A Lark Ascending

I remember when that Tower had a big rack full of the whole series of Jazz 625 VHSs. I should have bought the lot, instead of just the 4 or 5 I did pick up ! I recall - and it can't be more than ten years ago - spending a good hour rooting through a rack on the wall in Ray's (in its Shaftesbury Avenue days) devoted exclusively to Classics CDs. A real experience - would they have the ones I was looking for?

'Organissimoans' could have so many meanings!!!! Have a jolly Xmas and a topping New Year, y'all.

Finished a couple of 'location' thrillers at the weekend. Both great fun: The first one part of Donna Leon's marvellous Brunetti series set in and around Venice; the second in Provence. Just starting: I found his last one ('Depths') unreadable - gave up after 70 pages. The first chapter of this one is much more engaging. Hoping for something with the narrative drive, multiple sub-plots and character depth of the Wallander series.

I love going to live events but their joys can be overstated - for every vital, totally engaging performance there are many that just go through the motions. Or where you are just not properly alert - too tired, drunk one too many beers, just listless. All of which effects home listening - but you don't have that thought 'Gosh, why did I come all this way?' Two places I really enjoy recorded music: a) Driving - I'm probably quite wrong here but music and driving seem to use different bits of the brain. I can get really tuned into a CD whilst driving (unlike reading (or typing!) and listening to music where one or the other gets tuned out). b) Solo walking - ipod, walkperson or whatever. A nice wander in the country with appropriate music can be quite magical. Maria Schneider's 'Concert in the Garden' has never sounded better than when I listened to it in the gardens of Cordoba and Seville a few years back. But I do like live music too. I've not done a jazz one since the end of May. Must try harder!

I know you're right that live jazz has something that recorded jazz doesn't. But it's not an option for everyone. I live a good distance from the closest places that play jazz (and they are 95% home grown concerts), most of which happen on week nights where my job (and sheer exhaustion) prevents me from making the drive. For international musicians you're talking 90 minutes plus each way. So most of my live listening tends to be in intense bursts at festivals or where a concert a bit further afield coincides with a Saturday or a holiday. Every September I look at the regular Nottingham/Sheffield programmes (both about 45 minutes drive away - public transport doesn't happen to my little country town late at night) and mark half a dozen I'm definitely going to attend. This autumn I made none! As regards classical music, I prefer to listen at home rather than the concert hall.

Albums (or downloads!!!!), concerts, tours, festivals, books, projects... In the near future: Julian Arguelles has two CDs slated for early 2009. Enrico Rava's January ECM with Stefano Bollani, Larry Grenadier and Paul Motion. The first full CD by a great young English folk collaboration - Mawkin/Causley. And there must be a new English Acoustic Collective this year! Been waiting for ages! A bit nervous about... Bath and Cheltenham this year. With UK festivals seizing up all over in the current economic climate, a bit worried that the fist might drift a bit further into world music in order to draw off a wider base, the latter may have to cut back on the more off the wall stuff.

Answer as you please...as a listener, musician, impresario, record label owner... I find every year has its own shapes and enthusiasms. The thing that strikes me about my listening this year is how little newly issued music I went for. Partly a result of not getting to many concerts. Also a bit of weariness at some of the people I've really enjoyed on the UK scene in recent years going a bit too much for the youth/punk/electronica/indie market. Earlier in the year a period of immersion in Ellington led into a wonderful investigation of pre-bop jazz which I've only previously toyed with. The 'That Devilin' Tune' series really helped there; also led me into some of the byways of the bop years and ultimately into the 'cool' 50s (with help from the Gioia book). An autumn wallow in classic jazz guitar also proved a delight; and, more tentatively, I've enjoyed exploring some of the more 'out' jazz of Braxton and the like (though it will never be centre ground for me). Folk music reappeared at various points in the year, mainly thanks to the amazing burgeoning of young performers willing to play without recourse to added effects (drum machines, rock beats etc). Some marvellous English releases this year. But the big revival was classical music - something I fell into in the late 70s alongside jazz and folk, focused on almost completely in the 80s and then allowed to be an occasional visitor as jazz retook centre stage. The revival of the Lyrita label spearheaded a lot of English listening. But starting last Xmas I found myself drawn to baroque and early music in a way I'd never experienced before. Messiaen made big inroads in August, a lot of Russian as the year ended. Having been scared off contemporary classical in the early 90s by a combination of the obscure and unapproachable of hardline modernism and the saccharine nature of some of the more melodious new classical music, an article in Gramophone in May got me exploring again. It was great to find composers who I could both understand and relate to - Lindberg, Adams, Sallinen, Takemitsu, Higdon - and some modern classics that I'd never been interested in before (Glass, Reich). So all in all, another rich and rewarding year. Where did 2008 take you?

