A Lark Ascending

The ZYX version of Kelly Blue that I have suffers from wow making it impossible to fully enjoy. I've seen a more recent digipack version. Has it been corrected? The pitch transfer that really annoys me is the CD version of Wayne Shorter's 'Native Dancer' - Columbia in this case. It really is time that one got sorted out!

There's a lengthy article about this set here: http://www.jazzviews.co.uk/

Its a marvellous collection of mainly 60s UK jazz. Peterson is a UK DJ who seems to work with a 'hip' young crowd. Alongside modern stuff, soul etc he throws in jazz and has developed an interest of his own in this period. The CD is a mixture of exciting, up-tempo pieces with a strong rhythm, pieces that he's found go down well with the jazz-dance crowd; and more reflective pieces. I came into UK jazz in the 70s so the music on the disc was legendary stuff I'd not heard before. Many people with no interest at all in UK jazz have been taken aback by the music on this disc. As I've suggested above it seems to have kick started a revival of interest and a reissue programme. The Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet tracks caused so much interest that all their discs have just been reissued for the first time in 30 years. I'd recommend Impressed I - it's been one of my most played discs for the last year. Might sound different to non-UK ears.

I didn't! A Saturday when I sat and listened to what I'd bought in recent months instead of buying anew. I wasn't even tempted to order online! I am basking in my virtue!

The Garricks are apparently in line for the full reissue treatment, including the Argos.

Maria Schneider is putting out her next CD this way too: http://www.mariaschneider.com/ I've booked my copy!

Thank you for this post. I took a copy to work where it's caused amusement for over a week now! One colleague even wrote a blues on the perils of being beholden to computer systems, clearly inspired by discovering her real identity.

I was, of course, referring to the House of Lords! Anyone interested in the full releases should check that thread. The first reissues are scheduled for June with more in the Autumn. Roger Farbey, who knows far more about this music than I do, keeps in contact with the labels and has posted the details he's just received. Very good news.

I know the first three tracks - the Tracey is a really beautiful, smokey ballad that opens the Under Milk Wood Suite (I assume it'll be the original Bobby Wellins version); the Westbrook an absolutely exquisite Harry Beckett feature piece...it's like a quiet coda to the full suite (it'll be nice to hear this remastered properly - the 1999 CD reissue was one of the worst botch jobs I've heard - horrible wow!); the Ardley marvellously quirky. After that I'm into intriguing unknown territory! Even better news is that the long promised reissue of some of the full albums is coming closer, if this months Jazzwise is to be believed. There's a full discussion of this over at the 'other place' under a Don Rendell/Ian Carr thread.

Thanks for those links, Mike. I'd like to track down a little more of his music on disc.

Much as I love De Johnette I think Green Dolphin's suggestion from the Atomic rhythm section would really force him down different lines of thinking.

You might not be wrong. I saw him a couple of years back with the Robert Wyatt tribute band that Annie Whitehead does - Soupsongs - and he seemed very unsteady. There was little of the agile featheriness you hear on the recordings he made in the 60s and 70s. But I hear this in Kenny Wheeler too these days. Age perhaps catching us up?

Sidewinder, A superb festival all round. I managed 17 concerts in three and a bit days and only flagged in a couple. Great exercise dashing between the Everyman (as you say, wonderful venue) and the Town Hall (where I liked the Pillar Room too apart from, well, the pillars!). The Arnie Somogyi Hungarian Project was my fave alongside the Pascoal. Three Brits, one Brit of Hungarian extraction and six Hungarians, all using Hungarian music as the launch pad for some superb improvisations. Beautiful colouring from cimbalon and violin...but the Hungarian jazzers were out of this world. The three Taylor gigs were superb. I was especially moved by the short talk at the end and a very brief solo spot. Made me realise just how distinctive and special Taylor is. Wonderful young musicians too - alto player Chris Bowden is going to be something. Acoustic Ladyland, David Okumu, Tom Arthurs all produced thrilling performances. Nice to hear the Gress/Raney/Robson/Noble collaboration - very interesting music. And amazing to think they'd first got together the day before. I enjoyed the Gress Quintet the night before too though this got mixed reactions from those around me. The Earthworks Underground performance at the end was a lot of fun. Gerard Presencer was even more impressive than in his own concert on Saturday. Iain Ballamy continues to impress - I'd say he's our most distinctive saxophonist, a real sound of his own. A joy in the Django Bates gig on Friday as well. I'd have liked to have seen Beckett too - as you say, much under-rated. A player with a totally distinctive sound. Ah well, four weeks break and then Bath.....

