Belated Very Happy 80th birthday wishes to Mike Gibbs.

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 30 Sept
4 pm Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton introduces listeners' requests, including a rare wartime recording featuring French trumpeter Pierre Allier (1908-68) performing with Django Reinhardt.

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

5 pm Jazz Line-Up
Kevin Le Gendre presents performances given in April at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival, featuring bassist Miles Mosley and jazz trio Triptych - pianist Paul Edis, bassist Paul Susans and drummer Rob Walker.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096g1z8

10 pm Hear and Now

Just to draw attention to two of our young jazz musicians - violinist Angharad Davies, and bassist Dominic Lash - taking part in the three pieces by the composer Eliane Radique featured in this programme.

12 midnight Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Hailed as "the greatest drummer ever to draw breath", Buddy Rich (1917-87) was a jazz legend for 50 years. Geoffrey Smith traces his blazing career with Tommy Dorsey, Lester Young and his own super-charged ensembles

Life's a buddy, as they say.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096v1qz

Monday 2 Oct
11 pm Jazz Now
From last week's Scarborough Jazz Festival, Soweto Kinch presents a concert celebrating composer and bandleader Mike Gibbs's 80th birthday. He talks to Gibbs and the band, put together by Michael Janisch and Hans Koller. The music comes from all periods of Gibbs's long and influential career.

Should be well worth a listen. Mike was 80 last Monday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096gqwh

Also on Monday:

Radio 2
10 pm Gregory Porter on Nat King Cole
The singer/songwriter profiles one of the giants of 20th-century popular music, who earned the title of Nat "King" Cole from formidable careers as a jazz pianist and, from 1943, a singer with an immaculate, buttery and stately voice. Cole died of lung cancer in 1965, aged 45. Porter also explores Cole's political activism.

A young black fellow was singing to himself in a very Natty kinda way while stacking the freezer compartments in the local branch of St Sprees yesterday. "You're in the wrong job", I told him, "you should be on the stage". "Just trying to cheer myself up" he replied, grinning broadly.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Sat 30 Sept
4 pm Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton introduces listeners' requests, including a rare wartime recording featuring French trumpeter Pierre Allier (1908-68) performing with Django Reinhardt.

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

5 pm Jazz Line-Up
Kevin Le Gendre presents performances given in April at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival, featuring bassist Miles Mosley and jazz trio Triptych - pianist Paul Edis, bassist Paul Susans and drummer Rob Walker.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096g1z8

10 pm Hear and Now

Just to draw attention to two of our young jazz musicians - violinist Angharad Davies, and bassist Dominic Lash - taking part in the three pieces by the composer Eliane Radique featured in this programme.

12 midnight Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Hailed as "the greatest drummer ever to draw breath", Buddy Rich (1917-87) was a jazz legend for 50 years. Geoffrey Smith traces his blazing career with Tommy Dorsey, Lester Young and his own super-charged ensembles

Life's a buddy, as they say.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096v1qz

Monday 2 Oct
11 pm Jazz Now
From last week's Scarborough Jazz Festival, Soweto Kinch presents a concert celebrating composer and bandleader Mike Gibbs's 80th birthday. He talks to Gibbs and the band, put together by Michael Janisch and Hans Koller. The music comes from all periods of Gibbs's long and influential career.

Should be well worth a listen. Mike was 80 last Monday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096gqwh

Also on Monday:

Radio 2
10 pm Gregory Porter on Nat King Cole
The singer/songwriter profiles one of the giants of 20th-century popular music, who earned the title of Nat "King" Cole from formidable careers as a jazz pianist and, from 1943, a singer with an immaculate, buttery and stately voice. Cole died of lung cancer in 1965, aged 45. Porter also explores Cole's political activism.

A young black fellow was singing to himself in a very Natty kinda way while stacking the freezer compartments in the local branch of St Sprees yesterday. "You're in the wrong job", I told him, "you should be on the stage". "Just trying to cheer myself up" he replied, grinning broadly.

THIS is very fine indeed (one of a series of Swiss Radio Jazz CDs)...

