Stray cat

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 28 Nov
4.00 Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton introduces a session of listeners' requests, this time highlighting a trumpet battle featuring Fats Navarro. He also offers up music by Howard McGhee, and part of Duke Ellington's Shakespearean suite Such Sweet Thunder.

http://www.alynshipton.co.uk/blog/

Ck out Alyn's blog link (above) - at the end of this week's listing there's a picture of him moonlighting in a performance of The Messiah.

5.00 Jazz Line-Up
Julian Joseph presents a solo performance by Lionel Loueke, the West African-born guitarist who graduated from America's Berklee College of Music and also studied at the Thelonious Monk Institute, where he was mentored by pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and trumpeter Terernce Blanchard. This recital was recorded as live from the musician's performance on the Jazz Line-Up stage at the 2015 EFG London Jazz Festival

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qjfq4

I was there for the start of Lionel's set, and have to say I didn't see any electronic gadgetry - just a guy on a stool with a guitar and... body. The programme also includes a tribute by le Gendre to the late Coleridge Goode, by way of a Mike Garrick early 1970s track which is, erm, rather Goode...

12.00 Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Duke Ellington's alter ego and right-hand man Billy Strayhorn was born 100 years ago this weekend. Geoffrey Smith celebrates a unique talent.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042bg1x

Mon 30 Nov
11.00 Jazz on 3
In a special collaboration, saxophonist Iain Ballamy joins forces with pianist Tom Cawley's Curios at the Vortex Jazz Club. Cawley is a long-time admirer of Ballamy's playing and was his student, briefly, in London. This is the first time they have performed together in public.

https:///www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qjzx0

Iain must be glad they mostly spell his name right nowadays. Curios and Curioser??

By the way, to coincide timewise with Jon3 Jools Holland pays tribute to the late Rasta trombone man Rico Rodriguez, on the final one of his series on R2

[Ian Thumwood]

I have seen Lionel Loueke on a number of occasions and find his playing fascinating. He is a loose cannon in the nicest sense insofar that he continually comes up with the original and unexpected. He doesn't seem to sound like any one else and his whole approach to the guitar seems just as radical as someone like the more lauded Mary Halvorson. Add Jeff Parker to the mix and you have three of the most original guitar players on the scene at the moment.

I would strongly recommend the Jeff Ballard trio album that features Loueke and Miguel Zenon which covers all types of styles but there is one piece where they play the transcribed song of a Western Wren. The track souns like Ornette Coleman and is truly amazing. the album is called "Times tales" and is a bit of an eye opener if, like me, you considered Jeff Ballard to be something of a conservative figure. The free jazz stuff on this disc is amazing.

[Serial_Apologist]

I have seen Lionel Loueke on a number of occasions and find his playing fascinating. He is a loose cannon in the nicest sense insofar that he continually comes up with the original and unexpected. He doesn't seem to sound like any one else and his whole approach to the guitar seems just as radical as someone like the more lauded Mary Halvorson. Add Jeff Parker to the mix and you have three of the most original guitar players on the scene at the moment.

I would strongly recommend the Jeff Ballard trio album that features Loueke and Miguel Zenon which covers all types of styles but there is one piece where they play the transcribed song of a Western Wren. The track souns like Ornette Coleman and is truly amazing. the album is called "Times tales" and is a bit of an eye opener if, like me, you considered Jeff Ballard to be something of a conservative figure. The free jazz stuff on this disc is amazing.

I'd only ever heard Loueke once previously, namely on Herbie Hancock's 2008 visit to the Barbican. Whereas my friends thought him to be weak, faffing around and so on, they really didn't take kindly to the band's "whimsical" re-working of "Chameleon" either, fine-tuned down to the tiniest detail as the original of 1973 was, while I was out-of-step and entirely sympathetic. From the big grins on Herbie's face it was obvious he delighted in LL's contributions, and if anyone'e entitled to eff around with his tunes (think of "Watermelon Man" on that first Headhunters LP) it is Herbie, and he does it carrying on in that standards-deconstructive way the Miles bands did from 1963 to 1969, as (as you have noted) Wayne Shorter has also done for more than a decade now with his respectively sympathetic band.

