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To-Wa-Bac-A-Wa

Posted in History, Jazz with tags , , , , , on February 21, 2023 by telescoper

Today is Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day, and Mardi Gras, which gives me three excuses to post an authentic New Orleans parade tune from way back in 1927.

Jazz began with the marching bands that performed in New Orleans but then largely moved into the bordellos of Storyville, the biggest (legal) red light district in the history of the United States. When Storyville was closed down in 1917 as a threat to the health of the US Navy most professional jazz musicians lost their only source of regular income. Fortunately the very lawmakers who condemned jazz for its association with vice and crime soon passed a law that unwittingly ensured the music’s survival, proposing the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, passed in 1919, which prohibited the manufacture, distribution and sale of alcohol for human consumption. This was soon followed by the Volstead Act, which gave federal government the powers to enforce the 18th amendment. This ushered in the era of Prohibition, which turned Chicago into a bootlegger’s paradise almost overnight and jazz musicians flocked there to perform in the numerous speakeasies. That’s why so many of the great New Orleans Jazz records of the 1920s were actually made in Chicago.

Although the exodus was substantial, not all Jazz musicians left New Orleans. Many stayed there and kept the roots of the music going while it branched out in Chicago and, later, New York. Most of the bands that stayed kept going through the depression but never really achieved great commercial success until the traditional Jazz revival of the 1940s and 1950s. This example is a record produced by the Victor Record Company who sent a recording unit to New Orleans in 1927 to record some of the musicians who had stayed behind, many of them still playing in the marching band tradition of Buddy Bolden.

The title is To-Wa-Bac-A-Wa. I don’t know what it means but it’s an old French creole version of a tune that has subsequently reappeared many times in different forms with different names, most notably Bucket’s Got A Hole In it. The band is Louis Dumaine’s Jazzola Eight. Besides the lead cornet of Louis Dumaine, who lived from 1889 to 1949, it’s worth mentioning the clarinet style of Willie Joseph, which is heavily influenced by that of the great Johnny Dodds.

Anyway, it’s the kind of jaunty march-like number that’s perfect as a Mardi Gras parade tune and it always puts a spring in my step every time I hear it! There are also some old photographs of Mardi Gras parades to get you in the mood.

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Ives, Beethoven and Sibelius at the National Concert Hall

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , , , , , , on February 11, 2023 by telescoper

Last night’s concert by the National Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall in Dublin was one that I’d been looking forward to for a long time. It didn’t disappoint! Congratulations to the National Symphony for yet another excellent concert, this time under the direction of guest conductor Case Scaglione.

The first half of the programme consisted of The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with soloist Federico Colli. That’s an interesting juxtaposition, made even more interesting by the Beethoven piece was played directly after the Ives without a break for applause. I wondered what was up when Case Scaglione walked on stage with Federico Colli who took his seat at the piano at the start of the concert. There is no piano part in The Unanswered Question, so Colli sat quietly until the end of that piece and then went straight into the opening piano statement of the Beethoven. I wasn’t expecting this before the performance but it worked very well. The only problem is that I didn’t get the chance to applaud at the end of The Unanswered Question.

The Unanswered Question is one of my favourite works by Charles Ives (along with Three Places in New England), a composer whom I admire greatly. I wrote a piece about him some years ago, actually.  The Unanswered Question, was completed in 1908 (although it was revised later) and is subtitled “A Cosmic Landscape”. It’s a sort of meditation on the philosophical problem of existence. It comprises three different voices: muted strings playing notes from a G-Major triad (a rather “churchy” key, giving the flavour of a simple hymn). Then, played (in this performance) from the balcony behind the conductor, a solo trumpet poses the Question: a five note figure that is repeated with almost imperceptible variations several times during the work. The reply to the Question comes from the woodwinds, whose dissonant response is at first plaintive but then increasingly agitated and frustrated. Then the Question comes again without an answer, but the strings carry on quietly in G Major until everything goes quiet.

