Unsound frontiers with strings attached

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 24 Sept
4.00 Jazz Record Requests
To celebrate Radio 3's 70th birthday, listeners have nominated their favourite jazz recordings from 1946, from George Webb to Woody Herman. Presenter Alyn Shipton is joined by surprise guests.

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

5.00 Jazz Line-Up
Claire Martin showcases music from the 1940s onwards, and Kevin Le Gendre celebrates recordings from Charlie Parker with Strings.

Stones drummer Charlie Watts once did a tribute CD to those recordings with strings, and titled it "From One Charlie to Another"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wr2gx

12.00 Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
The career of bassist Charlie Haden

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wr3pw

Mon 26 Sept
11.00 Jazz Now
Soweto Kinch presents concerts broadcast on the network since 1946, including Stan Tracey, John Surman, Elton Dean and Betty Carter. He also talks to saxophonist Donny McCaslin about his new album and about working on David Bowie's final recording sessions

I bet I've got all the Britjazz stuff on c90, though it would be great were they to re-broadcast Stan's 1982 session of "The Crompton Suite", with Charles Fox introducing all about Samuel Crompton.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07w0h27

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Sat 24 Sept
4.00 Jazz Record Requests
To celebrate Radio 3's 70th birthday, listeners have nominated their favourite jazz recordings from 1946, from George Webb to Woody Herman. Presenter Alyn Shipton is joined by surprise guests.

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

5.00 Jazz Line-Up
Claire Martin showcases music from the 1940s onwards, and Kevin Le Gendre celebrates recordings from Charlie Parker with Strings.

Stones drummer Charlie Watts once did a tribute CD to those recordings with strings, and titled it "From One Charlie to Another"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wr2gx

12.00 Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
The career of bassist Charlie Haden

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wr3pw

Mon 26 Sept
11.00 Jazz Now
Soweto Kinch presents concerts broadcast on the network since 1946, including Stan Tracey, John Surman, Elton Dean and Betty Carter. He also talks to saxophonist Donny McCaslin about his new album and about working on David Bowie's final recording sessions

I bet I've got all the Britjazz stuff on c90, though it would be great were they to re-broadcast Stan's 1982 session of "The Crompton Suite", with Charles Fox introducing all about Samuel Crompton.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07w0h27

I was born in 1946, the same month (October) as Dave Holland, although unfortunately not with his talent. Well, there was still rationing...

As for missing British Jazz sessions, if they could find Mike Osborne's last BBC quartet date with I think, Marc Charig. I had this on C90 but my ex wife recorded a Tina Turner concert over it. The rifle shot was muffled...

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

I was born in 1946, the same month (October) as Dave Holland, although unfortunately not with his talent. Well, there was still rationing...

As for missing British Jazz sessions, if they could find Mike Osborne's last BBC quartet date with I think, Marc Charig. I had this on C90 but my ex wife recorded a Tina Turner concert over it. The rifle shot was muffled...

BN.

I might have that last BBC Mike Osborne session if it was released on that Canadian Reel To Reel label a few years ago; I'll check tomorrow. Ozzie became more sparing with his playing towards the end, jettisoning a lot of the sheets of sound approach, recalling Tubbs, though of course Mike lived on, in a "home" in Shropshire, iirc.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I might have that last BBC Mike Osborne session if it was released on that Canadian Reel To Reel label a few years ago; I'll check tomorrow. Ozzie became more sparing with his playing towards the end, jettisoning a lot of the sheets of sound approach, recalling Tubbs, though of course Mike lived on, in a "home" in Shropshire, iirc.

I've got one track from it on the flip side of the tape. It was very good including a ballad as I remember which was maybe not the thing he's most remembered for.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

I never know what to make of Jazz Line Up. I like Kevin Le Gendre's assessments even if I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions. The Parker with Stings is ok-ish , the alto playing being amongst the best and most lyrical Bird ever produced yet the string playing seems really redolent of that era. The results are extremely pleasant to listen to and it is impossible to deny their appeal yet I think time has moved on and many more writers have got a better grip of grafting strings in to a jazz concept. Had Parker made this record in 2016, it would have probably have been done with synthesizers. I partly agree with Le Gendre's assessment insofar that people who reject this record are completely wrong in their assessment yet I am not convinced it is a masterpiece. The strings and horn are well crafted and the arrangements are the work of someone who was clearly a craftsman . However, I can never get the idea in my head of the gulf between the arrangements and Parker's brilliant improvisations.

