A Lark Ascending

What is this obsession with grease? Y'all work in Kentucky Fried Chicken or what? Three non-greasy... Monty Python: (though even less pleasant fluids come to mind with that picture) And Keith... Also this... More candle wax than grease.

57 individual titles...made up of 97 discs. Four days continuous listening. Yikes!

He's also someone who, once you're bitten, keeps you coming back for more. That's partly helped by all those different phases he went through. Same voice, changing contexts. With some jazz players if you're not really involved I'm sure one disc starts to sound very much like the next (though Keith Jarrett's success would seem to blow that argument out of the water - no criticism of Keith, I love his music; but on the surface there's not a huge amount of difference between Facing You and Radiance or the first and most recent Standards discs). For 20 years my Miles collection did not go much beyond 1955-65. Then I discovered 1968 onwards...another splurge of buying. Then the full Second Quintet had to be explored. I'm still pretty hazy about the 80s and the period between Birth of the Cool and the Coltrane Quartet period. It's a bit like Dylan really! Similar marketing, similar charisma/enigmatic image-making, similar willingness to keep changing. Same record company!

Looks like there's a second Evan Parker/Stan Tracey disc. Recorded at Appleby in 2004: I must, however, commend PSI for getting another Appleby recording out nearly 3000 years ahead of the performance: Annouced as: FREE ZONE APPLEBY 5003 psi 05.05 Free improvisations by: EVAN PARKER soprano saxophone, BARRY GUY bass, PAUL LYTTON percussion, PHILIPP WACHSMANN violin and electronics, and JOEL RYAN live processing of pre-recorded samples and live input - the four duos with Ryan, and the four trios without him. That's what I call avant-garde!!!!

I have to confess that I have never consciously heard Picasso's music. ← I suppose a could be really arty-farty and respond "You don't hear the music in Picasso?" (imagine the suitably patronising tone)

'Miles Davis' is a name that is known well beyond the jazz community by people who have never consciously heard his music. Like Beethoven or Picasso. I expect that when people unfamiliar with non-mainstream music decide they want to experiment a bit it's a name that they recognise and take a chance on.

I certainly heard long stretches of Bitches Brew on the late night 'progressive' programme on Radio Luxemburg in the early 70s (anyone remember Kid Jensen?). It actually put me off exploring jazz at the time. I was clueless as to what it was all about. It's also worth noting that alot of Miles is very 'pretty' - it can make excellent background/ambient music. I suspect some people hear it at dinner parties and think "That's nice, I'd like a CD of that." It's also used alot in films and TV dramas. I heard 'Miles Ahead' being played in a shopping centre in Oslo a few years back...the whole recording! Can't imagine the shopping centre that would play 'Bitches Brew.'

I expect there's a whole generation of jazz enthusiasts, like myself, who first began to wonder about taking a listen to jazz when hearing the likes of Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin enthuse about Miles Davis (and Coltrane); and reading how McLaughlin used to play with him; and seeing those mysterious 'Bitches Brew' and 'Live Evil' sleeves in record shops, magazines and on those old CBS 'inner sleeves'.

Just imagine. Keith doing his 'someone just kneed me between the legs so I'll make it look as if the divine Oneness has descended upon me.' Meanwhile, just to the side, Kurt is doing his 'I'm really Lawrence Ferlinghetti' routine. Quite a sight. ********** I'd dearly like to hear Keith playing with a horn or two again. Preferably someone well away from home territory. Gianluigi Trovesi? Fredrik Ljungkvist? Jason Yarde? Distant dreams.

David Murray and Louis Sclavis did a marvellous two bass clarinet duo concert at the Bath Festival a few years back.

'This is the Place' has reached Sherwood Forest and is going down a treat. We tend to expect mandolins and crumhorns with everything here but, hey, I expect you're saving that for disc 3. I love 'Tenderly'...and that's a song I usually have no time for. Gorgeous. Well done, y'all (as Maid Marian often says).

Yes, I heard him with Bill Bruford's Earthworks a year or so back playing lovely bc. I saw him a couple of weeks back at the Appleby Festival - I can't recall him playing bc there. This new disc of Garland's has some gorgeous bc: Another UK player who regularly features bc is Julian Siegel - both on his own solo record and as a member of the band 'Partisans'.

Just noticed Stenson is also on this new ECM release: Record is called "Parish". Group led by drummer Thomas Strønen with Stenson, clarinet/sax from Fredrik Ljungkvist and bass from Mats Eilertsen. Ljungkvist is the excellent reed fronts-person of the wonderful Atomic.

I'll throw in a big recommendation for serenity. He has a new disc due in a few weeks. From Jazzmatazz: Bobo Stenson/Anders Jormin/Paul Motian - Goodbye (ECM) Sept 13

Oh, I have no problem with Branford not enjoying Henrikson. It's a world away from the part of the jazz world he works in. None of us can like everything. It was his attempt to built his personal lack of interest into some wider thesis about what jazz is that I can't agree with him on. But giving where he's coming from that view was not surprising. Despite his 'issues' I thought he made a very good presenter.

