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Mabel’s Dream

Posted in Biographical, Jazz with tags , , , on June 22, 2009 by telescoper

I could attempt to make a cheesy Radio 2 kind of link between my previous post and this one, along the lines of “From one dream to another..” but I don’t think I’ll bother.

Years ago my mum told me that she heard the tune Mabel’s Dream played on the piano by a friend of the family by the name of Johnny Handle. Best known as a folk musician (and founder member of a well-known band called The High Level Ranters) he is also a music teacher and musicologist with a wide range of interests in music.  I read somewhere that this lovely tune was originally written by Jelly Roll Morton and performed by him on solo piano, but I’ve never managed to locate a solo version. However, every time I try looking for it (which I did this evening) I seem to come across something really nice. Today was no exception.

By far the most famous recording of Mabel’s Dream was made by King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band in Chicago in 1923. This was the band that the young Louis Armstrong belonged to before going on to make the classic Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, one of which I posted a bit ago. It’s interesting how different the earlier band sounds:  with two cornets (King Oliver and Louis Armstrong), clarinet (Johnny Dodds), and trombone (Honore Dutrey) playing  together virtually all the time except for short improvised solo breaks. King Oliver usually played lead cornet, at least in their earlier recordings, with Louis Armstrong playing a decorative counterpoint around him rather like a clarinettist might. Later on, they swapped leads freely and completely intuitively producing a sound that was entirely unique.

The ensemble playing is intricate, but the band had no written music preferring to work exclusively from “head” arrangements. Their music is consistently delightful to listen to, even though the recordings are very low-fi, with a succession of marchy themes that makes it impossible not to want to tap your feet when you listen to them. You can find their version of Mabel’s Dream here.

Over time, this classic type of polyphonic Jazz- derived from its New Orleans roots – gradually morphed  into musical form dominated by much simpler arrangements and a succession of virtuoso solos. This change was also reflected in the differing fortunes of Louis Armstrong and King Oliver. The former went on to become an international celebrity, while the latter lost all his savings when his bank went bust during the Wall Street Crash. He ended his days working as a janitor, and died in poverty in a dingy rooming house in Savannah, Georgia in 1938.

When the traditional Jazz revival happened after the Second Wold War, many fans turned against the Hot Sevens because they weren’t genuine “Noo Awlins” meaning that they hankered after music that was made more collectively and had less emphasis on the soloists. Across Europe in particular, many bands tried to recreate the sound of the earlier era of American Jazz, with varying degrees of success. 

Looking around for a version of Mabel’s Dream, I came across the following clip from a French band called The High Society Jazz Band which I think is just gorgeous. The recording was made at a live performance in 1960, at the height of the “trad” revival. The lineup of the band is just like King Oliver’s many years earlier, complete with the front line of two cornets, clarinet and trombone as well as piano, drums, banjo and sousaphone. Mostly it’s a deliberate note-for-note copy of the King Oliver version, but at a slightly slower tempo. Normally I don’t really go for deliberate copies like this, even if they’re meant as a tribute, but any two cornettists willing and able to copy Louis Armstrong and King Oliver deserve the greatest respect! Hats off , then, to Pierre Merlin and Claude Rabanit (two names quite new to me) for doing such a great job. In fact, I also like Pierre Atlan’s take on Johnny Dodd’s clarinet breaks, and the trombonist (Mowgli Jospin) deserves a mention for his name alone!

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Midsummer Madness

Posted in Biographical, Music, Poetry with tags , , on June 21, 2009 by telescoper

I’ve just realised that the Summer Solstice happened this morning at about 6.47am British Summer Time (5h 46m 45s UTC). Astronomy buffs will know that’s the time when the Sun reaches its most northerly position in the sky, leading to the longest day in the northern hemisphere.

Since it’s also the bicentennial year of Felix Mendelssohn it was a no-brainer to decide to celebrate by picking one of the beautiful pieces he wrote as music for the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare.