Although I was a quick convert to CD and am very happy with the move to downloads, I do miss the old LP sleeves and agree with those above that they were part of the experience and enjoyment...not essential, but something that added an extra layer of pleasure. Many's the time I sat on a bus returning from town, lost in the glories of the packaging! I certainly remember gazing into the record shop in Newquay, Cornwall, at the start of the 70s, longing for these mysterious, unattainable (on my pocket money!) discs. And those sleeves still have an iconic status that can transport me back 35 years when I see them. Two examples of how influential they could be: a) When I started buying classical records many of them used famous paintings as the artwork. Got me interested in the history of painting and visiting galleries (nothing else in my upbringing or education would have brought me there!). b) In 1972 I bought Fairport Convention's 'Liege and Lief'. Inside the gatefold were some curious images and texts about British customs like Pace-egging and Mummers' Plays. That sleeve got my attention and made me curious about a world that was as foreign to me as the cottonfields of Mississippi. So sleeves didn't just enhance the music you were listening to; they could take you to quite other areas of experience. I'd prefer Mosaics with original art but can see why they don't do it. As has been said before, it's not too hard to find it online these days. A quick copy, paste and print and you can create your own alternative sleeve for the black and white boxes.

I love jazz vocals and they come in many forms. Most of the above are favourites but here are three very different takes: Betty Carter - to my mind, the ultimate 'jazz' singer. She does vocally what the instrumentalists do intrumentally. Andy Bey - blokes don't seem to handle jazz vocal as well as women (to my taste, anyway); Andy is an exception. Norma Winstone - jazz vocals exported, reshaped and turned into something very different. My favourite.

The typical English bathime:

Rained all day. Cold too. Mid-week it was crisp and crystal blue - had to watch it from a classroom window. If only this government would get the weather syncronised correctly.

Just a bowl of cheapo Sainsbury's muesli for me in the week (breakfast has to be polished off in 3 minutes!); with toast and honey or marmalade at weekends. When I'm away I always indulge in full English heart-attack fry-up...or even better, a full Irish (black and white pudding, soda bread!).

Some a/t have interested me (the other version of Flamenco Sketches on KofB, for example). Most don't get more than one play. I can imagine they are useful if you are 'studying' the music (either academically or as an enthusiast for a particular performer or period) but I only listen for pleasure so they are not a great deal of use to me. I'm quite happy to have them there as others value them but, as others have said, prefer them at the end of the disc. I tend to make CD-Rs of discs (like some Mosaics) where they are scattered in the main body of the music, filleting the released material. I can see the intellectual logic of arranging them chronologically but it makes for awkward listening for the general listener.

These are good too: http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/history.htm http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/jimcrowl...tionjimcrow.htm

Yes, I think they did, but being of an older generation than Bev ("if you owned a jazz record you automatically owned a folk record"), I never went in there! I think I'm younger than that generation! I owned rock records, never had a duffle coat and knew Aldermaston as an actor who played a teacher in a comedy series on TV.

It's 9.00 p.m. MG. The BBC will be out to dinner!

Yes, I half remember two shops next to each other. I think they were below Cambridge Circus...but I could be wrong.

