Tune in for Cannell's sake.

[Serial_Apologist]

First to mention:

Sat 16 May
1pm - Inside Music
Welsh pianist and composer Gwilym Simcock explores suspended choral harmonies by Eric Whitacre, celestial spirals on the harp, a rarely heard Walton piano quartet, three intriguing "minutes" from Piazzolla, and two very different sides of Bach.

This must be the one of Johann Sebastian with his wig on and the one never previously heard of him without it.

5pm - J to Z
Julian Joseph presents an exclusive home session from trumpeter Laura Jurd and pianist Elliot Galvin - one half of Mercury Prize-nominated band Dinosaur. They play stripped-back versions of music from Donosaur[sic]'s latest album.

It says on the link below that this is a home session - remember to keep at least 2 metres away from your speakers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j845

12midnight - Freeness
Adventurous improvised music, presented by Corey Mwamba, including a performance featuring saxophonist Anthony Braxton and harpist Jacqueline Kerrod, a track from fiddle player Laura Cannell's new album recorded at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station in London, and exploratory new music from guitarist Otto Fischer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j849

Sunday 17 May
4pm - Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton plays recordings by Duke Ellington, Chet Baker and Chicago-born saxophonist and composer Lee Konitz, who died last month, aged 92.

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

And the programme link is reproduced below - I shall try and remember to include this from now on.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j967

Part 2 of the 3-part programme A History of Black Classical Music starts at 11pm.

In a personal bid to up the interest factor in this week's regular jazz broadcastings samizdat, anybody who can name the two musicians mentioned on this page who performed at various times in Derek Bailey's Company Week is free to comment below on this week's Freeness programme.

[MarkG]

I'd hazard a guess that it was Anthony Braxton and Lee Konitz.

I remember some performances by Company were broadcast by Radio 3 in the old 'Music in Our Time' slot some considerable years ago.

[Quarky]

First to mention:

Sat 16 May
1pm - Inside Music
Welsh pianist and composer Gwilym Simcock explores suspended choral harmonies by Eric Whitacre, celestial spirals on the harp, a rarely heard Walton piano quartet, three intriguing "minutes" from Piazzolla, and two very different sides of Bach.

This must be the one of Johann Sebastian with his wig on and the one never previously heard of him without it.

Will be interested to hear what Gwilym has to say about Bach. Very often, Bach is locked into a real rocking rhythm. He didn't need a rhythm section. But that is just one aspect of his music.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'd hazard a guess that it was Anthony Braxton and Lee Konitz.

I remember some performances by Company were broadcast by Radio 3 in the old 'Music in Our Time' slot some considerable years ago.

Your guess would be right, Mark.

[Old Grumpy]

Nice set of tracks selected by Avishai Cohen...

...but is he the first guest to refer to the programme as "J to Zee"?

OG

[Serial_Apologist]

Nice set of tracks selected by Avishai Cohen...

...but is he the first guest to refer to the programme as "J to Zee"?

OG

Yes, but he is after all an American Israeli, so I guess he can infringe BBC protocols then.

Not being a big fan of Dinosaur, I was surprised that Laura Jurd and Elliot Galvin's home duet versions made a lot more sense from a musical point of view, sounding strongly reminiscent of the more "satirical" side of Prokofiev in the 1920s - the music, with its sudden bitonal skids and veerings into and out of unexpected keys sounding like offcuts from future Lieutenant Kijés and even Peter and the Wolves. Prokofiev and Shostakovitch from that pre stalinist lockdown period often included "saucy" jazz references; this to my ears wasn't so different in kind from that, or the 1920 caricaturings of the posh house guests in Poulenc's Les Biches - which in the case of youngish jazz musicians in the 21st century emulating the age of the flapper - intentionally or not - comes across as a bit quaint. Jazz musicians would do better turning to some of the German composers of the early Weimar Republic for trans-generational pertinence, though this too can have its risks, ending up becoming its own caricature, as happened with Willem Breuker's Kollektief. My guess is that one aspect about Dinosaur that irritates is the overgging with heavy complicated beats and metrics - todays session showed the latter to be capable of standing their own ground without extra "help" to ram the message of contemporary relevance home. For me Dinosaur comes across as clever-clever people going all out for impressing their friends and musical contemporaries, which is a shame - Laura is a good trumpet player and Elliott one of the best in a generation that includes pianists Matthew Bourne (age-wise just about) and Alex Hawkins - though I should really judge my suspenders while waiting to get some idea of the new album, out next week we heard - and on a Green theme, one assumes from the title.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I need to listen to this on Sounds as a friend was on the phone when he programme was on. Oddly enough, there is an interview on All About Jazz with Laura Jurd where she cites Stravinsky as her major influence. You can red this here:-

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/laura-jurd-getting-elemental-laura-jurd

