Spending some "Time" with Dave Brubeck, to end the year (1959, 1961, 1966)

And yep, it's SGTG breaktime once again. Thanks for all your comments, and for enjoying all the music.  As to where this blog goes from here, I think it'll definitely just be occasional posts, when there's an interesting radio concert to share, or the results of a quirky charity shop haul.  The whole 'sharing a massive CD collection and writing about it just because I wanted to' thing that sparked this off is pretty much done & dusted now, and has been hugely satisfying.  Thanks everyone for being part of it.

To leave things for now, here's a triple header by an artist I took far too long to give some serious time to, starting in the annus mirabilis of album jazz: 1959.  The Dave Brubeck Quartet had made a name for themselves in West Coast cool jazz over the course of the decade, and were becoming influenced by folk forms experienced on a tour of Eurasia, as evidenced by a 1958 album.

Their smash hit album a year later took the 'quirky time signatures' USP and just ran with it, creating indelible instant classics like Blue Rondo A La Turk and Paul Desmond's Take Five.  Beyond these standouts, the Time Out album contains absolute loveliness like Strange Meadow Lark and Kathy's Waltz, and my personal favourite, the effortlessly cool elegance of Three To Get Ready.

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The success of Time Out led to a handful of sequels, so here's a couple of them.  First up, from 1961, is Time Further Out - subtitled Miro Reflections as a nod to the cover art.  The album's running order is structured so as to progressively add more beats to the bar, starting off with a pair of waltzes and featuring another couple of pieces in 5/4, as well as the 7/4 of its best-known track Unsquare Dance.  Brubeck's dexterous pianism and the rhythm section's ability to play absolutely in-the-pocket regardless of the meter continue to be absolute joys, as is the breezy melodic sensibility of this coolest of quartets.

 

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The 'time' albums then concluded five years later with Time In, credited to Brubeck only on the cover but still featuring the classic quartet within.  This gorgeous record makes more sparing use of quirky time signatures, and after the full-tilt Lost Waltz that opens the album tends towards breezier mid-tempo tunes that hone in on the quartet's effortless interplay.  Not sure if it's because Time In was the least familiar to me of these three albums (that were found together in a box set), but I've been returning to it the most for sheer enjoyment.  And that feels like as good a place as any to leave SGTG for the moment.  Happy new year when it comes, everyone!

 

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Bruce Cockburn - Further Adventures Of (1978)

Always love a bit of late 70s Bruce Cockburn around the turn of the year, so after posting the masterpiece a few years back (link below), here's the one just before it.  More jazz-inflected arrangements, lyrics taking in the expected singer-songwriterly personal reflections with a heavy dose of Christian mysticism, and that incredible guitar playing.  A couple of more muscular tracks, Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth.... and Feast Of Fools, provide a good contrast to the lighter-hued material, and Red Ships Take Off In The Distance is one of his most dazzling instrumentals.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Dancing In The Dragon's Jaws

BBC Singers - A Christmas Carol (Milton Court, London, 14th Dec 2022)

Have a wonderful Christmas weekend, everyone.  Here's a concert recording that gives a fresh setting to a classic seasonal tale that I've been enjoying since its broadcast a week ago.  The BBC Singers first give a spirited half-hour of Christmas arrangements and carols old and new, and are then joined by Mel Giedroyc to narrate the rest of the concert.  It's a musical arrangement of Dickens' A Christmas Carol by composer Benedict Sheehan, weaving well-known carols into Sheehan's own music to set the story in a delightful new context, here receiving its UK premiere. 

Merry Christmas!

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Tomasz Stańko Quartet - Lontano (2006)

Recorded in November 2005, Lontano was the conclusion to a trilogy of albums recorded by the Tomasz Stańko Quartet: the trumpeter, now in his sixties, backed by a trio of fellow Poles half his age, who'd continue to produce great music in their own right.  The quartet's expansive, cinematic feel for space and patient, at times near-ambient improvisational pace reached their apex in the diffuse, impressionistic music on this aptly-titled album.

At the album's core are its title tracks, numbered I, II and III, a total of 40 minutes of free improvisation credited to the full group.  Whether they were all recorded as a single session or as three separate takes I'm not sure, but the Lontano tracks provide the deepest expression of this quartet's spacious sensibility, the shorter pieces that surround them highlighting the spare beauty of Stańko's writing and more sublime playing.  Stańko reaches back to his first ECM appearance for a fresh take on Tale, and even further to his first appearance on LP, the muscular version of Komeda's Kattorna giving an upbeat contrast to sublime ballads like Song For Ania and Sweet Thing.  A masterpiece of an album that keeps on giving with every listen.

