Good Vibrations

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 9 Oct
5pm - J to Z
A showcase of the finest new jazz and classics of the genre, with guests, sessions and gigs.

...is all it says this week in Radio Times. Mike Westbrook offering us his inspirational tracks was too subversive for them, I guess.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010f45

12midnight - Freeness
Corey Mwamba with a playlist featuring new and old music evoking natural processes and personal transformation, including a collaboration between pianist Tom Harris and drummer Kai Charuensy. Brooklyn-based multi-instrumetanlist Jessica Pavone continues her explorations into the impact of vibrations on health and wellbeing.

I remember seeing a sign over a supermarket aisle which read WELLBEING. I commented that I didn't know one could buy wellbeing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010f4c

Wayne Shorter's great 1969 Super Nova is also re-viewed on the programme. My copy is second-hand and came inside a cover for Etcetera; but that was fine once I'd heard the album!

Sun 10 Oct
4pm - Jazz Record Requests

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010fy4

Sky Arts
7pm - Ray Charles: Live at Montreux
The American musician performs at the jazz festival in 1997.

Followed at 8.30 by 70 minutes' worth of Chuck Berry.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Sat 9 Oct
5pm - J to Z
A showcase of the finest new jazz and classics of the genre, with guests, sessions and gigs.

...is all it says this week in Radio Times. Mike Westbrook offering us his inspirational tracks was too subversive for them, I guess.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010f45

12midnight - Freeness
Corey Mwamba with a playlist featuring new and old music evoking natural processes and personal transformation, including a collaboration between pianist Tom Harris and drummer Kai Charuensy. Brooklyn-based multi-instrumetanlist Jessica Pavone continues her explorations into the impact of vibrations on health and wellbeing.

I remember seeing a sign over a supermarket aisle which read WELLBEING. I commented that I didn't know one could buy wellbeing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010f4c

Wayne Shorter's great 1969 Super Nova is also re-viewed on the programme. My copy is second-hand and came inside a cover for Etcetera; but that was fine once I'd heard the album!

Sun 10 Oct
4pm - Jazz Record Requests

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010fy4

Sky Arts
7pm - Ray Charles: Live at Montreux
The American musician performs at the jazz festival in 1997.

Followed at 8.30 by 70 minutes' worth of Chuck Berry.

"Etcetera" is one of the very great Wayne Shorter albums! Mine came inside a sleeve of Etcetera!

[Serial_Apologist]

"Etcetera" is one of the very great Wayne Shorter albums! Mine came inside a sleeve of Etcetera!

Indeed it is!



It's always worth checking when buying second hand that the label agrees with what's inside, though. Sometimes such a mistake is not so salutary!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

About three years ago I bought a CD copy of Miles' soundtrack to "Lift to the Scaffold" on French Phillips, amongst a batch of other stuff. But when I eventually got to play it, no atmospheric Miles et Barney etc, but some God awful French techno thing, "Phillipé...." someone or other, warbling over the synths and drum machine. If it had been Francoise Hardy singing "Tout Les Garçons" etc, I would had been a lot less outraged!

[Serial_Apologist]

Wonderful to hear 85-years young Mike Westbrook along with his selection on J to Z a few minutes ago. The Duke track I hadn't heard before today - blindfolded I would have reckoned it was Mingus or even Sun Ra. Geri Allen composed Feed the Fire, track 5, by the Helen Sung & Harlem Quartet [sic], which I actually took to be Geri's band with Greg Osby: seriously, that good: unless I dropped off, Ms Allen's name got no mention? And I have to admit to having enjoyed Jean Pierre, in a later Gil Evans-resembling workout from the La Vallette re-union concert: the video ran out at the start of that, so this was my first hearing of the entire number. There was another all-too-like something else track whose title I missed 'cos someone called - a guitar trio like the one Pat Metheny had with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins. Yep, I know - I only have to listen again on the iplayer.

[Ian Thumwood]

Wonderful to hear 85-years young Mike Westbrook along with his selection on J to Z a few minutes ago. The Duke track I hadn't heard before today - blindfolded I would have reckoned it was Mingus or even Sun Ra. Geri Allen composed Feed the Fire, track 5, by the Helen Sung & Harlem Quartet [sic], which I actually took to be Geri's band with Greg Osby: seriously, that good: unless I dropped off, Ms Allen's name got no mention? And I have to admit to having enjoyed Jean Pierre, in a later Gil Evans-resembling workout from the La Vallette re-union concert: the video ran out at the start of that, so this was my first hearing of the entire number. There was another all-too-like something else track whose title I missed 'cos someone called - a guitar trio like the one Pat Metheny had with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins. Yep, I know - I only have to listen again on the iplayer.

I used to have a tape of "La Plus Belle Africaine" from an album Ellington's Orchestra made in London in the early 70s. It is a bit odd saying that Ellington is a bit like Mingus and Sun Ra when it is really Ellington who influenced the others. i quite like Sun Ra but have to say he is completely overpraised in comparison with Ellington who unfortunately died at the point his music started to get extremely interesting after the earlier passing of Strayhorn. By the time Sun Ra had established himself. Ellington already had a 30 year track record and had achieved artistic heights which alluded both Sun Ra and, I am afraid to say, Charles Mingus too. I love that track but there are other number like the "Togo Brava Suite" that sometimes make me feel I would have willingly sacrificed the Classic 1920s Ellington recordings just to see where Ellington would have ended up if he had lived longer. Of course, Ellington always was "modern" and there will always be something that jazz composers will continue to take from his music just in the way classical music has borrowed from Bach.

[Serial_Apologist]

I used to have a tape of "La Plus Belle Africaine" from an album Ellington's Orchestra made in London in the early 70s. It is a bit odd saying that Ellington is a bit like Mingus and Sun Ra when it is really Ellington who influenced the others. i quite like Sun Ra but have to say he is completely overpraised in comparison with Ellington who unfortunately died at the point his music started to get extremely interesting after the earlier passing of Strayhorn. By the time Sun Ra had established himself. Ellington already had a 30 year track record and had achieved artistic heights which alluded both Sun Ra and, I am afraid to say, Charles Mingus too. I love that track but there are other number like the "Togo Brava Suite" that sometimes make me feel I would have willingly sacrificed the Classic 1920s Ellington recordings just to see where Ellington would have ended up if he had lived longer. Of course, Ellington always was "modern" and there will always be something that jazz composers will continue to take from his music just in the way classical music has borrowed from Bach.

Yes, exactly. Westbrook commented ironically on the fact that La Plus Belle Africaine was from a 1967 concert whereas the Mingus track played afterwards from "The Black Saint" was recorded in 1963, which left me wondering if he was implying that the Duke might have been influenced by one whom he had himself previously influenced. It wouldn't be unheard of: think of Mary Lou Williams; but I suppose instances of older musicians being influenced by younger has been more common in classical music: the young Mozart's influence on teacher Haydn's later symphonies; Boulez's influence on his own teacher Messiaen in the 1950s, Stockhausen's on the ageing Stravinsky.

[Quarky]

Wonderful to hear 85-years young Mike Westbrook along with his selection on J to Z a few minutes ago. The Duke track I hadn't heard before today - blindfolded I would have reckoned it was Mingus or even Sun Ra.

Agreed -you can't argue with Mike Westbrook!

Intrigued by your comment of influences on Stravinsky - Schoenberg, not Stockhausen?

Stockhausen however clearly a major influence on Anthony Braxton. Unfortunately, I don't think he shared Stockhausen's sense of humour / sense of Theatre.....