Whenever anyone mentions that play I can’t help remembering the version of it we did at School. I only got to act in two plays when I was a schoolboy, but they were both authentically Shakespearean in the sense that all the parts, including the female ones, were played by boys. It was an all-boys school, you see. My best role was undoubtedly as Lady Macbeth in the Scottish play – a much more interesting part than her husband, if you ask me. The only other attempt at acting I ever engaged in was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Although I say so myself, my Bottom was the talk of the sixth form.

(I was going to say “and thereby hangs a tail”, but decided not to…)

I should also mention that I also saw Andy Lawrence playing the same part in the Queen Mary Players production of The Dream. I wonder if he remembers doing that?

Curiously, the phrase from which I got the title of this post (“this is very midsummer madness”) is not from this play but from Twelfth Night, a play whose title refers to winter time. I think it might have been a joke.

Anyway, I’m rambling. This clip is a plug for a new recording which sounds pretty good to me. I’ve picked the wonderful Notturno:

Postscript: I’m aware that some people might have been offended by some of the clerihews recently posted on this site. Sometimes the lure of a rhyme can take these into areas best left unvisited. I’d therefore like to offer these, the closing lines of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by way of an apology. I’ve also now taken the Clerihews themselves offline, owing to a number of attempts to post  abusive and/or threatening comments on that page (none of which came from anyone actually named there).

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

I’m glad at least that nobody tried to do a clerihew about Puck. I mean, how could you possible find a rhyme for “Robin Goodfellow”?

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Potato Head Blues

Posted in Biographical, Jazz with tags , , on June 12, 2009 by telescoper

I’ve just spent several hours ploughing through yet more examination scripts – first year ones, not needed before the finals Examination Board. By way of a bit of refreshment I thought I’d listen to this, and enjoyed it so much I thought I’d share it on here.

At one point in the film Manhattan, the character played by Woody Allen makes a list of the things that make life worth living. This record is one of them. Potato Head Blues was recorded on May 10th 1927 in the Okeh Studios in Chicago by Louis Armstrong and the Hot Seven. It’s not actually a blues, but we won’t quibble about that because whatever it is not it is definitely a timeless Jazz masterpiece.

The other members of the band are Johnny Dodds (clarinet, heard to good effect in the solo before Louis Armstrong), Johnny’s brother Warren “Baby” Dodds (drums), Louis Armstrong’s first wife Lil Armstrong (née Hardin, piano), Johnny St Cyr (banjo), Pete Briggs (brass bass or tuba) and John Thomas on trombone. But the star of the performance is, of course, Satchmo himself, who was at the absolute peak of his powers when this record was made. If you have any doubts about what a musical genius he was, go straight to the point (at about 1:50) where he launches into his famous stop-time solo chorus which is just breathtaking in its power and inventiveness. Built from a succession of dazzling impromptu phrases, it explodes into a joyous climax which is beautifully sustained into the final ensemble chorus that follows.  Enjoy!

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Examination Matters

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , on June 10, 2009 by telescoper

I made it safely back to Blighty last night and have spent the day catching up on a few things. I wasn’t really planning to post anything today, but after looking through the comments on my previous item I thought it was probably a good idea to move on!

My trip to Copenhagen was carefully timed to miss the mammoth examiners’ meeting that took place yesterday in the Cardiff School of Physics & Astronomy, at which decisions were made about the degree classes of the graduating students. Final results have to be confirmed by the University but, following a longstanding tradition, provisional pass lists went up on the boards immediately after the meeting.

When I came in this morning I was delighted to hear that the meeting went off fairly smoothly and also delighted to see the pass lists had very good news for many of the students I know quite well personally. Particular congratulations to all the students who got First Class Honours, some of whom will be taking another step on the academic treadmill and going on to do PhDs here and there. I’m not really sorry I missed the examiners’ meeting, but I am sorry I wasn’t here to congratulate the soon-to-be-graduates in person.

I remember that when I finished my degree and got the result I didn’t actually feel much euphoria, only exhaustion. When I was younger, exams were always times of enormous stress for me. I guess that’s because, when I first went to School, I was very far behind everyone else and, as one of the “slow” kids, I was almost thrown in the educational wastebin. I gradually caught up but for a long time felt that I was still regarded as a bit of a dunderhead so, to prove I wasn’t a fake,  to myself as much as anyone else, I worked very hard at all the examinations I had to take. It was only when I got to University that I realised all the stress wasn’t worth it. It’s nice to pass but you shouldn’t become obsessed with grades and certificates. Examinations seem to have an almost overwhelming significance when they’re the only thing on your horizon, but years later you will look back on them as being of very little real importance (regardless of whether you did well or not).