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Tomasz Stańko at SGTG:
Jazzmessage From Poland
Purple Sun

TWET 

Balladyna
Freelectronic in Montreux
Bluish
Bosonossa And Other Ballads
Matka Joanna 

Suspended Night

Neighbourhood (Manu Katché) 

Wolność W Sierpniu - Freedom In August
Dark Eyes
Wisława
Polin

Tribute To Tomasz Stańko, London Jazz Festival 2022

Echoes Of Nature - Wilderness River (1993)

The charity shop oddities just keep coming at the moment - here's an addition to that small corner of SGTG that features no music at all, but just captures a variety of natural sounds and presents them in album format.  This one, on the budget LaserLight label's Echoes Of Nature series from the 90s, offers exactly an hour of riverside recordings across four continuously-mixed tracks.  

 

The self-descriptive titles - Big River, Streamside Songbirds, Small Rapids and Crickets & Water - are pretty much all you need to know, other than it's all well recorded (that DDD coding is making me picture someone with a DAT machine in their backpack and a couple of microphones dangling over a bridge), and it does the job if you want to relax with nature for a bit.

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Arvo Pärt - Miserere (1991)

It's definitely Pärt weather now, so dropping in on the great Estonian composer today at the turn of the 90s.  Settled in by this time to a fruitful relationship with ECM New Series, the three works featured here were recorded in late 1990 with the Hilliard Ensemble, Western Wind Chamber Choir, Beethovenhalle Orchestra and others.

The 34-minute title piece comes first, with its stark choral liturgy interspersed with orchestral swells and the organ playing of Christopher Bowers-Broadbent.  Miserere remains one of Pärt's most immersive works in its controlled power, and it sounds sublime in this first recording.  A short respite is programmed next in Festina Lente, very much cut from the same cloth as the Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten.  We return to Old Testament liturgy for the final track, Sarah Was Ninety Years Old, but wordlessly.  An intermittent drumbeat forms the backbone of the piece as the Hilliards in turn add plaintive melodies, the culiminative effect (once Broadbent's organ enters for the finale) being another masterpiece of steady pacing to thoroughly entrance the patient listener.  This might not be Pärt's easiest album to get in to, but it pays some of the greatest rewards.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Tabula Rasa

Kanon Pokajanen

Spiegel Im Spiegel

Other posts featuring music by Pärt:

Trivium

Re: ECM

Christmas in Budapest, 2016

James MacMillan 60th Birthday Concert, 2019

The Fruit Of Silence at Truro Cathedral, 2019

BBC Concert Orchestra, Proms 2021

Jan Garbarek / The Hilliard Ensemble - Officium (1994)

Been giving this a fresh appraisal, so why not turn it into a post.  In a quirk of tapping in to the listening moods of the time, Jan Garbarek spontaneously joining in at a Hilliards rehearsal turned into one of ECM's breakout hits with the buying public, so the story goes.  There were sequels, but this first collaborative album between the early music singers and saxophonist remains a very 90s phenomenon all of its own.  So how does it hold up these days?

Officium certainly sounds breathtaking.  You'd expect nothing less from an ECM New Series recording of the Hilliard Ensemble, taking advantage of the resonances of the St. Gerold priory in Grosses Walsertal, Austria.  Flitting in and out is the ahistorical, but somehow seeming like a natural added voice, sound of Garbarek's saxes, equally attuned to the natural reverb.  An hour-plus immersion in this sound-world is definitely a sublime experience.

In terms of material, the album flits through the Hilliards' repertoire from the 12th to 16th century, giving a nice balance of starker, plainer material (including the odd solo spotlight) with more complex and interweaved voicings.  Garbarek doesn't overpower the singers, but finds subtle harmonies and drones with which to enhance the music.  The end result might be an early vocal music purist's nightmare, but for anyone willing to take the chance on this hybrid, as soon as you acclimatise to it it's a delight.  The only thing I sometimes wonder is if 77 minutes is a bit too much of the same thing for a single sitting, but on those occasions the first reprise of Parce Mihi Domine is a handy staging post to focus on one half of a double-album.  Overall, beautiful stuff that still stands up.  Must get hold of the other albums someday.

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Jan Garbarek at SGTG:

Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature

Othello Ballet Suite

Trip To Prillarguri

Listen To The Silence

Afric Pepperbird

Sart
Triptykon
Popofoni

Witchi-Tai-To

Dansere
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

The Hilliard Ensemble at SGTG:

Perotin

The Lamentations Of Jeremiah

Codex Speciálník

Transeamus

Annie Gosfield - Flying Sparks And Heavy Machinery (2001)

Appropriately-titled release from New York-based composer Annie Gosfield (b. 1960, Philadelphia).  This album, her second of four for John Zorn's Tzadik label, presents two works "developed in 1999 during a six-week residency in the factories of Nuremberg" designed to "combine art and industry".  The three-part, 42-minute EWA7 that takes up the bulk of the album is based on the mechanical sounds and rhythms of its titular factory where the premiere performance was held, with the 'Cylinders' portion taken from this original recording.