That's one of my two Lon! Every time I go to London and search the jazz and 'world' racks that's what I find! Great disc as you say. AMG has this to say about 'Slaves Mass': "This LP was reissued in the Mestres Da MPB series in its entirety, only with the track order changed. Not a jazz album in the strict sense, it has strong themes and very little improv. The album has the fusion "Mixing Pot," where Hermeto Pascoal really improvises and Alphonso Johnson shines. In "Missa Dos Escravos," Hermeto's emblematic pig gives his first growls in a song dominated by Brazilian Indian references and with no improv. "Aquela Valsa" is a beautiful 6/8 theme that turns into a samba, also with no improv, but presents a beautiful trombone solo by master Raul de Souza. "Cannon" is only incidental noise. "Chorinho Para Ele" is a beautiful and modern choro with a somewhat challenging glissando bridge that really proposed new directions for the traditional genre. Atonalism dominates the piano solo "Escuta Meu Piano," which also presents bits and pieces of different styles (like baião) and songs (that have an Egberto Gismonti flavor). Hot samba improvisation is again found in "Geléia de Cereja," though it is troubled by lack of motivic development"

Joy is very much the word for that concert. Reminds me of a Gianluigi Trovesi concert I saw last year where the sheer thrill of playing marvellous music with sympathetic musicians and an enthusiastic audience came across. I have two recordings by him but otherwise his recordings seem quite hard to track down. I notice 'Slaves Mass' from the 70s has just been reissued - one I recall getting very enthusiastic reviews.

One of many highlights of this years Cheltenham Festival in the UK, Hermeto Pascoal pulled off one of the most joyous jazz concerts I've attended. Leading a crack 20 piece UK band (Henry Lowther, Claude Deppa, Julian Arguelles, Chris Biscoe, Jason Yarde, the Mondesir brothers to name just a few) with a few Brazillian accomplices, this was some of the most exciting, inventive, funny, downright odd big band music I've heard. We had great Brazillian rhythmic pieces, some absolutely wonderful orchestration, teapot playing (a speciality, I believe!), accordion playing, a little folksy quintet. Pascoal is something of a legend in the UK. He toured here about ten years ago and made a huge impression on the Brits he played with; but I suspect the influence goes much earlier as I can hear his style in so much of the UK jazz that came up in the mid-80s. People like Django Bates, Iain Ballamy and Julian Arguelles clearly worship him! But what came across so much was the warmth of the man - his love of playing, his love of the musicians and his determination to connect with the audience (who he had eating out of his hand, via a translator). He let us know he very much wants to record with this particular band. I really hope that one comes off.

Chailly! Just remembered. Very popular with Decca in the late 80s!

My championing of Phil Robson continues... Just come out of superb gig - Robson with UK pianist Liam Noble, Tom Rainey and Drew Gress. Apparently they met yesterday, tried out Noble's tunes, did the concert today. Robson is a marvellous player with a real breadth of style. Well worth going out of your way to hear if you're a guitar fan.

I'm at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival between gigs at the present (just done a superb John Taylor big band, about to go into Drew Gress with Tim Berne, Craig Taborne etc) . My wallet has taken a pounding today: Polar Bear - new CD from this up and coming quartet. Acoustic Ladyland - their new CD (almost the same line-up as Polar Bear) - absolutely storming versions of Hendrix tunes in a jazz vein. Wonderful live band. Phil Robson - Screenwash - his new CD. A musician I've enthused about elsewhere. Seeing him tomorrow. Brian Auger - a new compilation of his stuff including lots of the 60s stuff with Julie Driscoll Ellington Uptown Absolutely jampacked festival, by the way. I've been coming here 7 years and never seen it so full.

