare state reforms of the previous 30 years had ensured that those in control had to accept that the barbarians were through the gates. But the class differences were clear to see and some of the English profs in particular who I endured in my first couple of terms could hardly contain their contempt for those of us who did not have the classical/biblical reference points a bought education would have ensured (I could quote Dylan but not Cicero!). Must have been very much harder in the 40s.

I'm currently reading through an old collection of essays about Delius. There's an article by the composer himself where he vents against much of contemporary music (early 20s) - he seems to really have it in for Stravinsky, the whole post-WWI French scene and the Diaghilev ballet group. Same sort of crustiness as I've read in extracts from Larkin. I'm always intrigued about the unwillingness (inability?) of some intelligent and high achieving people to see out of their box and acknowledge that it might be that they just don't get it (rather than the it being faulty). I suspect the offending music/book/painting just winds them up so much that they just have to vent. Or perhaps, viewing themselves as being someone with a higher level of perception than most, the promotion of something they dislike as of high 'artistic' value makes them insecure.

Thanks again. Will explore that line.

Never read this (or his poems...I don't really get poems!). But I think I should for what he has to say about what he likes. There's an interesting chapter in Dominic Sandbrook's book on the 1958-63 period of British history where he explores Larkin and Kingsley Amis as the grammar school boys from a lower middle class background hitting university and running headlong into the established elite who believe that they own "culture". Interesting that both became highly conservative. Think I might find myself sharing his prejudices!

Thanks, Big Wheel. I'll try what you say. It's not a laptop. And it seems to do other tasks fine - films through BBC IPlayer show fine, for example, once I've got there. It's just the moving between pages.

I've just noticed over recent months using IE that there's a growing hiatus between clicking a link and connecting. Becomes even longer when pressing the back button to return to the previous page. Something to do with all these Twitter, Facebook etc links that need loading to every time a page is opened, perhaps? Is it just the sheer volume that my connection cannot keep up with? Not the end of the world - but gets annoying, especially when working on a tight schedule.

Must read Melly's trilogy.

Wasn't he a vicar? - so sermon style came naturally I guess. He was. It very much comes across as 'the truth sent from above'. Doesn't work for fundamentalist relativists! I love Humphrey Lyttelton's two books on early jazz. None of the arty-farty nonsense that encrusts so much jazz writing with unsubstantiated projection. He just does a damn good job at explaining why the pieces he chooses were so remarkable for the time they emerged.