 

Engines whir into life in the opening section, gradually joined by metallic clangs developing into interlocking rhythmic patterns.  The passages of eerie subtlety in this first movement, with electronics by Ikue Mori, are particularly effective in contrast to the industrial-racket expectations that the next two parts deliver on.  By this point, with drving rhythms underpinning the other noises, comparisons with Einstürzende Neubauten are inescapable, but honestly, who cares - if you like this sort of thing, Gosfield puts it together really, really well, and it's such riotous fun to crank up loud.  

 

The shorter work that closes the album and provides its title takes similar inspiration from industrial sounds, but writes them in to a (slightly) more conventional context for string quartet and percussion quartet.  It's a nice conclusion to a very satisfying album which makes me want to listen to more of Gosfield's music (believe it or not, this one was a charity shop find, earlier this year).

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Alexei Lubimov - Der Bote: Elegies For Piano (2002)

A sublime programme, and one spanning the centuries from baroque to modern, performed by Alexei Lubimov (b. 1944, Moscow).  This recording was made by DRS Radio in Zurich at the end of 2000, and released as an ECM New Series album a year and a half later.

 

Kicking off with a 20-minute stretch that pairs CPE Bach and John Cage, it's clear that this is no ordinary classical solo piano recital.  But you know what, the Fantasie Für Klavier and a nice pacey In A Landscape complement each other just fine, and things just get more interesting from there.  With an overall theme of 'elegies', and an album title of 'the messenger' (taken from the haunting final piece), as a concept piece it plays out well, and just sounds heavenly.  Balancing stock repertoire choices like Liszt, Chopin and Debussy with the kind of more recent composers that have long been Lubimov's interest (Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov), he turns in a great set that feels satisfying from beginning to end on every listen.

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George Russell's New York Band - Live In An American Time Spiral (rec. 1982, rel. 1983)

Finishing up this little box set of George Russell's incredible music with the composer firmly focused on his New York Big Band, who we heard in their initial incarnation last time.  Only a couple of members from that group remained by the time of this recording at the end of July 1982, and the lineup here's as strong as any Russell band.  Just three long pieces: taking up all of the album's first half is Time Spiral, a Swedish Radio commission written in 1979.  Starting from mellow electric piano, it boils over more than once into a funk monster with plenty of scorching solo spots.  The rest of the album digs into Russell's rich back catalogue all the way to the late 40s, in a barnstroming Ezz-Thetic, and early 60s for D.C. Divertimento which gets a groove-smoking makeover.  Tons of fun from a firey ensemble.

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The rest of the "Complete Black Saint & Soul Note" box set:

Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature

Trip To Prillarguri

Othello Ballet Suite

Listen To The Silence

Vertical Event VI

New York Big Band

Giya Kancheli - Symphonies No. 1 & 7, Mourned By The Wind (1992)

Some more recordings of the Georgian master of steely storminess and melancholy calm, all taped in Moscow in September 1992.  The 'world premiere recording' banner up there I assume only refers to Kancheli's 7th Symphony (composed in 1986), as the other works on the disc both had prior releases - see links below for an earlier Mourned By The Wind.

This album, then, functions as a kind of bookending of Kancheli's symphonic era, that began in 1967 with his 1st and ended 19 years later with the aforementioned 7th.  Symphony No. 1's two movements show early signs of the Kancheli trademarks - fluctuating dynamics, especially in the choppy first movement, then a more languid solemnity in the second (love that twinkling percussion though).  The dramatic fireworks and passages of elegaic respite of Symphony No. 7 are contained in a single, flowing movement lasting 21 minutes.  Some later recordings are noted as proper blow-your-speakers-out monstrosities, but this premiere doesn't sound too extreme.

In between the symphonic bookends sits a lovely rendering of Mourned By The Wind, Liturgy for Viola and Orchestra.  It's not drastically different in approach to the 1988 Georgian recording, more a matter of taste - occasional little subtleties are more apparent in one version than in another.  Nice to have a contrast.