The Piano Concerto No. 4 by Ludwig van Beethoven is in G Major, so there is a continuity between the two pieces in terms of tonality, although of course the musical language is very different. It was composed in 1805/6, a hundred years before the Ives. It’s an audacious piece right from the start as it opens with unaccompanied piano. The second movement is a kind of dialogue between the orchestra and the piano, which at times sounds more like an argument as the orchestra makes a series of rather harsh statements with somewhat conciliatory responses from the piano. The last movement is a more conventional and jovial Rondo, by which time the solo trumpeter from the Ives piece had found her way back to the stage from the balcony. I’ve heard this movement several times played on its own on the radio.

Federico Colli cut a dashing figure in a grey suit and waistcoat with a high collar and a voluminous white cravat. He was well up to the demands of the piece, playing very expressively, tenderly at times and with virtuosic brilliance when called for.

After the wine break we returned for the majestic Symphony No. 1 by Jean Sibelius. This is one of the great symphonies and another favourite of mine – I have several different recordings of it and have heard it on the radio many times – but I had never heard it performed live in person before last night. The First Movement (initially Andante) opens with a theme played by solo clarinet. It then moves into allegro energico which was played very briskly in this performance (in contrast to some famous recordings which slow it down). The motif played by the clarinet at the start permeates the whole work, returning in different guises and endowing the composition with a strong sense of unity. It’s all shot through with great romantic tunes and has wonderful dynamics. In short, it’s a masterpiece. Not bad for a First Symphony!

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What The World Needs Now

Posted in Music with tags on February 9, 2023 by telescoper

Very sad to hear today of the death at the age of 94 of the great songwriter Burt Bacharach. By way of a little tribute I thought I’d reblog this post from a few years ago. R.I.P. Burt Bacharach (1928-2023).

telescoper's avatarIn the Dark

I’ve always been a not-so-secret admirer of American songwriter and record producer Burt Bacharach, but when someone told me the other day that there’s an album called Blue Note Plays Burt Bacharach I assumed it was a wind up because Blue Note Records has for many years been an uncompromising voice at the cutting edge of modern jazz rather than the lighter and more popular form of music exemplified my Mr B.

There’s no reason why two forms of excellence can’t exist together, however, and the album is definitely real and is a very nice compilation of Bacharach numbers from Blue Note albums featuring various musicians over the years. Here’s an example featuring Stanley Turrentine on tenor sax, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Micky Roker on drums. The tune is What The World Needs Now Is Love. Doesn’t it just?

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Mozart, Ravel and Danielle de Niese

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2023 by telescoper

After last week’s magnificent concert I couldn’t miss another chance to see and hear Danielle de Niese in at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, again with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jaime Martin. It was another fascinating (and very full) programme.

For last week’s concert, the National Concert Hall was only about two-thirds full but this time it was packed. I think the glowing reviews of La Voix Humaine contributed to that, as did the round of media interviews Danielle de Niese has done since then contributed to the full house.

Danielle de Niese seems to like singing 20th century French music and the concert opened with Shéhérazade by Maurice Ravel. This is a cycle of three songs which are settings of poems inspired by The Arabian Nights written by the pseudonymous poet Tristan Klingsor: Asie, La flûte enchantée, and L’Indifférent. Ravel was a real master of orchestration, and he creates a succession of exotic textures to complement the vocal lines. It’s not a long piece -altogether the three songs last about 15 minutes – but it covers a vast territory. There’s more than a nod to Debussy in this work too.

After that Danielle de Niese went off stage to change her frock, which was lime green for the Ravel, while the orchestra played the overture to the singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I’ve actually reviwed the whole Opera (was that really 12 years ago?) and wrote then (about the plot):

It’s admittedly a bit thin, even by the standards of comic opera but, right from the fabulous overture, the music is lovely and there’s a great deal of good-humoured fun, 

The overture is great fun to listen to, and obviously also to play. Jaime Martin was beaming and bouncing up and down on the podium during the performance.