My feelings about examinations agree pretty much with William Wordsworth, who studied at the same University as me, as expressed in this quotation from The Prelude:

Of College labours, of the Lecturer’s room
All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand,
With loyal students, faithful to their books,
Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants,
And honest dunces–of important days,
Examinations, when the man was weighed
As in a balance! of excessive hopes,
Tremblings withal and commendable fears,
Small jealousies, and triumphs good or bad–
Let others that know more speak as they know.
Such glory was but little sought by me,
And little won.

It seems to me a great a pity that our system of education – both at School and University – places such a great emphasis on examination and assessment, to the detriment of real learning. The biggest bane of physics education is the way modular degrees have been implemented. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to modularisation in principle. I just think the way we teach modules in British university fails to develop any understanding of the interconnection between different aspects of the subject. That’s an educational disaster because what is most exciting and compelling about physics is its essential unity. Splitting it into little boxes, taught on their own with no relationship to the other boxes, provides us with no scope to nurture the kind of lateral thinking that is key to the way physicists attempt to solve problems. The small size of each module makes the syllabus very “bitty” and fragmented. No sooner have you started to explore something at a proper level than the module is over. More advanced modules, following perhaps the following year, have to recap a large fraction of the earlier modules so there isn’t time to go as deep as one would like even over the whole curriculum.

Our students take 120 “credits” in a year, split into two semesters. These are usually split into 10-credit modules with an examination at the end of each semester. Laboratories and other continuously-assessed work does not involve a written examination, but the system means that a typical  student will have 5 written examination papers in January and another 5 in May. Each paper is two hours.

These factors mean that the ratio of assessment to education has risen sharply over the last decades with the undeniable result that academic standards have fallen in physics. The system encourages students to think of modules as little bit-sized bits of education to be consumed and then forgotten. Instead of learning to rely on their brains to solve problems, students tend to approach learning by memorising chunks of their notes and regurgitating them in the exam. I find it very sad when students ask me what derivations they should memorize to prepare for examinations. A brain is much more than a memory device. What we should be doing is giving students the confidence to think for themselves.

You can contrast this diet of examinations with the regime when I was an undergraduate. My entire degree result was based on six three-hour written examinations taken at the end of my final year, rather than something like 30 examinations taken over 3 years. Moreover, my finals were all in a three-day period. Morning and afternoon exams for three consecutive days is an ordeal I wouldn’t wish on anyone so I’m not saying the old days were better, but I do think we’ve gone far too far to the opposite extreme. The one good thing about the system I went through was that there was no possibility of passing examinations on memory alone. Since they were so close together there was no way of mugging up anything in between them. I only got through  by figuring things out in the exam room.

I don’t want to denigrate the success of our high achievers. They have taken the course we have given them and done extremely well. They deserve admiration and praise. What I’m saying is that I don’t think the education we provide does justice to their talents. That’s our fault, not theirs…

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Notes from the North

Posted in Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on June 8, 2009 by telescoper

Just time for a quick post today. I’m in Copenhagen for a short meeting entitled “Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics from the LHC to Planck“. The meeting only lasts today and tomorrow morning, but it’s been a lot of fun so far and has offered me the chance to chat with a lot of people I don’t often get the chance to talk to.

I suppose the only thing from the meeting I really want to mention in this short post is the  current status of Planck, which is currently about a million km from Earth. Both instruments (the High Frequency Instrument HFI and Low Frequency Instrument LFI) are still performing fine and the satellite,  having now been injected into its rather large orbit around L2, is  cooling down to its operating temperature. So far so good. There will be more tests at the beginning of July, after which it will start its real business of scanning the sky to make maps of the primordial temperature  fluctuations.