 

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Giya Kancheli at SGTG: 

Symphonies No. 3 & 6

Bright Sorrow/Mourned By The Wind (80s recordings)

BBC Concert Orchestra / Marcin Wasilewski Trio - Tribute To Tomasz Stańko (live at EFG London Jazz Festival, 16th Nov 2022)

As the noted in the radio host's intro, the late, great Tomasz Stańko would've been 80 this year.  An ideal time for a tribute concert, then - and this one definintely delivers the goods, with the trio who worked with him for several years augmented by orchestra and special guests.  Since the Polish trumpeter's death four years ago, we've been left with a truly great catalogue in European jazz, and the impression (I certainly get) that Stańko just kept getting better with age.  His last few years are my favourite to return to over and over, and music from this period forms the core of the setlist, the elegaic melodies enhanced by the BBC Concert Orchestra in ways that serve the material well.

The first half begins with Yankiel's Lid and Street Of Crocodiles from Polin (links to other albums below), spotlighting young saxophonist Emma Rawicz.  To fill the essential trumpet role, we then get Avishai Cohen for the rest of the evening, starting with a beautiful rendition of the Wisława title track.  More guests are introduced by way of a duet interlude - guitarist Rob Luft, a recent addition to the ECM stable, backs singer Alice Zawadzki on a folk song arrangement of hers.  Luft is then the featured player as we return to Stańko's music for Terminal 7, to lead in to the interval - and I've left this 20-minute section of the broadcast intact for a change, as the announcer features clips of an interview with Stańko recorded in 2008.

 

Tomasz Stańko's early association with Krzysztof Komeda, mentioned in the interval, is also reflected in the concert resuming with the Lullabye from Rosemary's Baby, sung by Zawadzki backed by the orchestra. Stańko's own music for film and theatre is also touched on, with A Farewell To Maria and Roberto Zucco - good to hear from a corner of the Stańko ouevre that remains lesser-known (not least because those obscure soundtracks could do with being reissued).  Other than Celine, an arrangement of material from Suspended Night, the rest of the set returns to the Wisława album - Faces, April Story and then a brief rip through Assassins to close a superb concert.  Avishai Cohen sounds fantastic throughout, given the not inconsiderable task of stepping into Stańko's shoes; the Marcin Wasilewski Trio a perfect link to the composer in life (and Wasilewski is always such an incredible pianist), and well-chosen guests and sympathetic arrangements all make this a fitting tribute.  If you love Stańko's music even half as much as I do, don't miss this one.

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Tomasz Stańko at SGTG:
Jazzmessage From Poland
Purple Sun

TWET 

Balladyna
Freelectronic in Montreux
Bluish
Bosonossa And Other Ballads
Matka Joanna 

Suspended Night

Neighbourhood (Manu Katché) 

Wolność W Sierpniu - Freedom In August
Dark Eyes
Wisława
Polin

Stravinsky - Apollo, The Rite Of Spring (City Of Birmingham Symphony Orch/Rattle, 1989)

Picked up this cracking little 80s recording recently for a couple of reasons: I like Rattle's Stravinsky in general, and also here was a work of Igor's that I hadn't heard before.  Apollo, or Apollon Musagète in its full original title, is a two-tableaux ballet dating to the late 1920s and centred around the Muses of Greek mythology.  The recording here by the Birmingham Symphony under Rattle is Stravinsky's 1947 revision of Apollo.  In contrast to the strident, outrageous in its time Rite, Apollo is gentle, lyrical and almost Romantically lush, making it a great fit for Rattle, with a great sounding orchestra.  The Rite Of Spring that accompanies Apollo on this disc is also the 1947 version, and doesn't go for over-the-top fireworks but brings out lots of nice subtleties.  A really enjoyable collection overall.

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Igor Stravinsky at SGTG:

Agon (plus bonus post: Firebird, Petroushka & Rite, Rattle 2017)

Aldous Huxley In Memoriam/Pribaoutki (live 2022)

BBC Concert Orchestra & Guy Barker's New Jazz Orchestra - Celebrating Mingus (30th Sept 2022)

Broadcast of a tribute concert held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London just over a month ago.  Celebrating Mingus, in his centenary year, is achieved by the two orchestras and saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin not in a straightforward programme of Mingus tunes - as was the case with a previous tribute concert posted here - but through Mingus' formative influences, and a grand narrative work in the second half.

The concert does start off with a pair of Mingus classics - Don't Be Afraid, The Clown's Afraid Too and Us Is Two, freshly orchestrated by Guy Barker (as is the whole programme) and providing a punchy, vivacious curtain-raiser.  The tempo then comes down for a lovely Fleurette Africaine, and stays with Ellington for Money Jungle's title track and I Got It Bad.  This section, sketching out Mingus' early influences, next reaches all the way back to Joplin and an orchestration of Jelly Roll Morton's arrangement of Maple Leaf Rag, before returning to Ellington by way of Tizol for a great Caravan.