"In 1960, 27-year-old Quincy Jones and his 18-piece all-star jazz orchestra were stranded in Europe when a show they were accompanying failed. A last-minute tour with Nat King Cole rescued them. This marvellous concert, recorded by Swiss radio and now released for the first time, comes as a revelation. As well as proving that Quincy's was a world-class band, it demonstrates that Nat had not given up seriously playing the piano, as was commonly believed. As he reveals in the interview that closes this CD, it was showbiz pressure that made him concentrate on singing. He plays brilliantly here." - Dave Gelly, Guardian

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Btw, it was Bud Powell's birthday yesterday (27/9/1924) and John Coltrane's c. a week ago (23/9/26). Strange how I always think of Coltrane as being much younger than Bud.

[Jazzrook]

Sat 30 Sept
4 pm Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton introduces listeners' requests, including a rare wartime recording featuring French trumpeter Pierre Allier (1908-68) performing with Django Reinhardt.

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

5 pm Jazz Line-Up
Kevin Le Gendre presents performances given in April at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival, featuring bassist Miles Mosley and jazz trio Triptych - pianist Paul Edis, bassist Paul Susans and drummer Rob Walker.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096g1z8

10 pm Hear and Now

Just to draw attention to two of our young jazz musicians - violinist Angharad Davies, and bassist Dominic Lash - taking part in the three pieces by the composer Eliane Radique featured in this programme.

12 midnight Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Hailed as "the greatest drummer ever to draw breath", Buddy Rich (1917-87) was a jazz legend for 50 years. Geoffrey Smith traces his blazing career with Tommy Dorsey, Lester Young and his own super-charged ensembles

Life's a buddy, as they say.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096v1qz

Monday 2 Oct
11 pm Jazz Now
From last week's Scarborough Jazz Festival, Soweto Kinch presents a concert celebrating composer and bandleader Mike Gibbs's 80th birthday. He talks to Gibbs and the band, put together by Michael Janisch and Hans Koller. The music comes from all periods of Gibbs's long and influential career.

Should be well worth a listen. Mike was 80 last Monday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096gqwh

Also on Monday:

Radio 2
10 pm Gregory Porter on Nat King Cole
The singer/songwriter profiles one of the giants of 20th-century popular music, who earned the title of Nat "King" Cole from formidable careers as a jazz pianist and, from 1943, a singer with an immaculate, buttery and stately voice. Cole died of lung cancer in 1965, aged 45. Porter also explores Cole's political activism.

A young black fellow was singing to himself in a very Natty kinda way while stacking the freezer compartments in the local branch of St Sprees yesterday. "You're in the wrong job", I told him, "you should be on the stage". "Just trying to cheer myself up" he replied, grinning broadly.

Also, on Radio 4, Sunday, 1 October, 4.30pm 'The First Jazz Poet' introduced by Michael Rosen. Could be interesting.

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

Also, on Radio 4, Sunday, 1 October, 4.30pm 'The First Jazz Poet' introduced by Michael Rosen. Could be interesting.

JR

Missed that! - thanks, JR.

[Ian Thumwood]

Off to see Mike Gibbs tonight and will report back tomorrow.

For what it is worth, it does seem strange that MG has managed to seem "contemporary" for nearly fifty years!! I think that he was the next stage on from Gil Evans and always a favourite with me from the first time I heard his music. Oddly, he seems to be more prolific these days and issued more records in recent years than seemed available when I first encountered his music.

I love big band jazz and , of course, Mike Gibbs, is one of the absolute heroes of this oeuvre. It is fascinating that he has remained faithful to his shorter forms and continues to explore the harmonic and textural possibilities of the orchestra whereas so many newer arrangers have looked to expand form. This has enabled him to still sound "modern" to my ears even if composers these days are able to do some pretty incredible things with orchestras which would not have been considered back in the 1960;s when he started. He is still one of the finest albeit it is open to conjecture as to who is making the kind of strides in big band writing these days . My money is on the likes on Maria Schneider but of the younger arrangers, Alan Ferber constantly delights with his writing.