Today I gave my (usual) talk about cosmic anomalies (which I’ve blogged about before), but there were also interesting talks about possible interpretation of the positron excess observed in the direction of the Galactic Centre,  on a model of anisotropic dark energy  and a wacky contribution by Igor Novikov about semi-traversible wormholes.

Meanwhile, over lunch and dinner the various European participants of the meeting mulled over the results from the elections to the European parliament which completed yesterday.

The results generally showed a move to the right across Europe. In the United Kingdom this also happened, as the Labour Party’s share of the vote collapsed to just under 16%. I’m not going to shed any tears for them, but I am shamed to admit that my country will now be represented in the European Parliament by two members of the British National Party – a bunch of neo-Nazi thugs who are doing the best they can for their own ends to exploit peoples’ discontent with the mainstream parties. Fortunately their share of the vote (about 6%, on a very low turnout) remained relatively small and was, in fact, less than that of the Green Party. Nevertheless with the 65th anniversary of D-Day only a few days ago, it is depressing that so many people have forgotten the sacrifices that previous generations made to save this country from exactly that  kind of fascist. I hope this disaster is not repeated at the next general election. This kind of monstrosity makes the arcane world of cosmology suddenly seem so irrelevant.

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Returning to Lognormality

Posted in Biographical, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 7, 2009 by telescoper

I’m off later today for a short trip to Copenhagen, a place I always enjoy visiting. I particularly remember a very nice time I had there back in 1990 when I was invited by Bernard Jones, who used to work at the Niels Bohr Institute.  I stayed there several weeks over the May/June period which is the best time of year  for Denmark; it’s sufficiently far North that the summer days are very long, and when it’s light until almost midnight it’s very tempting to spend a lot of time out late at night.

As well as being great fun, that little visit also produced my most-cited paper. I’ve never been very good at grabbing citations – I’m more likely to fall off bandwagons rather than jump onto them – but this little paper seems to keep getting citations. It hasn’t got that many by the standards of some papers, but it’s carried on being referred to for almost twenty years, which I’m quite proud of; you can see the citations per year statistics are fairly flat. The model we proposed turned out to be extremely useful in a range of situations, hence the long half-life.

nph-ref_history

I don’t think this is my best paper, but it’s definitely the one I had most fun working on. I remember we had the idea of doing something with lognormal distributions over coffee one day,  and just a few weeks later the paper was  finished. In some ways it’s the most simple-minded paper I’ve ever written – and that’s up against some pretty stiff competition – but there you go.

Picture1

The lognormal seemed an interesting idea to explore because it applies to non-linear processes in much the same way as the normal distribution does to linear ones. What I mean is that if you have a quantity Y which is the sum of n independent effects, Y=X1+X2+…+Xn, then the distribution of Y tends to be normal by virtue of the Central Limit Theorem regardless of what the distribution of the Xi is  If, however, the process is multiplicative so  Y=X1×X2×…×Xn then since log Y = log X1 + log X2 + …+log Xn then the Central Limit Theorem tends to make log Y normal, which is what the lognormal distribution means.

The lognormal is a good distribution for things produced by multiplicative processes, such as hierarchical fragmentation or coagulation processes: the distribution of sizes of the pebbles on Brighton beach  is quite a good example. It also crops up quite often in the theory of turbulence.

I;ll mention one other thing  about this distribution, just because it’s fun. The lognormal distribution is an example of a distribution that’s not completely determined by knowledge of its moments. Most people assume that if you know all the moments of a distribution then that has to specify the distribution uniquely, but it ain’t necessarily so.

If you’re wondering why I mentioned citations, it’s because it looks like they’re going to play a big part in the Research Excellence Framework, yet another new bureaucratical exercise to attempt to measure the quality of research done in UK universities. Unfortunately, using citations isn’t straightforward. Different disciplines have hugely different citation rates, for one thing. Should one count self-citations?. Also how do you aportion citations to multi-author papers? Suppose a paper with a thousand citations has 25 authors. Does each of them get the thousand citations, or should each get 1000/25? Or, put it another way, how does a single-author paper with 100 citations compare to a 50 author paper with 101?

Or perhaps the REF should use the logarithm of the number of citations instead?

