A Lark Ascending

A view on the current British scene from trumpeter Henry Lowther (check your Collier, Westbrook, LJCO etc records, not to mention a fair few 70s rock records)...I stumbled on it whilst looking for something else: http://www.artsinleicestershire.co.uk/jazzinleicestershire/

From: http://www.artsinleicestershire.co.uk/jazzinleicestershire/

This place always tickles me: http://www.brj.wrekin.sch.uk/ I don't think they encourage going down to the crossroads there.

After putting lots of titles up for download via amazon, e-music etc, there seems to have been a long hiatus. I'm waiting for one Fats Waller disc to appear. Hope financial problems haven't torpedoed the download option too!

Just listened to this - absolutely terrific. Wonderful arrangements, varying from track to track. Marvellous percussion...and the singing is fantastic (just wish I knew what she was singing about!). This is Brazilian music as I like it best. I wish this band would venture to these shores. I saw Teco Cardoso and Rodolfo Stroeter a few years back in an unforgettable concert with some UK musicians. Maybe when the World Music movers and shakers get over their fixation on freedom fighting desert bands from North Africa.

Sounds like the sort of jazz these chaps would listen to: You have to be a brit of a certain age to get the reference...though all can be relived on YouTube:

They actually began as a sort of US folk-rock/West Coast covers band - they were nicknamed 'England's Jefferson Airplane'. Their first album (before Sandy Denny joined) is almost completely in that vein (they recorded some Joni Mitchell and Dylan tracks that were not known over here, passed on by manager Joe Boyd). The English (well, really Scottish/Irish) influence began to trickle in on the next two albums until it took complete hold on Liege and Lief. It caused an early fragmentation with Ian Matthews parting from the band to follow a career with a more American feel. Give 'A Sailor's Life' off 'Unhalfbricking' a listen for an almost perfect mesh of English traditional music and Grateful Dead-like extended jamming. A magical track. If you listen to Richard Thompson's guitar you'll hear more than a hint of classic US country playing (he often does things by the likes of Buck Owens as encores etc)...though he has always avoided any blues styling, apart from a brief Blind Willie Johnson cover on the second album.

Keep listening...in time you'll do this quite naturally! I always wear a stetson and chew tobacco when listening to anything American.

A cardboard box - not all that substantial, but it kept them in place on the clipper ship that sped them across the Atlantic. I've ordered from BF a couple of times in the past and have never had any of the problems you've had...not yet, anyhow!

Good to hear that about the Salmaso - liberated my copy this morning from a neighbour who the postman left it with whilst I was away. Also the Joyce 'Slow Music'. I ordered direct from Biscoito and the prices were more than fair - no more than a full price Cd in the shops here, even after post and packing. Seemed to get here in about a week. Will keep your other rec. in mind.

Was he rummaging through bins?

It seems to be as hard as it's ever been to survive as a jazz musician in the UK - and yet there's no end of new musicians appearing in a multitude of jazz styles and substyles. Plenty of festivals and concerts (both national and international). There's a pretty strong movement here at present that is aiming at the youth market - not so much industry generated as musician generated. Young musicians who trained as jazz musicians but who were listening to indie-pop or rap or drum'n bass etc and want to include that in their music. Some of the most successful bands of recent years - Acoustic Ladyland, Polar Bear etc - have gone straight for the indie-rock audience. Of course, this can lead them to losing some of their jazz listeners (I've become less enthusiastic because I'm not keen on punk stylings or the repetitive drum/bass thing)...but that has always been the price that absorbing ideas from outside of the jazz mainstream has had to pay. It has to happen. We're not talking hear about popular bands aiming to get rich quick but young musicians who have a training in jazz but who want to be linked with their own generation. As to how far this can draw younger people into listening to the central jazz canon, I'm more sceptical. I was at a double bill a few months back- started with the Portico Quartet, a fairly lightweight semi-minimalist group who won a national prize, got on radio and therefore had the place packed with a very young and enthusiastic crowd. However, vast numbers left once their set was over, not prepared to give the Bojan Zulfikarpašić quartet a chance. Now the latter was hardly playing 'When the Saints Go Marching In' or 'Take Five' - it was an intense, burning set, including the ultra-hip drummer from Acoustic Ladyland/Polar Bear - but most of the younger crowd never gave it a chance. I've seen a number of jazz 'revivals' here over the years (i.e situations where the arts pages of the national press and the major record labels notice it for a while) but they don't last. Yet the music still thrives and new players continue to well up in a variety of settings - everything from the indie-jazz bands I mention through hard bop types (Empirical) to almost West Coast revivalists (Allison Neale). Like big bands, jazz ain't coming back...but I think it's always going to be here. Someone mentioned earlier that adults aren't as interested in music as they once were - I think that's very true in general; there are far more alternatives to leisure time activity than there were even in the mid-70s when I got hooked. But I think there will always be enough of an interested audience for music that strays off the motorways and onto the country lanes (and even the rugged footpaths) to sustain musics like jazz. But no-one is going to get rich doing it.

