Where there's rubies there's Braff

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 8 June
4pm - Jazz Record Requests

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

5pm - J to Z
Julian Joseph introduces pianist Gwilym Simcock, who performs solo pieces from his new album Near and Now. And Indian-born percussionist Sarathy Korwar discusses his musical influences.

Should that not be Near and How to spoonerise correctly??

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005shd

12midnight - Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Career highlights of trumpeter/cornettist Ruby Braff (1927-2003), who forged a timeless style at once lyrical, fluent and personal. With Geoffrey Smith.

Note: this is a repeat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037tvr6

Mon 10 June
11pm - Jazz Now
Soweto Kinch presents a recent concert by Bonsai at the PizzaExpress Jazz Club in Soho, London.

We can expect a few clips, then........

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sgw

Tues 11 June - Radio 2
9pm - The Jazz Show with Jamie Cullum
New and classic jazz, tonight with pianist, composer and rising UK jazz star Sarah Tandy performing material from her recently released album, Inflection in the Sentence.

Inflection, not infection. Please note that you can only get infection in the sentence when imposed by a judge.

[gradus]

The only Ruby Braff album (Black Lion from the seventies) I own actually enclosed a recording by a heavy metal group - I don't think Ruby was playing

[Flyposter]

Missed this last night, but available on iPlayer of course

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005nrn

[Serial_Apologist]

Missed this last night, but available on iPlayer of course

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005nrn

I missed that completely, due to the fact that when the Mixtape series began for me it offered mainly cobbled together inconsequentialities, and I thought, what's the point? I shall listen to this one with interest and Mr Threadgill is right up my street, normally. So, thanks for bring it to my detention, Flyposter!

[Serial_Apologist]

No wonder I overlooked the Henry Threadgill Mixtape: RT offers no details as to who, whom or what. It was wonderful! I've long been a fan of Threadgill, and his choice of tracks is fascinating - not at all what one might expect for its inclusion of one of the shorter instrumental entr'acts from Berg's opera "Lulu". It wouldn't surprise me if Threadgill had himself used tone rows in or as a basis of some of his compositions. Thanks again, Flyposter, and I hope others look at that programme, which begins with a delightful and insightful interview by Jennifer Lucy Allan - someone whose name I have not seen mentioned on this forum. I hope this is not the last we hear of her.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

No wonder I overlooked the Henry Threadgill Mixtape: RT offers no details as to who, whom or what. It was wonderful! I've long been a fan of Threadgill, and his choice of tracks is fascinating - not at all what one might expect for its inclusion of one of the shorter instrumental entr'acts from Berg's opera "Lulu". It wouldn't surprise me if Threadgill had himself used tone rows in or as a basis of some of his compositions. Thanks again, Flyposter, and I hope others look at that programme, which begins with a delightful and insightful interview by Jennifer Lucy Allan - someone whose name I have not seen mentioned on this forum. I hope this is not the last we hear of her.

Excellent! That slipped well under the wire! Now running smoothly from my smart phone to Bluetooth speaker to the tape deck, all (climate change) powered by a happy hamster on a treadmill (he's on drugs, so it's just another gig).

Thanks the most. And from the hamster, "Chet".

BN.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Seriously, a VERY good programme, he's a joy.

[Tenor Freak]

Wish they would put Threadgill on at the Proms.

[Serial_Apologist]

Wish they would put Threadgill on at the Proms.

My view for some time now has been that jazz composition now represents the best of middle-of-the-road modern new music - by which I mean to pay tribute to composers in the modern classical tradition that came to mean so much to me wheile I was coming up with the likes of Prokofiev and Bartok as well as British composers from Vaughan Williams and Holst on to 1960s figures such as Nicholas Maw who were feeding what the more radical innovators of the first half of the century had done to advance musical expression back into "the tradition". Apart from the true radicals such as Brian Ferneyhough and Richard Barrett I find little of comparison that can meaningfully feed into jazz the way those composers of generations preceding mine did - not that I would imagine Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg or Messiaen would thank me for making this claim on their behalves! - from listening to Hear and Now and its successor programme, the New Music Show, the overwhelming impression it leaves me is of a tradition - that of the Western concert hall, ballet stage, church and opera house - that very sadly has completely lost its way. I rarely hear anything the moves or stimulates me the way modernist music did in the 1960s - and still does when I turn to my recordings of Berio and Lutoslawsky, to name just two. I used to mark Radio Times in red biro for any concert that included something new or by a composer I'd grown to appreciate and love, then sit in eager anticipation waiting for the broadcast to begin.

I'm sure it's not a question of ears becoming jaded with advancing years. The compositional skills - not just arranging skills - that Ian Thumwood praises in today's jazz, still benefit from that earlier period when composition advanced as composers of the calibre of Prokofiev, Honegger, Szymanowsky or Martinu, incorporated advances in harmony, orchestration and form made by those such as Debussy, Roussel, Schoenberg, Bartok, Diaghlev-era Stravinsky and even Satie into the continuum inherited through respective national traditions. Just listening to what Gwilym Simcock had to say a moment ago on J to Z about his influences, and turning them to his own creative advantage, and then hearing the results, gives added confirmation to this feeling. Jazz has always experimented, translating 20th century advances in concert music into its own practices and modi operandi, but at its more acessible and "tuneful" also drew from the best of how popular music also drew on those advances, through the likes of Gershwin or Weill and on to The Beatles; today jazz has, it seems to me, reached a stage of sophistication where it has turned the tables, and it will be the influence that jazz has on, if you will forgive the phrase, straight ahead contemporary classical music, that will determine the future of the music and whether it has any that can reflect our times and future human concerns.

[CGR]

hat of the Western concert hall, ballet stage, church and opera house - that very sadly has completely lost its way. I rarely hear anything the moves or stimulates me the way modernist music did in the 1960s

Yep. These days I find contemporary classical bland, boring and utterly uninspiring. I too used to search Radio Times for interesting new music. Not any more.

But this is just another example of the dumbing-down of Radio 3 that's been ongoing for the past 20 years or so. Remember when we had 'concert on gramophone records' or studio concert recordings with really interesting interval readings during the day. No chatty, dumbed-down, presenter led 'shows'. Just quality full length music.