I would also have to say that JLU's contemporary records does seem to nicely capture the current paucity of genuinely decent jazz in 2016. The Ryan Quigley track was pretty good but then the ECM track and the truly rotten Neil Cowley offering some up the current malaise with so much jazz these days. I don't know what the ECM record featured had to do with jazz. The big band track also summed up the arrangement by numbers that sometimes mars jazz orchestrations. There was nothing wrong with the record yet it was nowhere as near as potent at the Woody Herman track "The Good Earth " which closed JRR as I was driving out of football.

By far the worst track was the Donny McCaslin effort. I was bowled over by McCaslin when I first heard him yet the last few records he has released seem to be a return to the worst excesses of Jazz Rock in the 1970's. Based on the maxim that anything featuring the stiff and wooden drumming of Mark Gulliana is going to be pretty dire to begin with, the chosen track was stuffed with almost Prog Rock -like pretentiousness. The result was horrible. I appreciate that this music is capturing the enthusiasm of the younger audience for jazz and that I am probably hopelessly out of touch, however the results seem to have little to do with jazz as far as I am concerned. I feel really disappointed in the change in direction that McCaslin's music has taken as I used to be a great fan. The recent band just produces unforgiveable crap.

I know that JLU is often singled out for criticism but it is very hard to make a case for it. Jazz Now seems more like my cup of tea but the graveyard shift it is afforded means that I only ever listen to it on catch up which is not always possible as I don't want to spend all my time at a computer. The programme is more likely to appeal to my taste that JLU which does sometime seem like an extension to "Jazzwise" magazine which I also gave up on many years ago. Maybe it would be better to switch the scheduling around ? for me, the big problem is that Radio 3 schedules jazz at the same time that I also want to listen to football on the radio or when I am at a match.

[Serial_Apologist]

What is sad for me with regards to JLU is the way the classic recordings review section shows up the paucity you describe in much of today's stuff, Ian - in which the Ryan Quigley track, the best of the sesh, was nevertheless an echo from the mid-1960s, with Paul Booth doing a very good Coltrane impersonation. I guess I tend to like Parker with Strings stuff because it takes me back to childhood and the cosy kinds of pastoral music around in the post-WW2 period, when it seemed things could only get better; and I would hazard a guess, judging by the popularity of Vaughan Williams's "The Lark Ascending", that a lot of other people use similar such music for similar escapist reasons.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

What is sad for me with regards to JLU is the way the classic recordings review section shows up the paucity you describe in much of today's stuff, Ian - in which the Ryan Quigley track, the best of the sesh, was nevertheless an echo from the mid-1960s, with Paul Booth doing a very good Coltrane impersonation. I guess I tend to like Parker with Strings stuff because it takes me back to childhood and the cosy kinds of pastoral music around in the post-WW2 period, when it seemed things could only get better; and I would hazard a guess, judging by the popularity of Vaughan Williams's "The Lark Ascending", that a lot of other people use similar such music for similar escapist reasons.

The Parker with Strings recordings are now so woven into several generations consciousness and deep affections that imperfections or the cornyness of some arrangements just fall away. "Just Friends" was the favourite (ever) Parker recording of Harold Land and Fathead Newman and many others. Its a gorgeous piece. The great French film "Wages of Fear" (Le Salaire de La Peur) from 1953 used "Summertime" as a coda after Yves Montand's brakeless truck finally crashes off the cliff! Perfect.

Also I don't agree that today the strings would inevitably be synths. Renee Rosnes's "Without Words" (Bluenote) from 1992, used a similar string section, one with the even same concert master/violinist from the Parker dates, the late Gene Orloff.

BN.

BTW strange they didn't mention Gilad Atzmon's remake of the Parker date. Beautifully done but rather pointless except as a straight homage.

[Ian Thumwood]

The point I was making with the synths is that they would have fulfilled the same function as the strings insofar a providing a harmonic cushion for Parker to embellish. Mention was made of "Focus" in the programme where I think Eddie Sauter was thinking beyond this concept. I agree about the Parker string arrangements being woven in to the conscious fabric but the writing for strings in a jazz context has improved remarkably since the late 1940's. You could make a good case for the use of strings in jazz as being perhaps the one area where there has been more progress than in any other area. For me the best recent example is Alan Ferber's "Music for nonet and strings - Chamber music" which is near perfect. I often think about how a track like "Ice Crystals" where Ferber allows the string section to improvise would go down in JRR. For my money, Alan Ferber is seriously under-rated and quite why he isn't better appreciated mystifies me. I've got a couple of his records and big band record is probably my favourite but I would imagine than the string disc is probably the closest anyone has come to a marriage between Classical strings and a jazz soloist since Gavin Bryar's "After the requiem" which featured Bill Frisell as the fourth string player in the quartet.

