A Lark Ascending

BB was the first Miles record I bought and I didn't care for it at all. I think what really bugged me was the way the music seemed to be based on a single chord where I've always loved the varying contours of frequent chord (and key) changes. It actually delayed me exploring any more Miles until over a year later when I heard 'Blue in Green' and found my way in via the late-50s. I didn't touch electric Miles again until the mid-90s. For some reason I bought 'In a Silent Way' and instantly loved it, following it with 'Files de K'. When I then went back to BB it suddenly opened up to me (nearly 20 years from that first purchase!). I now view it as an astounding record and have gone on to enjoy lots of the other pre-75 stuff (still only partly convinced by the 80s records). It just reenforces my belief in the importance of context for listening to music. No amount of being told that X is a work of genius will have any impact if you lack some connection through your previous listening. It's also why I'm very reluctant to give up on music I currently find difficult.

If you can't get a physical copy you can get a download version from amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Coleman-Hawkins-1943-1944/dp/B0027VZ33O/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&qid=1294251668&sr=8-21

Ah! Rumbled! OK, I'll own up. It was 1885. Archve field recordings of stirring tunes sung in the Paris Commune 14 years before. Ah, sounds like you got the reissue. I have the original "deep pit", burnt sienna and cerulean label version. With OBI. To be honest, even though I got the CD, I still prefer the cassette. A warmer, more natural sound.

Loved this. See-saws between grim murder mystery and tall, whimsical tale. I think the latter just wins out. A larger than life tale but a fun one. Now on: Leon's books always make me hungry - Inspector Brunetti's wife always makes such wonderful meals!

Ellington-a-thon 14 Like A Ship In The Night - 1939 I Can’t Stop Loving You - 1964 I’m Hip Too - 1967 Dusk - 1940 Chocolate Shake - 1941 Clementine - 1941 Upper Manhattan Medical Group - U.M.M.G. 1956 Admiration - 1930 Bunny Hop Mambo - 1954 NUTCRACKER SUITE - 1960

Ah! Rumbled! OK, I'll own up. It was 1885. Archve field recordings of stirring tunes sung in the Paris Commune 14 years before.

1985 Having had no end of nasty experiences in the previous 15 years with vinyl (I could only afford inexpensive turntables) CD was a godsend. I bought three CDs on the day I bought my player (on HP!) - Ravel/Chausson Piano Trios, Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne and a Julian Bream disc of guitar music by Albeniz and Granados. I can't recall my first jazz CD - until about 1990 there weren't that many around compared with classical. Suspect it was an ECM. For a while I was buying classical on CD and jazz/folk/rock on vinyl.

Will it filter out the endless grumbling of Jarrett-o-phobes? How many threads now?

Thanks for that alert! I remember being haunted by 'No Pussyfooting' which used to be played prior to KC going on stage around '73. Don't think the record came out until '74. It will be fascinating to hear this.

And for me, that's the type of thing I'd like to hear more of - not to "mimic the times" or anything like that, but just to start "jazz musicians" thinking about time in some newer ways that open up the now-pretty-much codified actions and reactions to where we've been for the better part of the 20th Century. A "creative musician" will always find personal openings in the source material, so I'm not looking for "copies" of "modern" beats, not at all. But the shift has to begin somewhere & somehow.... I guess the problem with evolution is that it occurs more quickly in history books than it does in real time... It's only right and proper that these sorts of experiments - possibly developing into something organic - happen. I'm not sure there's a shortage - the festivals I attend are never short on musicians 'interfacing' with modern technology and all manner of popular musics. There's a whole raft of young UK musicians who draw as much on their love of alternative rock, metal and dance music alongside jazz (and then there's Norway....). I just have an inbuilt personal aversion to 'beats' - but that's just me. If anything, I'd be more interested in jazz that can do without a regular beat (I know there's plenty of that in free jazz). The way that classical music gets by without having the beat pointed up (we still await a jazz Debussy [Gil Evans notwithstanding]). Trouble is, it 'wouldn't swing'!!!!!! Room for lots of options.