The single work devised by Barker that takes up the remainder of the concert is titled Mingus 100, and over 70 minutes paints the colourful life of its subject in vivid hues.  Far from being just a run-together medley of Mingus themes (although many classics are present and correct), the beautifully-arranged suite is narrated by Allan Harris, to a text by Rob Ryan.  Harris is a thoroughly engaging guide to the musical events, inhabiting the mercurial character of Mingus in all his joys, sorrows and memorable moments, turning the suite into something approaching a mini-musical biopic.  Just listen to the whole thing and enjoy, it's a wonderful tribute.

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Mingus at SGTG:

East Coasting
Jazz Portraits: Mingus In Wonderland 

Mingus Ah Um & Mingus Dynasty 
Oh Yeah

Tijuana Moods

Mingus Revisited (aka Pre-Bird)
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady  
Mingus Plays Piano  
Let My Children Hear Music

Mingus Moves
Changes One & Two
Cumbia & Jazz Fusion
plus:  

The Quintet: Jazz At Massey Hall
Blue Moods  
Money Jungle  

Mingus (Joni Mitchell album)
BBC Proms Tribute by Metropole Orkest

George Russell - New York Big Band (rec. 1977-78, first rel. 1982)

Getting into late 70s period Russell now, and starting to leave the Scandinavian era behind.  Not entirely though, as one track here - a great version of the Russell/Dizzy Gillespie co-write Cubano Be, Cubano Bop - comes from the same Swedish concert at which Vertical Event VI was recorded.  Otherwise, per the album title, we're in New York (possibly, per the album cover, at the Village Vanguard - the liners don't specify a venue) with hard grooving, bluesier material, especially on the vocal track Big City Blues.  A couple of re-arranged excerpts from Listen To The Silence, and one from Living Time, the 1972 suite released on CBS and featuring Bill Evans, highlight Russell's more complex work, and the album is rounded out by a piece from trumpet player Stanton Davis and an arrangement of God Bless The Child.

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pw: sgtg 

Previously posted at SGTG:

Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature

Trip To Prillarguri

Othello Ballet Suite

Listen To The Silence

Vertical Event VI

Philharmonia Orchestra (featuring Víkingur Ólafsson) Plays Mahler, Adams & Clyne (22nd Sept 2022)

Heady stuff from the Philharmonia, as they kick off their new season with a Mahler symphony.  Some lightness first though in a piece composed by London-born, New York based Anna Clyne for the 2013 Proms, twisting and twirling through evocations of masquerade balls gone by for a nicely frothy five minutes.

 

The Philharmonia Orchestra are then joined by pianist Víkingur Ólafsson to play Must The Devil Have All The Tunes?, John Adams' funk-infused piano concerto from 2018.  To sign off before the interval, Ólafsson encores with a gorgeous Rameau piece.  The second half of the concert is then given over to Mahler's hour-plus 5th Symphony in all its sombre-to-life-affirming glory, to complete a slightly odd on paper but very enjoyable programme, brilliantly played.

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John Adams at SGTG:
Shaker Loops (orchestral version)
Shaker Loops (original version) / Light Over Water
Grand Pianola Music 
The Chairman Dances, etc
The Chairman Dances (live 2020)
Road Movies, Hallelujah Junction etc
Harmonium etc (scroll past main post)

Naive And Sentinmental Music (live 2019)

Harmonielehre (live 2022)

Al Wilson - Searching For The Dolphins (expanded edition 2008; orig. rel. 1969)

Sticking with the charity shop finds for the second post this week.  Picked this one up on the assumption it was based around a take on Fred Neil's evergreen song that I find weirdly moving whoever's doing it, and it does indeed kick off with a very nice Dolphins, Mississippi-born Al Wilson (1939-2008) in fine voice.  This is followed by a solid By The Time I Get To Phoenix - okay, so it's a late-60s pop-soul album, and a pretty good one.  

 

The original LP, on the Liberty-distributed Soul City label, came with a hot Wrecking Crew backing band - Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon, Larry Knechtel, James Burton et al - and a great Southern soul vocalist out front.  Wilson released a handful of non-album singles at the turn of the 70s, which are captured here as worthwhile bonus tracks (check out CCR's Lodi).  Then there's The Snake, sitting at the halfway point of the LP, which instantly brought back great memories of nights out for me.

In the late 90s/early 00s, Edinburgh College of Art's indie disco night on Saturdays was never complete without the DJ, who must've been a bit of an old Northern Soul boy, dropping in The Snake to bring it to the attention of a new generation of hip young kids in their skinny jeans.  So that was nice to hear again after 20 years, and it's still a belter.  Even better to hear it in the context of an album-plus, to get a broader view on Wilson's incredible voice and the classic production with those top-drawer musicians.