[Serial_Apologist]

Just thought I'd draw attention to my link above to tonight's Jazz Now, since there are at least a couple of tracks from past broadcasts that people might not wish to miss, including one of Elton Dean's Ninesense, from a 1978 broadcast.

(I was too much involved in political activism to have heard any jazz back then )

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Just thought I'd draw attention to my link above to tonight's Jazz Now, since there are at least a couple of tracks from past broadcasts that people might not wish to miss, including one of Elton Dean's Ninesense, from a 1978 broadcast.

(I was too much involved in political activism to have heard any jazz back then )

Thanks for the alert. I always miss this program so will check the Radio Player thing or whatever teenagers listen to nowadays on their telephones.

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for the alert. I always miss this program so will check the Radio Player thing or whatever teenagers listen to nowadays on their telephones.

BN.

The first-but-one track was from a big band session by Stan Tracey's Big band. I happened to have it, but had forgotten Alan Skidmore was on there - as also the formidable Ninesense performance from '78, which even managed to outdo that on the near-contemporary Ogun Ninesense release of the time in terms of energy inputs. I must have at least four versions of this tune in recordings with various units!

[Ian Thumwood]

I really enjoyed the retrospective section of classic British Jazz. It was intriguing to hear how some of the tracks had aged. For me, the Stan Tracey big band was the best of the bunch but it was also nice to hear the Surman track again as I was at that gig. I was staggered to find out that it was recoded 20 years ago! The selection was dictated by commercial recordings such as the Betty Carter concert which I own - one of the best jazz vocal records ever. Maybe it would be good to hear some archive material that has not been made available?

A few comments. The Elton Dean session was impressive but I was struck at just how mainstream in now sounds. Parts of that track could almost have been performed by Wynton and although it was a pleasure to hear Tippett's "outside " piano on this track, I felt that this kind of music is now a million miles away from what might be called "cutting edge" these days. It certainly lacked the polish of the McCaslin tracks and sounded far more homespun. The record by Michael Garrick hadn't aged well, in my opinion. Not bad to listen to and thankfully lacking in the twee-ness of his later stuff which I find unlistenable. The use of the harpsichord added a nice bit of colour and it wasn't too bad albeit very much of it's time.

As far as Ian Carr's Nucleus is concerned, the track chosen had aged the least well of all the selections. This was a band which as "big" when I was discovering jazz but it always seemed past it's sell-by date back then as Fusion was totally out of fashion. The record owed a great deal to Miles' early 1980's work and the Nucleus track may have tried to latch on to what was probably quite exciting seeing as Davis had been in exile for most of the 1970s. When the band started to "Rock out", the result was almost comical. It immediately made me recall those dark days in the 1980s when jazz seemed to exist around Southampton university around here and never seemed to manifest itself elsewhere as opposed to Trad bands playing in pubs and the gathering of semi-pro musicians in "rehearsal bands." The Carr track took me back to when I was first discovering jazz. I never really got in to Nucleus as it seemed so old-fashioned even at the time. Maybe they might have been cooler in the 1970's but the track selected was demonstrative of the time when there was a paucity of genuine quality jazz.

The closing section with McCaslin was a brilliant interview and very interesting when it came to discussing the potential problems was categorising jazz. I was intrigued by McCaslin's informed response but I still think he is wasting his talent playing music that will have a limited shelf-life and is not really terrific jazz. It just some modish rather than hip. I don't think there have been many jazz musicians who I have enthused about more than McCaslin but who have done down the drain quite so spectacularly. He seemed the heir apparent to Michael Brecker about ten years ago and really hit form in the late 2000's. His latest records are awful and have little to do with jazz. A complete waste, in my opinion and maybe McCaslin has a point that today's jazz scene is more suited to musicians able to mix acoustic with electronica. I can understand the appeal but the results have driven me elsewhere in search of someone more authentic.

As far as the Dave Douglas set which I also caught up with, the same criticism applies. Jazz trumpet playing over an electronica backing with little or no interaction and the bleeps and tweets sounding more like 1980's Space Invaders than something cutting edge. Thankfully Douglas is frequently juggling new projects and it is not too difficult to find something he is involved in which is right on the money. The electronic paraphernalia is just a no-hoper in my opinion. Better to go purely acoustic and put the toys away.