[Ian Thumwood]

Just got back from the Mike Gibbs concert. It was a curious mixture of stuff starting off with a sumptuous arrangement of "You go to my head" before going all ECM with re-workings of a Eberhard Weber and Bill Frisell's "Throughout. " A re-working of John Lewis' "Django" was really good but the Gil Evans arrangement of "Las Vegas Tango" was the highlight of the first set. In the second half, the band performed a couple of tunes written by John Scofield before finishing with "On the third day," It was enjoyable but nowhere as near as good as the band put together in the early 1990s which featured John Scofield as principle soloist. That band had a fleetness of foot about it , underscored by the bass and drums of Steve Swallow and Bill Stewart. Whilst this band had an American bassist, it was very much a mixture of familiar and totally unknown UK players.

I love Mike Gibb's arrangements but I don't think this was a great band. Some of the ensemble playing was a bit ragged and lacked the snap in execution which is so often a feature of his music. The leader even made a comment at one point about getting through one of the arrangements. The band didn't really do the music justice. Talking about this during the interval with friends, the band was assembled for the tour and was not a regular working unit . The soloists who stood out were Jason Yarde and Mike Walker, for my money probably the most immediately appealing soloist on the current British jazz scene. I am never less than totally impressed by this brilliant guitarist. Otherwise the soloists didn't make must impression although, in fairness, it takes a Kenny Wheeler (honoured in a Gibbs original) , John Scofield or Steve Swallow, etc to not be overwhelmed by the wonderful colours of the orchestration. The music was therefore less interesting when the written parts weren't being played. Not too fussed by the pianist Hans Koller as the energy in the music seemed to me to dissipate every time he took a solo. All in all, the writing by the elderly composer was very much the highlight of the evening. It will curious to see what the consensus if when this music gets an airing on Radio 3.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

This Miles Mosley thing currently on JLU, it's comedy is it, like Spinal Tap? Just so I know...

BN

[Ian Thumwood]

This Miles Mosley thing currently on JLU, it's comedy is it, like Spinal Tap? Just so I know...

BN

Bluesnik

It was quite interesting to hear this band who I have never heard of because this is exactly the kind of stuff that the younger audience coming to jazz are really in to. If you are under 30, the set probably sounded terrific especially as the musicians clearly have chops. I wonder if you have listened to bands like Snarky Puppy or someone like Trombone Shorty whose music is in the same vein. What I find intriguing is that the music is clearly coming from a jazz tradition and is evidently much preferable than the dreadful group who played the hang the other week. I think jazz has always featured groups who come out of the "tradition" yet have a populist appeal. A good example was he Ramsey Lewis set next week which fulfilled exactly the same such as Miles Mosely. A few weeks ago you suggested that the Miles Davis group with Hank Mobley was great because it was possible for a wider audience to tap into their musical ethos. Well, I feel that this is exactly the same thing that Miles Mosely is doing.

Personally, the groups sounded a lot like Michael Kuwanuka whose CD that came out last year similarly joined the dots between jazz, soul and fusion. In comparison with much of today's pop, I felt that Kuwanuka was a blessing and I can see the same attributes with Mosely. That said, I wasn't too fussed with the performance although I would certainly not call it a "Spinal Tap" comedy as it is just populist. This is what today's jazz audience wants. No one under the age of 34 is really checking out the kind of stuff you listen to anymore. Even last night, I was one of the youngest people at the Mike Gibbs concert which was largely made up of people in their 70's and 80's. Furthermore, the hall was half empty.

Without appearing to being too rude, I probably get to more live gigs than you and there has been a massive change with the audience for jazz since the late 2010's. It is noticeable that there is increasingly a schism in the music which is seeing it split between more World / New Age / European elements that getting further away from the American model for the music and more "traditional" elements of jazz which very much plug into popular styles of music including funk and soul. You are also getting the likes of Donny McCaslin going electric and tapping in to EDM which I would have to say I hate more than Miles Mosely. I have a genuine and passionate dislike for the kind of crap that McCaslin in churning out. Outside of this there is a vanguard of musicians who are genuinely working in an advanced jazz field who appeal to an ever decreasing and specialist audience with the result that this music is what appeals to me more than anything else. Outside of this, most "traditional" jazz groups seem to be tribute acts like the Nat Steele quartet doing a very good impression of the MJQ.