If you mean me, how so? Just think you're criticising the records/musicians for failing to do things or 'develop' in the directions 'you' prefer. I've just listened to Iyer's 'Historicity' and don't like it as much as 'Solo', mainly because of the rather static 'beatbox' rhythms used in places - I can see why they are used, referencing recent pop music, but they don't suit me. But I'm not going to declare them a failure to develop because that don't fit with my listening context. 'Solo', by contrast, sounds much more lyrical, almost rhapsodic. Which would be kiss of death to many listeners; but fits with where I'm coming from.

Whole lotta projectin' goin' on! I enjoyed the Moran yesterday; the Iyer really moved me this afternoon. I don't ask any more of the entertainment I seek out.

The sense of self importance some critics get from ridiculing what is widely enjoyed ('Only I truly understand!'), perhaps? I like the Moran too. I've been playing the Vijay Iyer 'Solo' this afternoon, which turns up on the VV and the Jazzwise list. Having said earlier that nothing this year really grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, I was utterly captivated on this hearing.

Well, jazz has changed in that it has long left behind its early, pioneering days when there were still vast tracts of wilderness to be colonised and, consequently, most things sounded new. Add to that the way that technology and society have changed - we have access to so much more music and the means to acquire it. I came into jazz listening when it was in its late 70s doldrums but it still all sounded so fresh and exciting to may ears, mainly because it was all so new, I had limited means to purchase records and vast swathes of material lay mysteriously out of reach (OOP or only available on distant planets). I'd be hard pressed to name a single recording from this year that has completely bowled me over in the jazz world, though plenty I've gained pleasure from. I suspect that has more to do with me than the music itelf.

There's a time honoured tradition of 'best ofs' - think of the endless TV programmes with the '100 Best Xs'. But I doubt if many of the critics who contribute to these lists actually think of their choices as 'the best', more 'what they particularly enjoyed'. So the composite list can simply be seen as those discs that a fair number of critics shared a liking for in common. These polls are best read in that way, rather than as some attempt to establish what is 'best'. I know there are some vain souls who believe that what they approve of is 'the best'. I doubt that the majority of people take them very seriously.

Almost certainly 'you' (or we!)! When we had heard very little everything seemed exciting. Several thousand recordings down the line (and god knows how much radio and live music) it's going to be incrementally harder for each new release to make an impression, however good it is. Here's a UK poll from Jazzwise. Surprised at how conservative it is geographically - Jazzwise is normally a flag flyer for up-and-coming UK groups and jazz from Europe. Like the poll of this thread it's distilled from the choices of a range of critics. NEW RELEASES 1 Phronesis - Alive (Edition) 2 Charles Lloyd - Mirror (ECM) 3 Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden - Jasmine (ECM) 4 Robert Wyatt, Gilad Atzmon, Ros Stephen - For The Ghosts Within (Domino) 5 Norma Winstone Stories Yet To Tell (ECM) 6 Dave Holland Octet Pathways (Dave 2) 7 Esperanza Spalding - Chamber Music Society (Heads Up) 8 Vijay Iyer - Solo (ACT) 9 Brad Mehldau - Highway Rider (Nonesuch) 10 Food Quiet Inlet (ECM) REISSUES AND ARCHIVE 1 Loose Tubes - Dancing On Frith Street (Lost Marble) 2 Miles Davies - Bitches Brew 4Oth Anniversary Legacy Edition (Columbia) 3 Tubby Hayes Quartet - Lament (Solway) 4 Kenny Wheeler - Windmill Tilter (Best Goes On) 5 Arild Andersen - Green In Blue, Early Quartets (ECM) 6 Modern Jazz Quartet - Under the Jasmine Tree (Space Apple) 7. Thelonious Monk - Monk and Coltrane (OJC Riverside) 8 Jimi Hendrix Electric - Ladyland Experience (Hendrix/Sony Legacy) 9. Georgie Fame - Mod Classics 1964-1966 (BGP) 10 Shelley Mann - Live At The Black Hawk (AJC) Individual choices in the current magazine (though not online). More interesting than the collective chart. http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/

Read it during the 70s, though the NME was my main source. Although it was by then a mainly rock mag, it still devoted sections to jazz and did jazz interviews. That's where I got some of my first info about jazz. There was some talk a while back - I think sidewinder had the details - about it being digitalised. That would be fascinating! Edit: Report here The orthodox view of rock history, as usual. As I recall, all the UK music press went over to punk, new wave or whatever - whether as a matter of policy or because all but the biggest bands with international careers folded so there was not much 'dinosaur' music to write about. I stopped buying it around '77/'78.