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Lulu

Posted in Biographical, Opera with tags , , , on June 6, 2009 by telescoper

On Thursday (4th June) I went to the first night of the Royal Opera’s new production of Lulu, an Opera by Alban Berg. I was planning to blog about this yesterday but after the Opera my birthday celebrations descended into drunken chaos and I ended up getting back very late to Cardiff yesterday; I had to catch up a number of things so I didn’t have time. After the performance and dinner in a nearby restaurant we sat out on Joao’s roofgarden in Notting Hill drinking until the sun started to come up. That part is a bit of blur, but judging by the scale of my hangover yesterday it must have been good. Anyway, I’ve now recovered enough write something about the Opera.

Before Thursday I hadn’t seen Lulu in a live performance, although I do have it on DVD so I knew a bit about it. Berg was a student of Arnold Schoenberg, but he developed his own take on the twelve-tone techniques developed by his mentor. Not everyone finds  serialist music easy to enjoy, but I think if you’re going to have a go at it this Opera is one of the best places to start. I think the score for Lulu is completely wonderful: it’s constantly changing texture, sometimes lushly romantic (with a big  nod in the direction of Mahler in Act I), sometimes bleak and jagged. Sometimes there is no music at all and the singers use a stylised method of vocalisation in between speaking and singing (called Sprechstimme). This  is used only sparingly in Lulu, but it is wonderfully effective dramatically when it is.

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, conducted by Antonio Pappano, were absolutely fantastic throughout the performance. I’m no musician but I reckon this music must be extremely difficult to play, especially in the brass section, but they played with great passion as well as flawless precision. They really brought Berg’s music to life, and invested it with a vitality that positively glowed throughout the performance. With playing like this, it was easy to understand why Berg is such an influential composer: you can hear in this Opera the ideas behind many Hollywood movie scores, for example.

So what about the Opera itself? The play revolves around the character of Lulu, an enigmatic figure who is at times innocent and vulnerable and at others cynical and manipulative. Her personality is only revealed to us through her interactions with men, all of which end in disaster. Lulu’s first husband has a heart attack and dies; her second commits suicide. She then shoots another man and is imprisoned but eventually escapes. By the end of the opera, many years later on, she has wound up in London and is living in poverty working as a prostitute. She dies at the hands of Jack the Ripper.

The structure of the Opera is like a mirror, with Lulu’s reversal of fortunes happening after an intermezzo in the middle of Act 2, at the centre of which there is a remarkable musical palindrome (shown above). Before this her role in the drama is to drive the men around her into obsession, madness and death, although she never appears to understand why she has this effect on them. After the dramatic fulcrum of the piece she becomes more and more of a victim. The reason for this is not some great change in her own psychological make-up but just that she is getting older and  losing her looks. No longer sexually desirable, she has lost the only way of controlling the men in her life. From this point on, her decline is inexorable and death inevitable.

The new production is quite unlike the recording I have on DVD in that the staging is resolutely minimal. There is no set, just an occasional translucent screen, the costumes are modern and colours are monochrome. Lulu is dressed at one point  in a black cocktail dress very like that worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This might have been a deliberate reference to the parallels between Lulu and Holly Golightly (at least in Truman Capote’s novella, which is a much darker concoction than the film based on it); soprano Agneta Eichenholz bears more than a passing resemblance to Audrey Hepburn too. Her slender build -unusual for an opera singer with such a powerful voice – allowed her to play Lulu’s vulnerable aspects very well.

Against a sparse backdrop  the characters emerge as series of grotesques, which – at least in principle – is not a bad way of  presenting this Opera. Set in such a way it appears as a piece of absurdist theatre which is definitely part of what it represents. There are two problems, however.

One is that the sets give very little clue as to the location of the drama: I wouldn’t have known that the last scene was meant to be Victorian London unless I’d seen it before, so Jack the Ripper’s appearance must have been very  confusing to those who hadn’t picked up on that. Lulu is also meant to be a lot older in the last Act, but no attempt is made to age her in this production.  The libretto makes repeated reference to a painting of her, and it serves at the end to remind her of her age, but no portrait ever appears; I found that a bizarre omission.