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Jacques Loussier - Play Bach (rec. circa 1965 - I think - this compilation dated 1987)

Charity shop acquisition that caught my eye a couple of weeks ago, that cheap 'n cheesy cover art instantly bringing to mind the hilariously badly-adorned 80s reissues of Tangerine Dream's first four albums.  This album is no more 80s-sounding, electronic or retro-futuristic in any way - it's a collection of jazz piano trio recordings.

Angers-born pianist Jacques Loussier (1934-2019) and his trio of bassist Pierre Michelot (who was also part of Miles Davis' Ascenseur Pour L'échafaud lineup) and drummer Christian Garros occasionally varied their repertoire, but are largely notable for one thing.  It's in the title of this CD, and in the titles of dozens of LPs released from 1959 onwards (why not run a good pun into the ground?) - yep, the Loussier Trio's USP was to arrange the music of J. S. Bach for jazz trio.  They did it a lot (including updated recordings of the same pieces), and they did it very well.

This made the random find of a 1987-compiled CD on the Accord label - with no recording dates or any other source information - a bit baffling at first.  Eventually I narrowed down, with reasonable certainty, to this collection being sourced from live recordings originally released in 1965 as a double LP titled Play Bach Aux Champs-Élysées.  The 20-minute Partita In Se Bémol matched an Aux Champs version on YouTube, and the rest kind of fell into place from there.  Oh, and one other head-scratcher with that particular track: it briefly pauses for applause just before the eight-minute mark; the disc plays a track split here, but the Partita is listed as one continuous track on the back and inners (the disc thus knocking the rest of the track numbers out of sync with the tracklist).  I've edited the Partita back together here to match the original release, and because Accord's 80s compiling standards were starting to give me a migraine.

A fun-ish week of detective work aside, this stuff sounds really nice, and works.  Loussier (or Michelot) more often than not plays a few bars straight, then the melody gets jazzed up a bit, then the performance spins out into genuine piano trio interplay.  That's about it.  The fact that these are live recordings probably helps focus the extemporisations into something next-level and highly enjoyable.  And there's undeniably something quite "purest source" about using Bach as a springboard for the melodic, harmonic etc improvisations of jazz.  Wouldn't mind exploring more Loussier in future.

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pw: sgtg

Frank Zappa - Petit Wazoo (live 1972, rel. 2006 & 2016)

Following on from the "Wazoo" big band, Zappa spent October and November 1972 taking a slimmed-down version of his jazz ensemble on the road.  This became known as the "Petit Wazoo" band, and in Zappa's late life and after his death an official document of this group became one of the most sought-after releases by fans.

Well, he had been working on one.  When the keepers of The Vault looked for Petit Wazoo tapes in the mid-00s to compile into an album, they found tapes cut, sequenced and mixed by Zappa periodically between 1972 and 1977.  This was released in 2006 as Imaginary Diseases, and has the unmistakable stamp of being Zappa's own concept.  A couple of short pieces lead into a lengthy minor-key blues, and the album's just warming up.  A belter of a Farther O'Blivion follows, including a great drum solo by Jim Gordon, then another slinky groove-improv.  The highlights keep coming in the form of the title track and the final piece, a jam from Montreal, capping off an extremely satisfying album of great arrangements and top-notch guitar playing.

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Plans for the 'vault release' of Petit Wazoo music were then shelved - for no less than a decade, for whatever reason (no less than 30 albums separate the two releases, so possibly the Zappa Family Trust just like to keep things varied, and certainly can't be viewed as stingy to fans, as new archive releases continue unabated to this very month).  In any case, Little Dots came out in 2016 as a vault-selected companion piece to Imaginary Diseases, and contained a couple of non-instrumentals this time: a fine but no great revelation Cosmik Debris, and a full-length (literal) shaggy-dog story Rollo.  

 

Added to this are more jam-based pieces from Kansas City and Columbia, and the two-part composition that gives the album its title.  All great to hear, and the players interact brilliantly once again, but I think the Zappa-conceived sequence of Imaginary Diseases just edges it slightly as an overall album experience.  Great to have both to listen to side by side though, as a two-hour insight into this all-too short-lived ensemble.