And then Danielle de Niese returned (this time in a lurid red dress) to sing another piece by Mozart. Exsultate, Jubilate is a piece for solo voice and orchestra usually described as a motet but technically really a cantata. There are three movements, marked Allegro, Andante and Allegro. It’s obviously a work,with a religious theme, and the central Andante movement does sound like it is sacred music, but the outer Allegro movements are very operatic, with demanding coloratura passages, especially in the final Hallelujah. I don’t usually associate such vocal acrobatics with religious music, but it’s certainly a very exuberant and joyful piece. Astonishingly, Mozart was just 17 years old when he wrote it.

That piece by Mozart presented very different challenges to the soloist, Danielle de Niese but she showed herself to be a very accomplished performer in this too. With that her two-week residence in Dublin came to an end. She was presented with a huge bouquet of flowers and a standing ovation before we headed off to the bar for the interval.

After the wine break the National Symphony Orchestra was joined by the National Symphony Chorus for complete performance of the music to the ballet Daphnis et Chloé by Maurice Ravel. As is the case with Stravinsky’s Firebird, music from this ballet is often played in the form of a suite or, in the case of this ballet, two suites, but I have to say the whole is much greater than the sum of the suites and this work has become one of my favourite pieces to hear live. It’s a gloriously sensual and dramatic work, again brilliantly orchestrated, full of vibrant colours and lush textures, and even more wonderful when accompanied by the wordless singing of the massed ranks of the National Symphony Chorus. The score lasts a good hour, but that time seemed to flash by in this performance which was extremely well received by a very appreciative audience.

This was a very full programme and I had to leave during the applause to make sure I got back to Pearse station in time to catch the train back to Maynooth. I’m not as quick on my pins as I used to be. I arrived at Pearse with about five minutes to spare only to find that the train was five minutes late so I didn’t have rushed.

I have to congratulate whoever is doing the programming for these NSO concerts at the NCH. The last few have been excellent, and next week’s recipe of Ives, Beethoven and Sibelius looks great too!

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Brahms, Poulenc and Danielle de Niese

Posted in Music, Opera with tags , , , , , , on January 28, 2023 by telescoper

After a very busy week and ahead of the start of a new term on Monday, it was nice to be back in the National Concert Hall in Dublin last night for a superb concert, featuring a double bill of Brahms and Poulenc. It is quite an unusual pairing to have a symphony first, but each work we heard was about 40 minutes long, so it was actually well balanced, and the contrast worked very well indeed.

Before the interval we had came the main course in the form of the Symphony No. 3 in F Major by Johannes Brahms. This is of course quite a familiar work, but I really like concerts that mix unfamiliar material with the standard concert repertoire. It also gave me the chance to persevere with Brahms as my friends keep telling me to. It’s not that I don’t like Brahms, it’s just that I don’t find that he moves me as much as many other composers and so many people rave about him that I think I must be missing something. The 3rd Symphony is a very fine work, offering lots of variety across its four movements while maintaining a strong sense of coherence. I’m no expert on Brahms but it seems to me that the 3rd Symphony is where he really found his voice as a symphonic composer and stepped out from the shadow of Beethoven. It was performed beautifully last night under the direction of Jaime Martin and the National Symphony Orchestra.

After the wine break we returned for a rare treat in the form of La Voix Humaine, a one-act Opera for soprano and orchestra by Francis Poulenc, featuring the wonderful Danielle de Niese. The staging for this work is shown in the picture taken before most the orchestra had returned: just a chaise longue, a chair, a small table and an old-fashioned telephone.

La Voix Humaine portrays the last conversation between an anonymous woman (referred to throughout as Elle, the French word for “she”) and her lover, with whom she has just broken up. Only one character appears on stage and we only hear Elle’s side of the conversation. She sings into the telephone throughout; . the audience has to infer what her ex is saying at the other end. There are also frequent interruptions from another character who keeps intruding on the conversation, as the call appears to be on a party line, a concept that younger readers will not understand! This, together with the frequent disconnections and reconnections, provides some darkly comic relief. As you can probably imagine, it doesn’t end happily.