The other problem is that there are strong links between the story of Lulu and the Grand Guignol  genre of horror plays, with their  opulently macabre  stagings and exaggeratedly gory endings. Throwing all those connections  away robs the Opera of all of its schlock value and, with that, a great deal of the irony needed to make this blackest of black comedies work the way it should. The killing of Lulu in fact happens off stage in this production which makes the ending very tame. I wouldn’t want to go over-the-top in depicting the horror of Lulu’s death – I wanted to see an Opera, not a snuff movie – but the audience should be shocked by the brutality of her final moments; these are the key to what the Opera is about. Perhaps the director was concerned not to let the drama descend into mere titillation. There’s always a danger of crossing the line into vulgar pornography in depicting explicit sexuality and violence, but I think this production is too afraid of taking risks. This opera should feel more dangerous than this setting allows it to be. Ypu’re not meant to feel comfortable about this Opera.

Although limited by the stylized nature of the production, the principals were good. Agneta Eichenholz’s is a  desensitized creature, damaged by abuse and inhabiting a moral vacuum. Her detachment in the face of the death and destruction around her is perfectly judged. She sang beautifully for the most part but – possibly because of first night nerves – her voice came apart on a couple of high notes early on. Other characters worth mentioning are Michael Volle who was outstanding as Dr Schön and Philip Langridge in the dual role of the Prince and the Marquis.

This morning I read Andrew Clements’ review in the Guardian which I thought was a bit harsh: only two stars doesn’t really do justice to a fascinating evening. I would have  given three stars for the quality of the music alone. Personally, I could have listened to the whole thing in a concert performance and still enjoyed it. But having decided to go for a full staging,  it seems to me a bit perverse to have stripped  it down so drastically. Clements claimed he was “bored” by what happened on stage. I certainly wasn’t, but I did find myself more perplexed by the production than by the moral ambivalence of the story itself, so I’d have to say it didn’t really do justice to an Opera which I still think of as masterpiece.

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Day of Days

Posted in Biographical with tags , on June 4, 2009 by telescoper

Well, here we are then.

Another birthday.

Actually, this one has been great (so far) and I’m looking forward to the rest of the day. Although it coulded over yesterday evening leading me to think our sunny spell was over, today I awoke to bright sunshine again and it’s stayed the same all morning. The garden looks unkempt but is at least full of flowers and smells, and I had my breakfast outside again before toddling off down to the polling station in St Catharine’s Church Hall to cast my vote in the Elections for the European parliament.

We won’t get the results of that election until Sunday because different European countries are voting on different days and the results are only announced when all polls are closed. I’ll be in Copenhagen on Sunday so will have to catch up on the news from there. Other parts of the United Kingdom are also voting for their local Councils too, and those results will be out tomorrow.

I’m not an expert political analyst but it seems to me these elections could go one of two ways: either the major political parties get a complete drubbing or the population is so disgusted with the political establishment that they don’t turn out at all. When I went to my polling station it was completely deserted apart from the two ladies keeping track of the ballot papers. On the basis of that observation, it could be that apathy will carry the day.

Incidentally, I’m very old-fashioned about voting. I don’t agree at all with the trend of encouraging on-line or postal voting. I think it’s part of one’s civic duty to cast a vote and that means getting off your arse and putting a cross on a bit of paper. It gives a sense of participation to vote in person and most excuses for not doing so just amount to  laziness. There are polling stations all over the place, they open from the early morning until late at night, and it only takes a minute or so to vote.  So get out there and do your bit.

Now I have time to do mark a few more examinations before having a shower and getting ready to get on the train to London. As a birthday treat, organized by Joao Magueijo, a bunch of us are off to the posh seats at Covent Garden to see the opening night of the Royal Opera‘s new production of Alban Berg‘s Lulu, which I’ll review when I get back tomorrow.

ps. A package arrived in the post on Tuesday from my Mum with my usual birthday gift. It turned out to be a raincoat – usually a useful thing for someone living in Wales – but on a sweltering day it seemed a bit comical. No doubt I’ll get a chance to wear it before too long…

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Flaming June

Posted in Biographical, Bute Park with tags , , , , on June 1, 2009 by telescoper

Since we’re in the middle of a heatwave I thought “Flaming June” would be a good title. I only just discovered, however, that it’s not as I thought some sort of folk expression or quotation from a poem, but the title of this Pre-Raphaelite painting by Frederic Leighton of a lady wearing what looks like a dress made out of old curtains. Apparently the oleander branch seen in the upper right symbolizes the fragile link between sleep and death. Or, in this weather, the fragile link between sleep and sunstroke.