I have that from a very early issue of the BBC Music Magazine. I'm not one for buying lots of versions of classical music but the Tenth has had me go through a very early pre-Cooke Ormandy version, one I can't recall, the Bournemouth Rattle on LP, a CD version I can't recall (I'm away from home and can't check), and a return to he Rattle when it came out on CD. I've heard very good things on the Rattle/BPO version too. I'm a big fan of Bartok too. In fact a love the whole late-Romantic/early modern era in classical music - Wagner to Berg/Britten/Copland etc. Elsewhere there's lots I enjoy but I feel like I'm on the outside looking in through a window rather than really flowing with the music.

And don't overlook the Deryck Cooke reconstruction of the Tenth. At one time this was controversial with some orchestras - the Berlin Phil among them - refusing to touch it. Simon Rattle, amongst others, has championed it, and made performing it part of his contract with the Berliners. Real curdled late-Romanticism. There's a moment 3/4s way through the first movement (almost all Mahler and often played/recorded on its own) where he seems to be forseeing all the horrors of the 20thC. A Romantic interpretation? Perhaps but it sends chills down my spine. And the last movement is built round a melody that is as rapturous as anything in Mahler. The first statement on flute has me floored every time and the way the orchestra picks it up in wave after wave of development over the next twenty minutes is simply aching. I think my overall favourite is the Sixth. Quite despairing in the huge last movement. But with an adagio to die for.

There was a TV documentary about Mahler done by Leonard Bernstein in the 80s which really flagged up the Jewish roots of much of his music. Once you start listening for it it's very clear. Uri Caine's Mahler arrangements frequently play this up, even to the point of having a cantor singing over the top in places. Many of the themes of the First can also be found in the 'Songs of a Wayfarer' cycle.

Sorry, Chuck. I can't think of much more to say without repeating myself (again!). On copywrite I hold to my belief that 50 years is enough - most workers would be delighted to have their labours produce a product that could be copywrited for five years, let alone fifty. Working in a field where creativity is also vital yet where the norm is to immediately share it without payment (unless you choose to write it up and publish it) I find it difficult to weep tears for those whose payments cease after 50 years. On the Proper issue - clearly a muddier area than I first thought. But I'd still like to see a more rounded investigation. I'm still perplexed by the fact that the furious condemnation of them here is not reflected in a widespread boycott of them by the labels they distribute. I'm suspicious, but not yet convinced. Yes, I'm probably guilty of ethical compromise in buying sets like this. Stand me in front of someone who doesn't tape radio shows, has never bought a bootleg (I havn't!), taped or CDR'd a recording they've not bought and so on and I stand condemned. But I'd be more than a little amused to be lectured to by anyone who has done those things. I'll leave it at that. I really have no wish to provide further ammunition for Clementine to go off on another one of his rants. Though I suspect I have... Count that as a surrender if you like. [Perhaps a poll on who has buried their Propers might be interesting at this point?]

My first three singles (and records): Question - The Moody Blues Brontasaurus - The Move All Right Now - Free Summer 1970.

Listen out for the funeral march in movement three. It's based on 'Frere Jacques' (or 'Brother Martin' in German version) and Mahler does extraordinary things with it; breaking it up are some heartbreakingly beautiful pastoral sections. The first and last movements are quite over the top - bombastic might be a fair enough phrase though full of fine melodies. Very late-19thC. There's a nice scherzo (movement 2) with an edgy violin dance - always makes me think of skeletons. The first four Mahler Symphonies are very closely tied to German Romanticism and nature worship. After that 5, 6, 7, 9, the recontructed Tenth and 'The Song of the Earth' go to some very strange places (the 8th is a choral piece and has its own world). I first listened to Mahler in 1973. He remains the composer I return to most.