The performance was in French and there were no surtitles. It struck me that this work would be very difficult to translate into another language, as the music so accurately follows the natural rhythm and emphasis of spoken French. We were given the full libretto, with English translation, in the programme notes, but fortunately my memory of schoolboy French was good enough to get me a pass mark on following it without having to refer to the translation.

Poulenc’s compelling and emotionally charged music helps suggest what is being said at the other end when Elle is not singing, as well as accompanying her. The score struck me as rather cinematic, in that parts could easily be imagined as incidental music in a movie. Given the nature of the libretto, much of the music is like a the recitatives you find in operatic scores, but it is also more expansive and sensual when Elle pours out her broken heart. There are definite touches of Debussy in the orchestration, but it’s a very original approach that Poulenc uses and the National Symphony Orchestra made it come alive with great intensity.

And what can I say about Danielle de Niese? Amazingly, this was the first time she had performed La Voix Humaine in front of a live audience. She was sensational. She has a lovely voice and sang beautifully but her acting was also utterly convincing and she had a compelling stage presence. This was not just a concert performance but a genuine opera. I was straight up on my feet at the end, along with the rest of the audience. Brava!

To be honest, this was the piece I went for, rather than the Brahms, as I had never heard it before. I wasn’t disappointed. It was an intensely moving performance of a remarkable work which had me in pieces at the end. I enjoyed Brahms 3rd Symphony, but La Voix Humaine hit me in the guts. I must listen to more Poulenc.

Danielle de Niese is back at the NCH next Friday, singing Ravel and Mozart. Needless to say, after last night’s performance I’ll definitely be going!

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The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady

Posted in Jazz with tags , on January 20, 2023 by telescoper

I was just reminded via social media that it was on this day 60 years ago, i.e. on 20th January 1963, that a recording session took place under the direction of Charles Mingus that led to the class album The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. I hadn’t realized that this entire album was recorded in a single day!

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady relies much less on soloists than earlier Mingus performances and involves a rather bigger band: Mingus himself (bass, piano and composer); Jerome Richardson (soprano & baritone saxophone, flute), Dick Hafer (tenor saxophone, flute); Charlie Mariano (alto saxophone); Rolf Ericson and Richard Williams (trumpet); Quentin Jackson (trombone); Don Butterfield (tuba, contrabass trombone); Jaki Byard (piano); Jay Berliner (acoustic guitar); and Dannie Richmond (drums). Charlie Mariano is outstanding on this album but the other solos tend to be short, acting more as punctuation than as part of the actual composition. It is very much an orchestral work, with thematic material introduced and recycled in various ways, some of it from pervious recording sessions. That gives this work a retrospective feeling, as well as being very original in style. Overall the sense is of Mingus trying out how he could use elements of his past approaches in a new direction. A good example are the accelerando passages. Danny Richmond did have a bit of a habit of speeding up, but on this album these bits are intentional. The first, however, starts very abruptly and doesn’t really work. Mingus tries the idea again, much more successfully, and again a couple of times more.

This is a great album but I think it provided Mingus with a practical difficulty, in that he was clearly getting more interested in longer works with big orchestral textures but most of the venues he could play in could only cope with smaller bands. He responded by working more at jazz festivals that could indulge this taste.

Anyway, here is the whole album which I have just listened to all the way through. I have it on vinyl LP and CD but fortunately it is also on the YooToob:

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As Time Goes By – Dexter Gordon

Posted in Jazz with tags , on January 19, 2023 by telescoper

I’ve been grading examinations all day and still haven’t quite finished so here’s a quick post I’ve been keeping up my sleeve for a busy day. It’s the great Dexter Gordon recorded in 1980 playing As Time Goes By. Ever since Coleman Hawkins recorded Body and Soul in 1939, the yardstick by which tenor saxophonists have tended to be measured is their playing on ballads and Dexter Gordon was right up there among the best. It’s very hard to play with accuracy and imagination at slow tempo than it is to produce a quick flurry of notes. Young musicians can learn a lot from his intelligent, but never overcomplicated, improvisations.