[Ian Thumwood]

Anyone else think that the Michael Garrick tracks on JLU sounded like the kind of stuff you used to hear on the test card when you were of sick from school? I appreciate Le Gendres' enthusiasm for the music and can appreciate the craftsmanship of the writing yet there is something annoying and twee about his work. I really dislike it. There is something missing from Garrick's music that I can't put my finger on but it certainly misses the kind of ingredient that you find when you hear Stan Tracey where the edginess of the harmonies and the shear swing of the music makes you nod in acknowledgement that this is more akin to what jazz should sound like.

The Lionel Loeke set is amazing. Some of the phrase and the way he manages to crunch the odd bar in to his phrasing which have a significant number of additional beats makes you want to punch the air. This is the musical equivalent of a long distance David Beckham pass.

[Serial_Apologist]

Anyone else think that the Michael Garrick tracks on JLU sounded like the kind of stuff you used to hear on the test card when you were of sick from school? I appreciate Le Gendres' enthusiasm for the music and can appreciate the craftsmanship of the writing yet there is something annoying and twee about his work. I really dislike it. There is something missing from Garrick's music that I can't put my finger on but it certainly misses the kind of ingredient that you find when you hear Stan Tracey where the edginess of the harmonies and the shear swing of the music makes you nod in acknowledgement that this is more akin to what jazz should sound like.

The Lionel Loeke set is amazing. Some of the phrase and the way he manages to crunch the odd bar in to his phrasing which have a significant number of additional beats makes you want to punch the air. This is the musical equivalent of a long distance David Beckham pass.

Yes - the place was full of general public wandering around, so it's amazing how he holds that silence in the sound around himself. Shame I had to leave after the first number, my shoes being full of water!

On the Garrick one should be reminded not all his stuff is like the aspect the programe chose to focus on. That said, for me it applies to jazz a kind of aural landscape specific to English music in different ways, from Warlock to Birtwistle, that I welcome, though you obviously don't! I expect Bluesnik to be on your side in this one!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Yes - the place was full of general public wandering around, so it's amazing how he holds that silence in the sound around himself. Shame I had to leave after the first number, my shoes being full of water!

On the Garrick one should be reminded not all his stuff is like the aspect the programe chose to focus on. That said, for me it applies to jazz a kind of aural landscape specific to English music in different ways, from Warlock to Birtwistle, that I welcome, though you obviously don't! I expect Bluesnik to be on your side in this one!

Funny you should say that SA, its the poetic/literary "Englishness" that turns me away. Graham Collier also had a touch of this. Westbrook in a more theatrical sense. BUT I recently "rediscovered" Keith Tippett and am knocked out, particularly by the earlier sessions. Wonderful stuff.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I agree about there being a pastoral influence in British jazz and , in the likes of someone like John Surman, I actually like it. Check out sometime like his record "The amazing adventures of Simon, Simon," for example. Garrick just seems to write music rather like a school teacher - it's worthy and their is clearly a musical intelligence yet when stacked up against something more genuine, it seems lightweight. The same applies to a lot of British Classical music which I tend to think often gets over-praised. There is a lot of British Classical music that I love (Delius, Foulds, some Elgar and Bax) but there is a good proportion that tend to be over-praised like Benjamin Britten. Several years ago one of my French friends invited me around his house for a meal and we spent the afternoon discussing graphic novels and listening to jazz on Youtube /CDs. It was really interesting in that he was a former music teacher ( jazz drumming at Lyon Conservatoire) yet he knew nothing about British classical composers and was surprised to learn that there were any! I think he was surprised to learn that Holst was actually English! I have had the same experience a jazz workshops where the likes of Joe Harriot and Tubby Hayes are totally unknown amongst musicians, teachers and fans (although I did meet a Tubby fan who worked in the record section of FNAC in Rouen) and this made me think that perhaps our musicians were not considered so highly elsewhere. Go to France and British music means pop music. It has always intrigued me and made me wonder if I might have over-looked a "French Tubby." I suppose Barney Willen is the closest thing albeit he was Belgian, I believe.