Wondered if you had checked out any of the Chicago stuff I have been posting about because I am sure that this is the kind of jazz that will strongly appeal to you. Jazzrook is also checking this out but I do feel that it is a minority of people who are exploring this music.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

There's nothing contemporary about Miles Mosely, it's the kind of crass jazzical Jimi "funk" that I endured in the '70s. The lyrics were totally laughable, tragic, straight off "teenager, paint your bedroom black" and the constant injunctions to "join in" and "our drummer" would have embarrassed even Geno Washington on a wet Tuesday at the Torquay Soul Cellar (1965). Without helpful drugs. Sad, sad, sad...


"No one under the age of 34 is really checking out the kind of stuff you listen to anymore". (sic)

Well, MORE for me then. I used to hate queuing up outside WH Smith's for the latest Frank Strozier LP...the fist fights I had to just grab one copy. And with the girls, they were the worst. Fists, nails, stilettos, they'd kill to get "Long Nights". "We just love that Frank Strozier!", they'd shout. "His alto impros scramble our hormones!" You had to be there...

Miles Mosely, eat your heart out.

BN.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

And...if that's what passes as "jazz" in the year of our Lord, then "jazz" should have a "do not resuscitate" nameplate placed next to its hospice bed, and a kindly nurse come around to pull out all the drips at 4am precisely.

"It died in its sleep, but it was a good age. Completely worn out by the end, fkd to put it crudely, so for the best really". Send no flowers.

[Ian Thumwood]

I am on your side with this. Most people coming to the music under the age of 30 won't give a sh/t about the process of improvisation and are unlikely to be checking out Sonny Rollins let alone Frank Strozier. It is quite fascinating coming to contemporary jazz in the 1980s when there was almost a fanaticism about respecting the tradition and Neo-Classicism was all the rage to the extent that many musicians were able to pick up their instruments again and find their music valued when it had looked like Fusion had previous put the kibosh on their careers. Currently, the 70's feel in current music is something that is very highly valued by music fans whether you like it or not. Playing 27 choruses on a blues is not valued.

Back in July I had some fascinating discussions with fellow jazz fans some of whom were really in to the idea of using electronica and sampling as they saw a connection between this and the notion that jazz was a creative music and had to embrace "contemporary" ideas. A few days later I hung out with some musicians who had just performed in a bar and they all lamented that the audience were being hoodwinked and the current generation of jazz musicians were largely pretty hopeless as what they performed lack honesty. A host of names were banded around with the pianist who was broadly my age stating that it was criminal that a musician like Phineas Newborn is unheard of these days.

It is really a generational thing, I feel. Each generation thinks it's own jazz is better and as time passes that stuff that is faddish quickly vanishes and the "true" jazz manages to survive. The problem I feel is that whilst there are plenty of hardcore jazz musicians out there, the festivals are booking the likes of Miles Mosely or Trombone Shorty so that musicians that I would prefer to listen to are unable to build up a following because festivals are too scared to put them on. All the festivals are all thinking short term and the situation will not get any better.

[Ian Thumwood]

Nice to hear the John Abercrombie track on JRR. It was a really good programme tonight with the Webster / Hawkins track, the brilliant Horace Silver tune. Zawinal and the first track with Django. Also nice to hear the Eubie Blake piano roll.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

On a serious note, I'm not sure how, at this point, you can change the broad "business" of "festivals". Not sure if you saw that note I put up from the Swanage Festival, about to fold unless it can be crowd funded via Kickstarter. The whole economics has changed along with "tastes" taxes and consumption. I haven't been to a festival since Jackie McLean and Cedar Walton etc played Cheltenham...and that's loooooong ago and very far away. Do I miss festivals. No, not really.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

I did read the Swanage Festival note which was not a surprise.

Festivals have killed themselves. They do not think long term and have relied too heavily on promoting that year's particular fashion without developing a long term audience for the next generation of jazz musicians. It is frustrating because there are loads of musicians I would love to hear perform live but you now that no one in Europe will take a punt on booking them unless it is for a small scale festival for something avant garde which seems like the last refuge of genuine jazz musicians. It is a serious business because trhe festivals used to be a saviour for visiting musicians and now they prefer to book pop acts.