 

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Frank Zappa at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

The Grand Wazoo

Wazoo (Live 1972) 

Road Tapes Venue #2 (Live 1973)

Roxy & Elsewhere

One Size Fits All

Orchestral Favourites

Sleep Dirt

Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar

Boulez Conducts Zappa - The Perfect Stranger  

Jazz From Hell

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Total Immersion at The Barbican, London (live 2022)

The Byrds - (Untitled)/(Unissued) (deluxe edition 2000, orig. 2LP rel. 1970)

I used to reach for this one a lot at the turning of the seasons, and dug it out for a fresh appraisal the other day.  First released in September 1970 as a live record/studio record double, (Untitled) put in place the Byrds lineup that would prove most stable, carrying them through to the end (apart from the original lineup's reunions).  Roger McGuinn, Clarence White, Skip Battin and Gene Parsons proved to be a tight, adventurous live unit, and the collection of concert recordings that open the collection rip through material old and new culminating in a 16-minute jam around Eight Miles High.

The studio album is equally revelatory, marking a fresh high point in Byrdsian songwriting.  McGuinn at the time was attempting to write a musical entitled Gene Tryp, based on Peer Gynt and in collaboration with Jacques Levy (later Dylan's Desire co-writer).  As well as the live opener Lover Of The Bayou, songs from this abandoned project appearing on (Untitled) are Chestnut Mare, All The Things and Just A Season, working just fine as quality standalone songs.  Skip Battin comes to the fore as a writer too, on the memorable Vietnam-themed closer Well Come Back Home, and collaborative efforts Yesterday's Train, Hungry Planet and You All Look Alike.

Live and studio together, this 70 minutes of music add up to one of the strongest albums ever released under the Byrds moniker, but even more was recorded - and released as a bonus CD 30 years later.  This was my first exposure to (Untitled), on receiving a mix tape from someone with the gorgeous acoustic take on Lowell George's Willin' and seeking out the source.  The (Unissued) disc took a mirror approach to the original album, starting out with 20 minutes of studio outtakes then adding 25 minutes of further live material - and a neat little hidden extra in an accapella Amazing Grace.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

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Previously posted at SGTG: Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

George Russell - Listen To The Silence (rec. 1971, orig. rel. 1973)

Back to George Russell with another commissioned work, this time for the 1971 Kongsberg Jazz Festival, and recorded at its live premiere performance (with some studio effects added later) on 21st June 1971, Kongsberg Church, Norway.  Taking some lines from Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Nicoll, Dee Brown and snippets from Newsweek and the New York Times for its libretto, Listen To The Silence is a choral work calling for two choirs as well as jazz ensemble.  

 

The chanting voices get things underway before Russell, Garbarek & co enter to drive the music forward, and the work continues in this manner with the church acoustics giving the stentorian vocal delivery a definite atmospheric boost.  The instrumental sections are frequently more minimal and stripped-down compared to Russell's other work of the era, but this works in favour of the overall stark mood, and makes the Garbarek-Rypdal section at the start of Event IV all the more outstanding.  Subtitled "A Mass For Our Time", Listen To The Silence might be a bit 'of its time' in subject matter, but it remains a captivating listening experience to this day.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature

Trip To Prillarguri

Othello Ballet Suite

Vertical Event VI

John Adams - Harmonielehre (BBC SSO & RSNO, 9th February 2022)

A live concert broadcast from back in February, and a joining of forces to mark the Association of British Concert Orchestras' 2022 conference in Glasgow.  The hundred-plus combined might of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra renders John Adams' mid-80s work in fine detail, but first up is a UK premiere.  Samy Moussa's Elysium is inspired by views of the afterlife in classical Greece, and shimmers into view before building in grandeur.

The solo spotlight for the programme falls on 19-year old Spanish violinist María Dueñas, who lives up to her "rising superstar" billing in a great rendering of Shostakovich's 1st Violin Concerto.  After the interval, the double-orchestra gives its full energy to John Adams' wondrous Harmoniehlehre.  Taking fresh inspiration from imagery in his dreams, Romantic music and harmonic exploration, Adam's three-section work from 1985 barrels along in unforgettable style.

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Samy Moussa at SGTG:

A Globe Itself Infolding 

 

Dmitri Shostakovich at SGTG:

Symphony No. 15 (live 2017, scroll past main post)

Symphony No. 15 (live 2022) 

John Adams at SGTG:
Shaker Loops (orchestral version)
Shaker Loops (original version) / Light Over Water
Grand Pianola Music 
The Chairman Dances, etc
The Chairman Dances (live 2020)
Road Movies, Hallelujah Junction etc
Harmonium etc (scroll past main post)

Naive And Sentinmental Music (live 2019)

Miles Davis - Aura (rec. 1985, rel. 1989)

A suite of music composed for Miles by Palle Mikkelborg in 1984, and recorded in early 1985.  Contractual hurdles delayed its release until 1989, but it was worth the wait - Aura is nothing less than Miles Ahead for the 80s, lushly orchestrated but with the sound right up to date for its era.  Elements of rock, reggae and electronic music are all woven into the multi-colour suite, which is musically germinated from a ten-note theme based on the letters in "MILES DAVIS", a la B-A-C-H.  Sometimes eerily ambient, such as the opening minute with the calm broken by John McLaughlin introducing the theme, sometimes hard-edged and frenetic, Aura is a great album that finds Miles with plenty of spark left in him.