I don't remember the New Oxford Street shops. I do remember Dobells on Charing Cross Road - another place that did folk too. Probably a hangover from the days when, if you owned a jazz record you automatically owned a folk record, a duffle coat and annually marched to Aldermaston. The Collets on TCR was a very modern building - I'm sure it opened within my period of visiting London hunting the record shops (started about 1972). I know I'd been in Collets somewhere else but can't recall where. Maybe it was on Shaftesbury Ave.

I recall a Collets 'Left-wing' book shop that did records too in the mid to late 80s. It was in what was then a quite new building just up towards TCR tube station from Foyles. I recall it being good for folk but don't recall the jazz. In fact - I might be wrong here - when it closed it's collection might have shifted to the downstairs room in Rays. Might have been the 90s. Same enterprise?

I love Wagner (and Tristan in particular) - just don't think it's very polite to throw everything else out of the way for him. Why does it need to be a live broadcast? A time delay of a couple of hours would still get through it by midnight. The only person listening was probably David Mellor and he has 75 different versions on CD. Anyway - next year there are anniversaries for both Handel and Haydn and the BBC has plans! Expect entire weeks when everything else gets thrown overboard for 'innovative' broadcasting i.e. non-stop Handel/Haydn. Bet Guy Barker is desperately writing a jazz take on both as we speak, hoping he can get a slice of the action.

I would point out I do not 'possess' these - even more limited editions than the record label! Sorry! It's been a long day!

Another thought - most Brits would find it equally incomprehensible. The cultural context of most English people owes more to American popular music - be it Bing, Frank, Elvis, Otis or Madonna - than to anything native. I'm not sure about that. I realised in 1967 that American music was pretty well as foreign to me as Nigerian. The fact that the songs are sung in a language that more closely approximates to English than Pidgin does is, I feel, deceptive. And people are easily deceived. MG Oh, I'd argue the basic diet of the English in popular culture (music and cinema) is either American or American influenced (I'm talking Sinatra, Elvis, Rodgers and Hammerstein and what used to be called Top Twenty pop here rather than Howlin' Wolf). We've been singing pop songs in cod-American for decades. We had a young girl in school a few years back who had a great voice and simply shone because she sang in an English accent. All the others learn that mid-Atlantic twang from the music they prefer - even if the accent isn't there, the way they bend the notes owes more to soul music than the grace notes of a traditional English singer (you don't have to watch one of those 'Wanna-be-a-Star' programmes for very long to hear this). The girl with the English voice is now a fairly well known performer on the folk circuit. Whenever I use folk music in lessons - and there are many songs that are wonderful for history lessons - the kids can hardly contain themselves from falling off their chairs laughing (just as well they weren't subjected to folk music via 'Singing Together' as I was in the early 60s....'Oh No John, No John, No John, No' - the Britten-Pears School of Folk Music!!!). The Scots and Irish (I'm not so sure about the Welsh) are much better at drawing on their native traditions, mainly because it helps distinguish them from the English. The English seem more concerned to be seen as....well...modern! Which has tended to mean American for about a century. (Of course this is all complicated by the fact that many English traditional folk songs are re-imports of things that went off to America at some point (either from England, Scotland or Ireland) and then returned again, being reabsorbed into the local culture).

Another thought - most Brits would find it equally incomprehensible. The cultural context of most English people owes more to American popular music - be it Bing, Frank, Elvis, Otis or Madonna - than to anything native.

This is fun - five different composers turning well known Xmas songs into orchestral confectionary. All very tuneful, major key (mainly) and full of Xmas cheer (no-one is suffering for their art here!). Sounds like movie music evoking Xmas or the sorts of thing the BBC uses when advertising its Xmas season.

I thought it was you, Hot Ptah. I know what you mean. Sometimes you hear music that has absolutely nothing you can get a grip on. Most criticism is written as if there's some ultimate hierarchy of importance/significance that we're trying to establish; yet, so often, it's the context from which you are listening that is most important. I think it's why so much jazz from Europe strikes Americans (and those who listen to mainly American music) as cold. The reference points are so different.