Anyway, the year rolls on. The examination period is almost over, marking season is upon us and it will soon be time for  examiners’ meetings, class lists and all the arcane business of academic life.

Yesterday I sat in the garden marking a third-year paper or, actually, only half a paper as I give the course jointly with another member of staff. After I’d finished I decided to go for a ride on my bicycle up the Taff Trail and around Bute Park. It was nice, but should have been nicer. Unfortunately, Cardiff City Council’s insane policy of organizing “events” all over the park, involving heavy vehicle movements and temporary buildings, has led to the wholesale destruction of the grass in many places. If the hot summer continues then this will get worse. The site of last year’s National Eisteddfod on Pontcanna Fields still hasn’t recovered; fifteen local sports fields have been completely ruined as you can see from this little video taken a couple of months ago.

Despite ongoing protests, the Council seems determined to press ahead with its plans to make Bute Park unfit as a place of quiet recreation by building a road so that more lorries can enter it.

Anyway, hordes of people were still about in the park yesterday, sunbathing, playing cricket, having barbecues, swimming in the Taff (illegally) and a few brave souls were jogging  around, leaving trails of sweat on the footpaths.

This took me back to the occasion – the best part of twenty years ago – when I entered the Great North Run for the first time. Nowadays this race – the biggest mass participation half-marathon race in the world, with 50,000 competitors – is run in September, but in those days it was held in June. As it happened, there was also a heatwave the first time I did it. I remember lining up at 9.30 on a Sunday morning on the start grid (I was number eleven thousand and something) while the stewards went round pleading with all the participants to take plenty of water as they went around as it was going to be very hot indeed and they didn’t want people suffering from dehydration.

In those days I was quite a keen long-distance runner and was fairly fit. I wasn’t that concerned about the heat but took the advice to heart and determined to stop at all the water stations on the way from Newcastle to South Shields. When we started I also took care not to go off too fast over the first mile or so, which is basically all downhill from the Town Moor to the Tyne Bridge. Not that you could go fast anyway, as the track was so crowded with runners.

I remember the wonderful feeling as we emerged onto the Tyne Bridge and took in the splendid view of the bridges along the river. When we got to Gateshead the crowds were out in large numbers cheering everyone on and I felt completely elated. The first water station was near Gateshead athletics stadium, and I took a drink there as I did at the next, and the next. After Gateshead the route heads towards the Felling bypass at about 4-5 miles and then the runners can see a long climb in front of them. A large thermometer showed the temperature on the road to be about 45 Celsius. Fortunately the people living in houses either side of the road were out in their front gardens offering encouragement and sometimes had their hoses out to shower people as they went past. At one point there was a fire engine that had made an impromptu fountain by the side of the road too.

Unfortunately, as I near the ten mile mark I started to feel a bit strange. I had never actually taken on water while I was running before this race; I never felt the need for it when on training runs. My stomach wasn’t used to the water sloshing around while I was running. I felt quite sick by the time we got to the top of the climb but when I saw the sea and felt its breath on my face I cheered up and descended the steep downward slope towards the seafront near Marsden Rock.

There’s a good mile and a half along the seafront to the finish, however, and I was definitely struggling really badly by then. I could see the finish line but it felt like it wasn’t getting any closer. I slowed to a crawl but kept going, finally reaching the grandstand where a large crowd shouted encouragement. I must have looked dreadful because I heard several people shouting out my number along with “keep going, son”  and “you’re nearly there”.

Eventually I got to the finish line but the feeder lanes were quite busy then – I was finishing at about the peak  time of about 1hr 50 – so I was forced to slow right down because of the people in front of me.

