Time to get those cards posted

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 12 Dec
4.00 Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton presents a second edition focusing on Scandinavian jazz, as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season. He also takes another listener suggestion for an essential jazz records.

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

5.00 Jazz Line-Up
The BBC Big Band, along with three of today's leading jazz vocalists - Liane Carroll, Claire Martin and Ian Shaw - perform a unique musical tribute to one of the 20th century's greatest interpreters of popular song, Frank Sinatra, who was born 100 years ago today. Recorded last month at Sage Gateshead.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06rw51c

Nuff said really...

12.00 Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
The haunting tone of Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek is one of the most distinctive sounds in international jazz. For the Northern Lights season, Geoffrey Smith surveys his achievement and star partnerships with the likes of pianist Keith Jarrett.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pd0sk

Mon 14 Dec
11.00 Jazz on 3
Cuban pianist David Virelles and his quartet explore Afro-Cuban scred music at Kings Place, as part of the 2015 EFG London Jazz Festival.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06rwlym

[Ian Thumwood]

Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain - this can only have been a request by Bluesnik.

I've got to say that I find Jan Garbarek almost unlistenable these days. I love the earlier stuff with Keith Jarrett and on discs like "Paradigm" but it seems strange to think that when I discovered his music in the mid 1980's I thought that this was the future of jazz. It sounds anything but these days. A great loss to jazz, in my opinion.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain - this can only have been a request by Bluesnik.

I've got to say that I find Jan Garbarek almost unlistenable these days. I love the earlier stuff with Keith Jarrett and on discs like "Paradigm" but it seems strange to think that when I discovered his music in the mid 1980's I thought that this was the future of jazz. It sounds anything but these days. A great loss to jazz, in my opinion.

Not guilty yer Honour. I now only listen to Soviet Ukski's playing Comrade Shostakovich 15 in the hour before the dawn.

But if anything if intended to cause terminal depression in the Bluesnik Duck Dacha its...

JLU : "The BBC Big Band, along with three of today's
leading jazz vocalists - Liane Carroll, Claire Martin
and Ian Shaw - perform a unique musical tribute to
one of the 20th century's greatest interpreters of
popular song, Frank Sinatra"

God, the three of them, the horror the horror...let friendly bombs fall. In Apocalypse Now when Willard finally "gets off the boat", what inhuman horror does he find? That trio.

BN.

[Old Grumpy]

JRR listing on Alyn's blog runs more or less continuous prose on my computer for some reason

but help is at hand - the listing is again on the JRR webpage.

Credit where credit's due.*

OG



* Probably with Alyn, I suspect

[Serial_Apologist]

JRR listing on Alyn's blog runs more or less continuous prose on my computer for some reason

On mine too, but only for this week's. Space is the place, but Ian would possibly disagree...

but help is at hand - the listing is again on the JRR webpage.

Credit where credit's due.*

Isn't his economy inflated enough as it stands?

[Ian Thumwood]

But if anything if intended to cause terminal depression in the Bluesnik Duck Dacha its...

JLU : "The BBC Big Band, along with three of today's
leading jazz vocalists - Liane Carroll, Claire Martin
and Ian Shaw - perform a unique musical tribute to
one of the 20th century's greatest interpreters of
popular song, Frank Sinatra"

God, the three of them, the horror the horror...let friendly bombs fall. In Apocalypse Now when Willard finally "gets off the boat", what inhuman horror does he find? That trio.

BN.

I didn't bother listening as this had no interest for me. Sinatra seems to be in all the papers and features on serious radio stations at the moment as it is his centenary. I have a sneaking admiration for Sinatra as a musician although his music isn't my taste. If he had continued to make records as good as this I would have felt pretty different about him but the Granz book that I had a look at last week made me feel that Sinatra wasn't too respectful of some musicians with a greater jazz pedigree than him such as Ella and Basie. This track is practically faultless:-

As far as the contemporary British singers are concerned, they don't really fit my definition of jazz and I would imagine that most people posting here would feel the same. I really despair with these three musicians as they have that veneer of "jazz establishment" about them and are almost the "go to" figures when people want to put jazz on without offending the kind of fringe audience that I feel impede what many promoters could put on in both this country and much of Europe. Listening to the kind of players that I have been checking out in 2015 such as Josh Berman, Satoko Fujji, Steve Lehman, Frank Rosaly, etc it is at least rewarding to think that there is sufficient good and challenging stuff out there that renders the like of Carroll, Shaw and Martin more jazzy pop acts than genuine jazz craftsmen.