After the high drama of the first 3 weeks of December, a week where temperatures rose and the country was enveloped in a gloomy mist for day after day. At least all our water pipes haven't popped like in Northern Ireland: Weather and infrastructure blamed for water crisis

A page turner even though there was more gratuitous violence than I care for; and the characters were cardboard cut-out. None of the depth of Mankell.

Over the last week - three episodes of a Swedish version of Wallendar (not the famous series which I've yet to see - there's an episode tonight). Enjoyed them very much. Last night: Passed the time, but tried to cover too much ground in too short a time. I can cope with historical inaccuracy for dramatic ends (if it's OK for Shakespeare...) but the scenes where Sir Walter Raleigh beat the Spanish Armada singlehanded were straight out of Errol Flynn. And the misty mountain lochside scenes of Mary Queen of Scot's detention centre at Fotheringay castle were amusing. Fotheringay is in Northamptonshire which is flat and one of the dullest counties in England! Clive Owen was hopeless as Raleigh; I seem to recall him being similarly unimpressive in the blockbuster about King Arthur.

Happy New Year all. What was happening musically in 1911? Though they seem to have missed Sibelius' 4th.

Interesting idea for a thread. And quite difficult to answer - partly because I can think of far more than five turning points (or forking points); partly because its difficult not to choose what you think you ought to have as a key disc rather than what might have been a real clincher that you have since lost interest in. Here's a stab: 1970 - My third album (the single of 'Question' had been my first record ever). At the time I was listening to pop radio pretty randomly - this one sent me away from the top 20 and into the thickets of the prog-rock/album rock of the early 70s. [Just to show what a left turn it proved to be, my first two albums were by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition!!!! The Moody Blues might be considered naff today, but they saved me from Wembley!). 1971 - Took me nearly a year to really get this but I think it opened me up to more discordant music; and the wonderful Tippett/Charig/Evans sequence on side two had me very curious about jazz. The Soft Machine, Centipede, Henry Cow, the Canterbury bands and ultimately Ogun all came from this. 1971 - prior to buying this I had a single by East of Eden called 'Jig-a-Jig' that was a minor hit; it resonated somewhere with my awareness that I had an Irish heritage through my mother. Heard (and recorded in a primitive manner) a session Fairport did of some of these songs for John Peel's show a few months before release. Bought the LP when it came out and followed it up through other Fairports, Sandy Denny, Swarbrick and Carthy and on into English (and eventually via Planxty Irish) folk music. 1973 - Somehow I knew rock music would never be enough, and the rock music of the early 70s pointed outwards in so many directions. I was rather taken by the classical twiddlings of bands like The Nice, ELP, Yes etc but attempts to listen to classical music had no impact. One of the pieces that really grabbed me was a version of the main tune from the Karelia Suite by The Nice. One evening I was listening to Jon Anderson being interviewed on the radio and playing some favourite records and he played the last movement of Sibelius 5. I was utterly captivated by it. A friend leant me the disc above and for the first time an extended piece of classical music made sense. Followed it up by buying a few budget Sibelius discs and then on to Stravinsky, Mahler and Bruckner. Vaughan Williams was a couple of years down the line! 1975 - Began the process that, over about a year, got me accustomed to a jazzier way of harmonising music. Also the idea that music didn't have to stick to a strict beat. Not my first Jarrett (that was the decidedly odd 'In the Light') but gave me a taste for ECM and eventually jazz.

'Sounds of Jazz' - that's the name!

Looks interesting. I recall all manner of broadcasts on the BBC (especially Jazz on 2 on a Sunday night with Peter Clayton) where larger bands like this from John Taylor, Kenny Wheeler etc appeared, the music never making it to disc. This sounds like it's coming out of that sort of area.

Feel free to ramble, Jaz Nut. That's what the thread is all about!