This performance was filmed in 1980 when Dexter Gordon was 57 years old but it has to be said that he looks much older, no doubt as a result of his lifelong struggle with drugs and alcohol. He seems somewhat inebriated as he recites the words to the song at the start – something he did regularly in live performances – but once he’s in the zone he plays quite beautifully. I am sad I never got to see him live; Dexter Gordon passed away in 1990, at the age of 67.

P.S. When he was much younger, Dexter Gordon featured in one of the most famous of all jazz photographs taken by Herman Leonard in 1948 which I’m taking the liberty of posting here:

Time goes by indeed.

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Mahler, Weber, Schubert and Strauss at the NCH

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2023 by telescoper

And so it came to pass that last night I took the train into Dublin for my first concert of the year 2023 at the National Concert Hall in Dublin which happened to be by the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of guest conductor Carlos Kalmar.

It was an unusual programme in terms of its construction. Often the menu for such concerts begin with a short appetizer but this one started with the first movement of  Gustav Mahler‘s 10th Symphony. The composer died a hundred years ago in 1910 having not actually finished the rest of the symphony, but I gather that he left sufficiently detailed sketches and notes that complete versions have been constructed, but nevertheless the first movement is frequently performed on its own. It’s quintessentially Mahler in many ways, but it’s a strange opening for a symphony because it’s a very long Adagio movement (lasting about 30 minutes). It’s a complex and weighty movement for a full orchestra, rather cryptic in nature but overall with a rather dark tone, far from the usual lollipop to start a concert!

Originally this programme was supposed to feature the Duet Concertino by Richard Strauss but it was announced last week that this would be replaced by the Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F Minor by Carl Maria von Weber with the NSO’s principal clarinettist John Finucane. Unusually for a concerto performance, John Finucane was reading a score, which perhaps suggests he stood in at short notice but in any case the performance was very fine. The third movement, a spirited Rondo kicked off by a very jaunty theme, is probably the most familiar piece, but I particularly enjoyed the interplay between clarinet and horns in the slow (2nd movement). John Finucane had brought his fan club with him, and the audience responded warmly.

After the wine break we had Symphony No. 8 in B Minor by Franz Schubert, the famous “Unfinished Symphony”. Somewhat surprisingly, I am pretty sure that I had never heard this piece performed live until this concert.

Schubert apparently wrote the first two wonderful movements of this piece in the space of only eight days in 1822 but then seems to have abandoned it. The composition wasn’t interrupted by his death – he didn’t pass away until 1828 – so it’s a mystery why he didn’t finish it. It wasn’t even discovered until the 1860s. Unlike Mahler 10, we don’t have any idea what the rest of this symphony would have been but the two existing movements are exceptional, not least for the stream of lovely melodies. This work clearly belongs to the same world as the Weber piece (which was composed in 1811) but having one after the other emphasizes the transition from Classical to Romantic, and having Mahler on the same programme contrasts early and late Romantic in a very illuminating way.

The last piece was Music of the Spheres, a waltz by Josef Strauss, the younger brother of the more famous Johan Strauss II. It’s a jolly enough but rather insubstantial piece that seemed rather incongruous to me in this programme, especially at the end as it is the sort of piece one could imagine as an appetizer. It seems to have been decided that something was needed in place of the missing movement(s) of the Schubert Symphony, so perhaps it was meant to play the role of a dessert?

In any case it was an upbeat way to end the concert which was very enjoyable. I then made my way out into the rain to get the train back to Maynooth. For a Friday night, Dublin was very quiet indeed, perhaps because of the inclement weather and/or the post-Christmas lull. The NCH wasn’t full but there was a decent attendance and the performance was warmly appreciated.

P.S. Note that the National Symphony Orchestra is no longer the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra owing to some restructuring. Note also that it is planned to close down the NCH for at least two years for extensive refurbishment. I’m not sure what will happen to the NSO during this period.