[Old Grumpy]

I didn't bother listening as this had no interest for me. Sinatra seems to be in all the papers and features on serious radio stations at the moment as it is his centenary. I have a sneaking admiration for Sinatra as a musician although his music isn't my taste. If he had continued to make records as good as this I would have felt pretty different about him but the Granz book that I had a look at last week made me feel that Sinatra wasn't too respectful of some musicians with a greater jazz pedigree than him such as Ella and Basie. This track is practically faultless:-

As far as the contemporary British singers are concerned, they don't really fit my definition of jazz and I would imagine that most people posting here would feel the same. I really despair with these three musicians as they have that veneer of "jazz establishment" about them and are almost the "go to" figures when people want to put jazz on without offending the kind of fringe audience that I feel impede what many promoters could put on in both this country and much of Europe. Listening to the kind of players that I have been checking out in 2015 such as Josh Berman, Satoko Fujji, Steve Lehman, Frank Rosaly, etc it is at least rewarding to think that there is sufficient good and challenging stuff out there that renders the like of Carroll, Shaw and Martin more jazzy pop acts than genuine jazz craftsmen.

Sure, Carroll, Martin and Shaw embrace music outside the strict definintion of "jazz". That does not necessarily make them bad singers. I personally enjoy each of their individual performances, particularly in the live setting, but also on disc.

As regards the Sage Sinatra gig, I am not so sure. I was in the audience and it never quite delivered. The sound balance was not good and the paucity of audience members in a large hall may have had something to do with it. I will be interested to hear JLU when I get round to listening to it. It may come accross better through the BBC feed.

OG

[Quarky]

.

I like the backing! Quite a line up - Nat Cole piano (didn't he record this?), Charlie Shavers, Lawrence Brown, Johnny Hodges, Coleman Hawkins, Harry Carney,

[PUSB]

I like the backing! Quite a line up - Nat Cole piano (didn't he record this?), Charlie Shavers, Lawrence Brown, Johnny Hodges, Coleman Hawkins, Harry Carney,

Never understood what people see in Sinatra. The band here seems far too good for him.

[Ian Thumwood]

Never understood what people see in Sinatra. The band here seems far too good for him.

As I said previously, I am not in to Sinatra but I think his musicianship marks him out as one of the finest male singers of the 29th century. His earlier work with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey is really outside jazz more than anything he recorded yet his sense of phrasing was suggestive that he really "got" the music by the time he made the 2Sweet Lorraine" recording. The later efforts with the like of Nelson Riddle and Billy May are pretty much representative of an artist at his peak and by the tie he recorded with the likes of Basie, there was clearly a sympathetic musical relationship between a singer and a big band whose phrasing was , if anything, more lithe than the singer's. I love the "Sweet Lorraine" track as it is demonstrative that Sinatra was an equal of some of the finest soloists who came out of the 1940's. It is a massive disappointment that he never made more records in this style as they are vastly superior to any other "pop" singers who dabbled in this style. Granted that there were a rash of imitators and that Sinatra started to become a parody of himself in the end, I think his approach has generally aged really well especially if you consider him with contemporaries such as Billy Ecktstine or someone like Johnny Hartman whose appearance with John Coltrane's quartet is considered to be something of a minor classic yet sounds incongruous to my ears. The Sinatra track seems totally of it's time whereas the Hartman / Coltrane combination sounds nothing like the meeting of contemporaries it actually was.

I would have liked Sinatra more had to pursued a purer jazz agenda but I think he was far more credible as a "jazz" singer than someone like Bing Crosby (whose popularity really baffles me) or even Nat "King " Cole whose voice was probably a better musical instrument but mired in "middle - of-the-road" blandness by the time he had become popular as ditched the futuristic trio which was impressive.

The problem is that Sinatra prompted a myriad of followers and wannabes that denigrates his music somewhat.

Singers are a really personal thing and I sometime feel that technical brilliance is over-looked (Ella, Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, etc) or deemed something of a curse as is the case of a singer like Whitney Huston who is too readily dismissed.

[Serial_Apologist]

As I said previously, I am not in to Sinatra but I think his musicianship marks him out as one of the finest male singers of the 29th century.

In that case I greatly look forward to his performances in our respective next reincarnations!

[Ian Thumwood]

woops.............

[Quarky]

Never understood what people see in Sinatra. The band here seems far too good for him.

Agreed about the band. I would not put Frank into the Jazz musician mould, in contrast to Ella, Nat, Billie. He had a strong feel for Jazz, but he was primarily a ballad singer. He could make a ballad live and breath and project it through his personality onto the audience. Hence his great popularity. And of course he had a certain way with the ladies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUs-QT6a2gA