As I crossed the line, I stopped running and was immediately overcome with nausea. I bent over, hands on my knees and emptied the contents of my stomach – mainly water – all over the grass. I felt absolutely dreadful but, after a quick check from the St John Ambulance crew who were on hand, I recovered and found my folks who were nearby. After we got home and I had a shower I felt fine.

About a week later, when I had returned to my flat in London a letter arrived for me. I opened it up and found a small passport-sized photograph, with the caption “YOUR MOMENT OF TRIUMPH”. It turns out there was an automatic camera near the finishing line that snapped everyone crossing it along with a shot of the digital clock showing their finishing time. The idea is that you could order a blow-up of the picture for £25 to put on your wall.

In my case, though, the picture showed not a moment of splendid athletic achievement, but a bedraggled creature puking uncontrollably while those around him looked on in disgust. I didn’t order the blow-up of my throw-up.

Over the years I did the Great North Run a number of times – six or seven, I don’t remember exactly – and a few marathons too, but the strain of running on the roads around London gradually told on my knees and I had to stop because of recurrent pain and swelling. Eventually, a few years ago I surrendered to the inevitable and had arthroscopic surgery to sort out the damage to my knee joints. That seems to have fixed the problem, but my running days are over.

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On Green Dolphin Street

Posted in Biographical, Jazz with tags , , , , , on May 31, 2009 by telescoper

Years ago in 1980, when the great pianist Bill Evans passed away suddenly, Humphrey Lyttelton paid tribute to him on his radio programme “The Best of Jazz” by playing a number of tracks featuring him. I didn’t really know much about Bill Evans at the time – I was only 17 then – but one track that Humph chose has been imprinted on my mind ever since, and it’s one of those pieces of music that I listen to over and over again.

The track is On Green Dolphin Street, as recorded in 1958 by the great Miles Davis sextet of the time that featured himself on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor sax, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley on alto sax, Jimmy Cobb on drums, Paul Chambers on bass and Bill Evans on piano. This is the same band that played on the classic album Kind of Blue, one of the most popular and also most innovative jazz records of all time, which was recorded a bit after the recording of On Green Dolphin Street.  I love Kind of Blue, of course, but I think this track is even better than the many great tracks on that album (All Blues, Flamenco Sketches, Blue in Green, etc). In fact, I’d venture the opinion – despite certainty of contradiction – that this is the greatest Jazz recording ever made.

On Green Dolphin Street was suggested to Miles Davis the band’s leader by the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. It was the theme tune from a film from the late 1940s. It’s also the title of a more recent very fine novel by Sebastian Faulks.

I think the Miles Davis version demonstrates his genius not only as a musician himself but also as a bandleader. On Green Dolphin Street definitely bears the Miles Davis hallmark, but it also manages to accommodate the very different styles of the other musicians and allows them also to impose their personality on it. This is done by having each solo introduced with a passage with the rhythm section playing a different, less propulsive, 3/4 time behind it. This allows each musician to set out their stall before the superb rhythm section kicks into a more swinging straight-ahead beat  (although it still keeps the 3/4 feel alongside the 4-4, courtesy of brilliant drumming by Jimmy Cobb) and they head off into their own territory. As the soloists hand over from one to the other there are moments of beautiful contrast and dramatic tension, especially – and this is the reason why Humph picked this one in 1980 – when Bill Evans takes over for his solo from Cannonball Adderley. He starts with hesitant single-note phrases before moving into a richly voiced two handed solo fully of lush harmonies. It’s amazing to me to hear how the mood changes completely and immediately when he starts playing.

Not that the other soloists play badly either. After Bill Evans short but exquisite prelude, Miles Davis takes over on muted trumpet, more lyrical and less introspective than in Kind of Blue but still with a moody,  melancholic edge. He’s followed by John Coltrane’s passionately virtuosic solo which floods out of him in an agonized stream which contrasts with Miles’ poised simplicity. By contrast, Cannonball Adderley is jaunty and upbeat, sauntering through his solo up to that wonderful moment where he hands over to the piano. Then Miles Davis takes over again to take them to the conclusion of the piece.

I’m not into League tables for music, but this is definitely fit to put up alongside the greatest of them all…

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