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R.I.P. Terry Hall (1959-2022)

Posted in Biographical, Music, R.I.P. on December 20, 2022 by telescoper

I was very sad last night to hear the news of the death at the age of 63 of Terry Hall, lead singer of The Specials, one of the leading bands of the 2 Tone movement which swept the UK music scene in 1979. The Guardian obituary makes it clear what a tough upbringing Terry Hall had but also how firmly he stuck to his political ideals.

I was still at School in the 1970s and, though never a fan of Punk (which immediately preceded 2-Tone in popularity), I absolutely loved bands like The Specials, The Beat and especially Selecter. I enjoyed not only their music, but also their admirably inclusive multi-racial approach, exemplified by their adoption of Ska, the Jamaican music genre that paved the way to Reggae.

Being a bit of an anorak I actually managed way back then to get hold of some of the very rare original Ska recordings, principally by the superb Skatalites. This wonderful band specialized in irreverent and eccentric cover versions of movie film tunes from the 1960s including Doctor Zhivago and James Bond, plus the classic Guns of Navarone. Nowadays you can find lots of this music to download, but it was quite hard work getting vinyl recordings at that time. As well as enjoying 2-Tone itself I was immensely grateful for the window it provided to a treasure house of wonderful music.

Ska is usually played (at least nominally) in 4/4 time, but each beat is really a cluster of sub-beats forming a triplet so the usual 1-2-3-4 of the 4/4 turns into 123-123-123-123, etc . Usually the drummer puts a heavy bass accent (and usually a side stick or rim shot on the snare) on the 3rd component of each triplet, and there would be guitar chops, other percussion, and/or brass riffs on the “off” beats. It is said that this structure was inherited, at least in part, from the marching bands that played in Jamaica and it does give a kind of strutting feel to the overall pulse. But wherever it came from the beat gives the music an infectiously bouncy rhythm that gives anyone dancing to it an irresistible urge to jump up and down, especially on up-tempo numbers. The triplet structure also gives those with no sense of rhythm a greater probability of moving in time with at least one relevant beat.

Anyway, here as a tribute to Terry Hall are The Specials, in a typically exuberant live performance recorded on British TV in 1979 (a programme which I think I actually watched at the time). They are playing the theme from The Guns of Navarone as a direct tribute to the Skatalites, whose wonderful original version you can also find on Youtube here (although it is really just audio).

Rest in peace, Terry Hall (1959-2022)

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Free Jazz – A Collective Improvisation

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2022 by telescoper

In late 1960 the great saxophonist Ornette Coleman did a recording session with a stellar band of eight musicians: Coleman himself (alto sax); Eric Dolphy (bass clarinet); Freddie Hubbard and Don Cherry (trumpets); Charlie Haden and Scott Lafaro (both on bass); Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell (both on Drums). The octet thus formed is actually two quartets and these are presented one on each stereo channel.

What Ornette Coleman did with these musicians on that day was extraordinary, a piece of collective improvisation that lasted almost 40 minutes duration and which had never been attempted before on record. It’s not entirely improvised – there is a brief introduction and some pre-arranged polyphonic passages (some just an individual chord) between the soloists – but other than that the soloists were told to take turns playing whatever they liked while the rest of the band should accompany as they saw fit. The intervals between solos are largely dissonant which produces an interesting challenge for the soloists in deciding exactly how to start.

One aspect of this otherwise superb album that doesn’t work consistently for me is the inclusion of two drummers; tt least at the start they seem to get in each other’s way more than anything else but as the piece develops they seem to understand that a more subdued approach is needed and that makes it easier for the soloists as well as making the atmosphere looser and more relaxed. Listening to this track just now it struck me how much it is dominated by Ornette Coleman who directs the traffic as well as playing a terrific solo of his own in the middle.

This track was Free Jazz was originally released in two parts on a vinyl LP but it’s now available on CD in one track, along with the originally discarded first take. Not surprisingly given the nature of the piece, critics were divided, with some recognizing it as an important new development, and others hating it. This record is not exactly easy listening and when I first heard this about 40 years ago I didn’t get it at all, but now I think that for all its unevenness it’s a superb record. If you’ve got 40 minutes to spare you can now listen to it and make your own mind up!

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