Interesting to see that only 2 jazz albums feature in her list of 6 "musical milestones, " one of these being predictably Miles Davis. You would guess that players like Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford brown, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan or Kenny Dorham are probably not on her radar let alone earlier players like Roy Eldridge or Buck Clayton. It appears to be the complex that excites her - as you say, the complex time signatures are a key element. I will listen to the radio programme and get back to you with my thoughts. She seems a player with perhaps one foot in classical music and the other marginally in jazz. Got to say that if you want to listen to a good British female trumpeter, I would recommend Sheila Maurice-Grey. I have found that her playing really cuts through whereas I have been left cold by Laura Jurd's work. When your own record producer is saying that the quality of compositions on your record is not strong and that LJ was bowing to pressure of the record label to record her own work, the expectations cannot be too high. I have got to say that every time these newer players from the UK appear on J-Z, the comments by Cassie Kinoshi regarding the fact the lack of appreciation and understanding of jazz' history amongst most of the younger, white jazz musicians emerging seems increasingly salient. I don't object to Classical influences in jazz as it is an essential component in many instances. However, I think it is how you employ these influences that is important. I was quite surprised to see that this article was written by Chris May. For what it is worth, this website is extremely partisan towards British jazz musicians.

It is curious that you mention Willem Breuker's Kollektief as I had only been listening to one of their records on Thursday that I had not played for a long while. Theatrics were a large part of Breuker's band's performance and this does not get picked up on recordings. I have to put my cards on the table and say that I am a big fan even if there are moments where the humour can be stretched too far - Haydn trumpet concerto played on a car horn, for example. However, the band should really be looked upon as a European counterpart to the Art Ensemble of Chicago. A lot of the repertoire does come from a European tradition and the band's repertoire included music by the likes of Hugo Wolf, Ennio Morricone, Reginald Forsythe and, of course, a lot of Kurt Weill. Breuker was actually an authority on Weill and I believe had published a book about him. On the other hand, the band were not adverse to satirising all sorts of music whether it been big band swing, Louis Prima, Steve Reich, Jerry Lee Lewis or even Astor Piazzolla. All was ripe for pastiche and the music could jump from one influence to another. There has always been an absurdist element in Dutch Free Jazz and perhaps the greatest manifestation of this was in the Kollektief. I have to say that the playing on this record is at a very high level and it sounds very technically demanding - especially when the launch in to tunes at a breakneck 2/4. You are correct that the band does become a caricature and I would add that there is obviously an element of slapstick in the music too. Although it is not for everyone , I don't think their music should be written off. It is a band that I greatly miss - a 1980's European equivalent of an American territory band from the 1930s which has gone completely off the rails.

With regard to Matthew Bourne, I walked out of his gig with the Instabile Orchestra when they played Basingstoke about ten years ago. The kind of musician to make you despair of the current state of jazz in the UK.

[Ian Thumwood]

Listening to J-Z, I felt that the best material was by the familiar names. The John Scofield record was great and I also like the Jan Ira Bloom track. Avishai Cohen's selections and thoughts proved to be interesting, especially the Art Blakey track.

Listening to the Laura Jurd / Elliot Galvin duo, it wasn't quite as bad as SA made out. It was inoffensive but tended to boil down to the material not being particularly memorable even if it was clever. Sorry to sat that a lot of it didn't swing and had no groove. It was quite interesting hearing Cohen's comments and then realising that the qualities singled out in his selections were missing in the tracks performed by the duo. I did like the track performed by Jas Kayser who is a new name to me but pleasingly another talent from the UK who appears to have popped up, performed with some American heavyweights and perhaps grasps what makes the kind of jazz people want to listen to as opposed to the more "worthy" efforts of LJ / EG duo. Oddly enough, I felt that there was a maturity in the JK track that was absent in the duo. You would have thought that LJ and EG were the younger musicians. The duo struck me as the kind of thing you hear a lot of on the free stage at Vienne where they tend to feature artists trying to break through. This can be extremely interesting and rewarding. I don't think that LJ / EG are particularly unique. There is a French duo called "Ortie" which pursue a similar Classical-influenced approach that I really like and neither of the participants in that duo is getting any kind of media attention in the UK even though I think their results are far more successful in my opinion. Again, I would reiterate my perception that Cassie Kinoshi's assessment is not too far away from the truth regarding the younger generation of British players. It probably comes down to personal taste. I would say that after the disaster zone of the last , acoustic performance of "Dinosaur" on J-, this was an improvement even if very much parochial. By contrast, I am finding myself constantly surprised by the quality of Black, British jazz at the moment, in particular because the age of the participants seem to be consistently so young. For me, a lot of this stuff comes across as the real deal as it has respect for the jazz tradition as well as offering something fresh and contemporary. I just get the feeling that this movement was well overdue, largely because so much British jazz in the 2000s strikes me as almost being ashamed with itself. (Thinking about stuff like portico Quartet, Neil Cowley, Go-Go Penguin, etc, etc.) Anyone liking Laura Jurd's approach to jazz might also appreciate cornetist Kirk Knuffke and, if familiar, offer a comparison.

The worse track was "Thundercat." Am I missing something here? Not sure what all the fuss is about, both from the press and fellow musicians. You probably have to be a bassist to appreciate the track but it just sounded like 1970s fusion albeit produced in a more sophisticated fashion. I probably would guess that the appeal of both Thundercat and Laura Jurd probably rests with a younger generation so might be a bit out of turn in this respect. I think those tracks that did appeal on J- Z do so because it is largely the kind of jazz I grew up with. I am starting to feel like that bloke who wrote to Jazz Journal all those years ago to say that "Loose Tubes were not jazz!"