A Lark Ascending

Missed February, I'm afraid. Am doing David O'Higgins/Eric Alexander for March. Will make up in May with two festivals!

Thanks, sidewinder. I never noticed that!

Nice, Chris. I almost like this point now more than the full flood of spring. Everything seems in such a state of becoming (sorry if that sounds pretentious!!!). It always amazes me how quickly it all happens.

I got this version last year off e-music. Works for me: Replaced an earlier Davis version on LP.

Gosh, Serioza. Not seen anything as well advanced as that here yet! The first leaves are just breaking forth in the bushes and trees.

Wonderful piece. I first heard it in a concert in Nottingham with Andre Previn in the mid to late 80s. The then apartheid government of South Africa had just imposed reporting restrictions that day to try and muffle the sound of unrest in the country; 'A Child of Our Time' seemed as relevant as when it was first performed.

As all artists in Britain had either been purged by the first Labour government or defected along with Philby, Burgess, McLean (but not Blunt), we imported an Australian to teach us: Amazingly I noticed a new Rolf Harris learn to draw partwork in a newsagent today!

You must believe in spring! First the real Boston, not the impostor: John Cotton was a minister here before he took ship for Massachusetts. Great church ('Boston Stump') that can be seen for miles around in this pancake flat landscape. Then some shots from the coast - hard to see any sea; mainly mudflats and reclaimed land: Lincolnshire can do 'big skies' too! This is an amazing time of year: The area is now a nature reserve. Absolutely teeming with birdlife today. I can't tell a chaffinch from a vulture but found the sheer volume of airborne things quite wondrous:

Well, I'll miss you greatly, MG. Love your enthusiasm, generosity in sharing your knowledge and down-to earth approach.

I enjoy Leon's books as much for the sense of being in Venice as for the plot lines.

A third site added to the title on request.

Haven't tried Deezer yet but have changed the thread title to encompass it.

One man's 'pompous/pretentious' is another man's 'aspiration/unique vision'. I like some of the suites better than others; but I'd go for the latter characterisation for all the ones I've heard.

Amazing shots.

Been to Kenilworth Castle? I've been taking school trips there since about 1989! I know every stone! Warwick (just up the road) is more complete and imposing but heavily commercialised and very expensive. If you stick 'Kenilworth March' into Spotify you'll get an extract from Sir Arthur Bliss' 'Kenilworth Suite' for brass band. Says it's by Harry Mortimer but that's the conductor.

That's him in the blue shirt, briskly and nonchalantly strolling away from the pier.

Two Bach cantatas on different discs - No. 60 and No. 82. I've been waiting to hear the chorale from number 60 for nearly 30 years, from when I first became besotted with the Berg Violin Concerto. The theme from the chorale is quoted most poignantly. But I've never located a version of the Bach until now.

Very nice. Where is that, Serioza? We're told the Russian spring is especially violent (or so most liner notes to recordings of The Rite of Spring would have it). Any pictures of things bursting out of the ground and throttling passers by?

My favourite band when I first started buying records in 1970. By the time this came out I'd given up of them. So Spotify gave me the chance to hear if there was anything there I'd missed. Clearly not! They always suffered from being too democratic, so you always got songs that were completely devoid of melodic interest or were near nursery rhymes (how they got their reputation for being profound sages still amazes me!). On this album the weak material dominates. Except for one beautiful song called 'Driftwood' that I half recall as a single. Not surpringly by Justin Hayward who was always their best songwriter, singer and a good guitar player too (a very distinctive electric sound). Yes, Spotify can also be useful to confirm that you did the right thing by ignoring an album!

Tell me where you are sitting. I'll wave at you! I booked some Bath concerts today: Saturday Portico Qt + Bojan Z Jerusalem Quartet (Haydn, Bartok and Debussy...hope I'm not required to wear a dinner jacket!) Sunday Nick Bartsche + Curios Julie Fowlis (Gaelic folk singer...hope I'm not required to wear a kilt). Monday Bobo Stenson Branford Marsalis (hope I'm not requiredto wear a beret).