Great clip, TTK. Very 60s...you can almost see the John Paul Sartres sticking out of the back pockets. There's a very 70's TV music show clip of Vinicius doing Berimbau and half of the Canto de Ossanha (with Toquinho and Jobim [a bit further in]) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP0t2E6rqWA...feature=related Not as dark and haunting as your clip. This is how I remember European music TV in the 70s...though the music was never as good. That Os Afro Sambas album is a marvel - though I've only acquired the original in the last year or so. I very much like this later version and the interpretation on the second disc here:

Interesting, Seeline. In Scottish/Irish folklore there's a similar tale, but a woman is involved. She sheds her seal skin to come ashore in human form. What usually happens is a chap falls for her and hides the skin. She lives a human life but always seeks the skin, eventually finding it and returning to the waters. The Selkie

Two great Brazilian musical dolphins Some years ago I became smitten by the Luiz Eca tune 'The Dolphin', hearing it first on a Stan Tracey CD and then later done by Louis Stewart, Bill Evans and Stan Getz. Today, whilst listening again to the Quarteto Jobim-Morelenbaum album I was completely transfixed by the tune 'O Boto'. Looking it up on Google it turns out to mean 'The Dolphin'. So well done dolphins...you've inspired two fabulous tunes. I will check my tins of tuna with greater care in future to ensure you are not being harmed.

And once you've replaced it, here's how to make music with it: Malcolm Arnold's 'A Grand Grand Overture for 3 Vacuum Cleaners, 1 Floor Polisher, 4 Rifles and Orchestra. Skip to 7 minutes if you can't take the whole thing. The ending would do Morecambe and Wise proud. WARNING: Not for Darmstadt-isttas. You know you'll only get cross and start brandishing your slide rule and graph paper!

Reminds me of May Bank Holiday weekend - great jazz, beautiful city, nice beer. Not sure how this made its way to Worksop Sainsburys.

I don't know why but I've stuck with the Orange page - chock-a-block with celebrity news! Changed today to the much more sober but useful: http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Very Prog ! 'Worship, cried the clown, I am a TV, making bandsmen go clockwork.' No wonder the world's going to the dogs. Previous generations could quote Shakespeare and Tennyson. All I can manage is snippets of Pete Sinfield (and Dylan [bob, not Thomas]).

I remember those too - though I only saw the earlier Island samplers on a rather nice promo brochure Island put out with nice colour reproductions of all its releases. I think they had vanished by the time I was buying records from mid-1970 onwards.

I've seen a copy of 'The New Age of Atlantic' with a 99p sticker on. Which, thinking about it, wasn't that cheap. A full LP cost £1.99 in those days.

He did indeed. I recall him as the vocalist (and, I think bass player) on King Crimson's 'Lizard'. Don't think he liked the experience much...I get the impression he was more of a balladeer. The music he had to sing on 'Lizard' was verging on free jazz (well, polytonal jazz!) and the lyrics were bonkers....'See the slinky-sealed circus policeman, bareback ladies have fish.'

Led, perhaps, by the Big Bands as they march back into towns?

I remember this one...bought it in WH Smiths in St. Austell of all places: Side One 1.Led Zeppelin: "Hey, Hey, What Can I Do" (Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham) - 3:53 (from "Immigrant Song" US single b-side, cat. no. 2777, 1970) 2.Loudon Wainwright III: "Motel Blues" (L. Wainwright) - 2:43 (from Album II, cat. no. K40272, 1971) 3.Gordon Haskell: "Sitting by the Fire" (Haskell) - 3:41 (from It Is and It Isn't, cat. no. K40311, 1972) 4.Dr. John: "Where Ya at Mule" (Mac Rebennack) - 4:55 (from The Sun, Moon & Herbs, cat. no. K40250, 1971) 5.Buffalo Springfield: "Bluebird" (Stephen Stills) - 4:28 (from Buffalo Springfield Again, cat. no. K40014, 1967) 6.Delaney, Bonnie & Friends: "Only You Know And I Know" (Dave Mason) - 3:24 (from D&B Together, cat. no. CBS KC 31377, 1972) [edit] Side Two 1.Cactus: "Long Tall Sally" (Richard Penniman) - 3:03 (from One Way...Or Another, cat. no. K12345, 1971) 2.Jonathan Edwards: "Everybody Knows Her" (Edwards) - 1:53 (from Jonathan Edwards, cat. no. K40282, 1971) 3.The J. Geils Band: "I Don't Need You No More" (Peter Wolf, Seth Justman) – 2:35 (from The Morning After, cat. no. K40293, 1971) 4.John Prine: "Sam Stone" (Prine) – 4:14 (from John Prine cat. no. K40357, 1971) 5.Yes: "America" (Paul Simon) – 10:30 (previously unreleased) The Led Zepp and Yes tracks were unavailable elsewhere at the time - and I took a real liking to Loudon, Buffalo Springfield, the elaney and Bonnie track and John Prine as a result. Though this was the most influential cheapo sampler for me: A 2LP Island records treasure trove - I ended up following most of the artists on it - Fairport, Fotheringay, John Martyn, Traffic etc. I also recall hearing this one though I never owned it:

Fabulous record - Seeline recommended it to me a couple of years back over on the AAJ Brazil thread. I also like this one: The one I'd like to find, but appears to be missing in action, is this: Edit: (Sorry, Seeline! Crossed post!)