Quite! Although I have to say I did enjoy much of the rest of the programme. ← Yes, I enjoyed it too. There were many faces in that programme I never expected to see on UK TV! The sequence of Branford looking non-plussed at Arve Henriksen was priceless!

Yes, I saw the Marsalis programme. I very much thought Marsalis was twisting things to his own agenda - warning Kinch that it was OK to play around with rap but one day he'd have to make his choice if he wanted to be a real jazz musician. I found him terribly patronising. I'm no rap fan but I trust Kinch smiled politely and ignored him. Didn't see that awards programme.

There are discs on Ogun of both Lucine and the Viva la Black band. I have the latter - to be honest Yarde does not really make his presence felt there. On Kofi, the one disappointment I had with the Monk disc was that it was postly done on soprano. Nothing wrong with that but I'd hoped for lots of baritone. Side bit of information: Soweto Kinch's second album is due in the next few weeks. It will be interesting to see where he's gone from the much praised debut.

Moholo has just moved back to South Africa. He did an interview at the JB shindig. I got the impression he was testing the water a bit and planning to still come back and play here every now and then. His recent duo CD with Stan Tracey is really interesting.

I'm not a Pine fan myself - too much electronica, too much funk for my taste. I attended the Jazz Britannia concert earlier this year that he hosted and it was all very glitzy, lots of star turns. Not to my taste but very appealing to others. And there were people like Kofi up there completely comfortable in this more showbizzy context, able to go elsewhere and play something more intense. Part of the broad spectrum of jazz though not an area I need to spend much time in. I'd highly recommend the last Jazz Jamaica CD, 'Massive'. There's an extraordinary version of 'Footprints' with a wonderful Jason Yarde arrangement. It's a fun disc but with lots of full on playing. I suspect the up-and-coming Motown disc might have less of a jazz content. I agree entirely about Yarde. I saw him a few years back in Louis Moholo's band alongside the likes of Tippett, Evan Parker, Rutherford and Paul Rogers and he was stunning. I've been anticipating a recording ever since but his activities seem to have been directed elsewhere. Around the same time he also played in a great octet Phil Robson put together (some interesting mixes of scenes here - Yarde might be associated with the Pine/Crosby scene yet here is in the 70s improv scene and the Babel scene). He played in a fairly ramshackle Moholo band in the foyer at Jazz Britannia; but the real eye-opener was a large group he put together at Cheltenham this year to perform a really original extended composition. Definitely a man to watch. He's on tour with a band put together by Mark Lockheart this Autumn - Mark Lockheart, Steve Buckley, Jason Yarde, Julian Siegel reeds, John Parricelli guitar, Dudley Phillips bass, Martin France drms. That seems to place him in the Loose Tubes scene too!

Ray Warleigh was in the Kenny Wheeler 75th Birthday band that toured here in January - played a great solo at one point. I too wonder why we've heard so little of him. Interesting to see Gary Crosby playing with a man with a huge reputation as a teacher. Crosby has himself become one of the big influences on up-and-coming UK players. Many of the new generation -Soweto Kinch for example - have come up through his Tomorrow's Warriors band. As for Crosby's work with 'that crowd' I think it's very much a thoughtful choice. Reading interviews with him he quite deliberately wants to play music that connects with the community and has little time for the academic side of jazz. I've really enjoyed the 'Jazz Jamaica' records and performances I've heard over the years...though the recent Motown inspired concert I saw was rather low on soloing despite the excellence of the band. 'Entertainment' figure large in his concept of what jazz is about. I've seen Byron Wallen a couple of times this year - once performing a large scale piece, the other in a superb quartet with another great UK player (soprano/baritone), Tony Kofi. Not someone I've noticed over the years; but I'll be listening more carefully now.

If you get the chance, see the man live. Wonderful playing but also very good humoured, able to win over a English-speaking audience even though his English is not perfect. I don't enjoy his ECM recordings as much as the earlier pieces. From G to G is a tremendous record (I owe Steve for alerting me to it a few years back and opening up the whole wonderful world of Italian jazz to me). One you might have missed: Some pronounced electric guitar in there alongside the usual jazz/Italian folk influences. Pino Minafra, the trumpet player on 'From G to G', is a mighty performer in his own right though rather under-recorded. His 'Sudori' is a classic and his 2005 release: should be snapped up.

I've heard the UK label BGO is about to reissue it. They've recently put out the Carr/Rendell records and a long lost Mike Gibbs date.

...and, finally, here's the sextet in absolutely roaring form on 30th July... A festival well worth going out of your way for if you're in the UK in late july one year. Do you really need to see Buckingham Palace? The countryside around Appelby is spectacular! Apologies for photo quality - all taken on a bog standard digital which does not cope well with low light.

...and here's one of the permutations... Guess the other players!