ACT seem to be putting most of their catalogue up (in the UK at least). Mostly European jazz, mainly on the fjordy side of things (an exaggeration - it's pretty wide) but you've got some good David Binney, Nguyen Le, Richie Beirach. I strongly recommend the two Joel Harrison Free Country albums (don't be put off by Norah Jones!) - some really imaginative, dark explorations of country tunes with David Binney and Uri Caine on board. Nguyen Le's discs, especially the more Vietnamese centred ones with Huong Thanh are marvellous. They don't seem to have the wonderful 'Tales from Vietnam yet' but I suspect it is on its way.

I got into Ellington very quickly in the late 70s, mainly because I had clear reference points from everything from Steely Dan to Mike Westbrook. In the early 80s I was obsessed with the Billie Holiday 30s recordings and started to take to the instrumentalists. I think what stopped me going much further was the availability of decent quality LPs. I recall buying things by Count Basie and King Oliver that sounded very distant. I think it was the late 90s, and particularly the arrival of the net and bulletin boards, that really piqued my curiosity about pre-1945. I remember Lon and Swinging Swede (amongst others) being really helpful at that time (I still have a print off of a long set of recommendations from SS). My whole experience of music has been of liking some things immediately and being indifferent to or disliking other things. And yet, at a later date, coming to like things I previously found dull or irritating. Which is why I'm loath to write off anything just because I don't like it now. I also think there's so much music out there that we can afford to build up our interests according to what suits us locally rather than according to what is deemed great. Verdi or Webern might be considered greater composers than Vaughan Williams or Frank Bridge but I'd sooner go with what renonates with my brain rather than what someone tells me I ought to be listening to. But the fact that I'm told I ought to be listening to something will often make me investigate.

I think the main problem for me was that Armstrong (and early jazz in general) was stylistically so far from what I was listening to. I associated Armstrong with 'Hello Dolly' and 'What a Wonderful World' (nice enough but mum and dad music) and the sound of the 20s-30s with either British Trad (which was well past its fashionable stage by the 70s) or 'The Big Bands are Back' nostagia. When I did experiment with a Hot Fives LP in the early 80s it sounded so distant I couldn't really hear anything. I think the two things that made me go back were Humphrey Lyttleton's 'Best of Jazz' book where he made such a compelling case for the music, and hearing on the radio some of the sonic improvements that started to appear in the 80s - the Robert Parker series springs to mind (probably not approved by audiophiles but suddenly the music sounded in the room to my inexpert ears).

I honestly don't see how you CAN like jazz without appreciating Armstrong. His sound is central to the genre. Everything blossoms forth from his horn... Of course you can like jazz without 'appreciating' Armstrong. I liked jazz for nearly twenty years before having any interest or feel for him. It's perfectly possible to like jazz without caring about anything before 1945...or 1960...or 1978 (or after those dates, for that matter). Of course, it would be hard to understand how it evolved historically. But an awful lot of people who listen to jazz just enjoy the music, regardless of the historical background or the philosophical debates. 'You can't like jazz if you don't like X/Y/Z' is an insider ruse. It's one of the things that distances people from jazz...the idea that there is some sort of insider masonic knowledge that is needed before you can be a true believer. To my mind, you can take as much or as little of what jazz has on offer as you wish and still claim to like jazz. As I said, to claim to have some sort of understanding or appreciation takes much more. But only a few people need that.

Excellent points. Just because you don't "get" someone, it doesn't mean that there is nothing there to "get". “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” My view too. An awful lot of time is taken up by critics and bulletin board posters using words like 'paradigm', 'aesthetic' and 'art' to disguise the fact that what they're really saying is 'Purple rule, Sabbath are crap.' I've never really got Brubeck - I'm not keen on the block chords and what to my ears sounds rather heavy handed. But I like some of the Quartets music, largely because of Desmond. I don't find it hard to see that the problem lies in the fact that my ears don't align with Brubeck's approach rather than it being something inherently wrong with Brubeck. Braxton is someone who interests me but I can't claim to understand or love him. It's almost as if I can sense there is something there but can't yet feel it. Armstrong I learnt to really enjoy 10-15 years ago; but if I was grabbing my favourite CDs as the house collapsed around me, there would be other things to go for first. Just because an historical judgement has been made that Armstong is highly significant doesn't mean we have to align our musical preferences to encompass him. But the fact that he is so highly regarded and his importance has been argued by many very good writers without particular axes to grind made me seek him out. In his case, I was rewarded.