link

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Miles Davis at SGTG:
Conception
Walkin'
Blue Moods
Bags' Groove
Miles Ahead (with Gil Evans)
Sketches Of Spain (with Gil Evans)
Quiet Nights (with Gil Evans) 

A Tribute To Jack Johnson

Live-Evil
On The Corner

In Concert

Big Fun
Agharta

Dark Magus

We Want Miles

Frank Zappa (BBC Symphony Orchestra / uBu Ensemble) - Total Immersion at The Barbican, London (19th March 2022)

With the Proms posts over, here's a 'Total Immersion Day' broadcast from earlier in the year.  Taking a fresh look at the Zappa music of the London Symphony Orchestra, Perfect Stranger and Yellow Shark eras, and more besides, the day's events also threaded in Zappa's formative influences as a composer.  This gives us a great take on Varèse's Intégrals as well as some lesser-known Stravinsky, in his late work written in memoriam of Aldous Huxley and the miniature song-cycle Pribaoutki from 1914.

For Zappa's music, the 'Total Immersion' concerts were divided between the full force of the BBC Symphony Orchestra to play the LSO-era works, and the contemporary ensemble uBu for the rest.  From the former, we get the lushly-orchestrated version of Pedro's Dowry, the complementary ballet pieces Bob In Dacron and Sad Jane, and the full-length Mo 'N Herb's Vacation.  The ensemble play The Perfect Stranger, Outrage At Valdez, Dog/Meat and Be-Bop Tango, giving full vivid life to Zappa's musical colourings.  Taken together, this broadcast is a great presentation of unique music, made even more informative by a couple of chats with Negative Dialectics Of Poodle Play author Ben Watson.

link

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Frank Zappa at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

The Grand Wazoo

Wazoo (Live 1972) 

Road Tapes Venue #2 (Live 1973)

Roxy & Elsewhere

One Size Fits All

Orchestral Favourites

Sleep Dirt

Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar

Boulez Conducts Zappa - The Perfect Stranger  

Jazz From Hell

You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The Helsinki Concert

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Weather Report - Tale Spinnin' (1975)

Percussive fireworks and melodic fusion from Weather Report at the top of their game.  In his only appearance with WR, Leon 'Ngudu' Chancler of Herbie Hancock/Santana/many others fame is the drummer, with Alyrio Lima handling percussion and the core trio of Zawinul, Shorter and Johnson carried over from the previous album.  Tale Spinnin' gets off to a flying start with one of Weather Report's most memorable album openers, Man In The Green Shirt, and grooves onwards with a sublime Shorter composition and another lengthy Zawinul piece.  It's not all funky fusion - the highly atmospheric Badia is a definite standout, with Zawinul's eerie electronics continuing the band's early experimental strand.

link

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Previously posted at SGTG:

s/t debut

I Sing The Body Electric

Mysterious Traveller 

Black Market

BBC Proms 2022: Marius Neset / London Sinfonietta - Geyser (3 Sept 2022)

The last post from this year's Proms is another world premiere, in this work composed by Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset.  Playing with the London Sinfonietta, Neset took his geologically-inspired suite from its calm beginnings to frenetic interlocking patterns with great solos and on to much more besides.  Don't take the track splits I've added in as necessarily accurate - this was mostly guesswork as only the first couple of sections are applauded, all the rest segues, and I had nothing else to refer to.  But do enjoy all the twists and turns of this incredible work, with Neset's core quintet blending wonderfully with the ensemble.

link

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Wynton Marsalis / Eastman Wind Ensemble - Carnaval (1987)

Been meaning to give Marsalis a listen for ages, so this charity shop find came in handy.  It's not exactly typical of his straight-ahead revivalism of pre-60s bop, though - Carnaval reaches even further back to pay homage to the brass bands of the turn of the 20th century.  Not a great introduction to Wynton's trumpet playing either - he sticks to cornet throughout for brass-band lead-instrument authenticity.  But regardless, this is a really nice album.

Marsalis is backed throughout by the Eastman Wind Ensemble, conducted by Donald Hunsberger.  The programme sounds beautifully recorded (full digital, eh, great traditionalist? Shouldn't you have been recording on to Edison cylinders for this project? ;)) and features era-typical brass band repertoire from Jean-Baptiste Arban, Paganini, Rimsky-Korsakov and more.  Ideal music to accompany the last days of mild weather before the change of seasons.

link

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