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Charles Ives

Posted in Music with tags Charles Ives, The Housatonic at Stockbridge on May 19, 2009 by telescoper

This morning I was woken up by the lovely voice of Sarah Mohr-Pietsch whispering in my ear. She introduces the Breakfast programme on BBC Radio 3 when Rob Cowan isn’t doing it. As a matter of fact, I thought her name was More-Peach, but there you are. You learn something every day.

This morning Sultry Sarah reminded me that the remarkable composer Charles Ives, whom I’ve blogged about before, died 55 years ago this very day. To find something with which to mark the anniversary I had a quick look on Youtube and found this little gem.

The Housatonic at Stockbridge is best known as the last piece of Charles Ives’ Orchestral Suite No. 1 Three Places in New England. It’s a complex richly-orchestrated piece which is powerfully evocative of both the place (near the Housatonic River at Stockbridge, Massachusetts) and the time (June 1908) when he went walking there with his wife on their honeymoon. It makes great use of one of Ives’ favourite devices of juxtaposing familiar melodies with his own advanced harmonic inventions.

However, this morning I found this wonderful pared-down version for soprano voice and piano which also manages to be beautiful, but in an entirely different way…

Eurovision

Posted in Opera with tags Casta Diva, Maria Callas on May 16, 2009 by telescoper

Just in case you’ve had the misfortune to sit through the tedious spectacle that is the annual Eurovision song contest, let this be a reminder that Eurovision wasn’t always synonymous with utter garbage…

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The Anachronic Jazz Band

Posted in Jazz with tags Anachronic Jazz Band, Anthropology, Charlie Parker on May 10, 2009 by telescoper

I heard a record by this band ages and ages ago (probably in the 70s) and was delighted to be reminded of them by finding this little clip on Youtube. It’s a bit of an oddity, but I think it’s both fun and fascinating.

The Anachronic Jazz Band is, I think, now defunct but they were from Paris originally. The style they played in could probably be described as like the New York style of the late 1920s, with definite touches of Bix Beiderbecke. On the other hand, the tunes they played all came from the era of modern jazz, such as this one which is the Charlie Parker classic Anthropology. I’ve already posted a version of it by Bud Powell, in fact..

You might think that an uncompromising bebop number like this would pose unsurmountable challenges for a traditional jazz outfit, but I think they pull it off rather well. I think though that they were probably helped by the fact that this tune, like many modern jazz compositions, is actually based on a chord progression belonging to a much more familiar tune. In this case the harmonies actually derive from George Gershwin’s standard I Got Rhythm….

Anyway, perhaps the efforts of this fine little band go some way to showing that there’s more continuity between traditional and modern jazz than one might suppose…

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The Onions

Posted in Biographical, Jazz with tags Humphrey Lyttelton, Wally Fawkes on May 4, 2009 by telescoper

I’m not going to make excuses. This is a piece of pure nostalgia.

We had this old record in the house when I was a little kid. It was quite an innovation at the time. Most of the jazz records my dad had collected were on 10″ shellac discs to be played at 78rpm. This was a very limited format in that you could never get more than about 3 minutes on each side. They were also extremely fragile. Most of the ones we used to have ended up broken into pieces.

But when Humphrey Lyttelton’s band did a concert in 1954 at the then very new Royal Festival Hall in London, the Parlophone label decided to release four tracks on a vinyl EP (extended play). This allowed them to get a longer playing time but also meant that the actual discs survived a bit longer than 78s used to.

I was born in 1963, about nine years after the record was released but I distinctly remember as a kid sitting in our house in Benwell with this record playing on our little gramophone. I never seemed to be able to shout “Onions” on the right beat in the little two-bar interval left for the purpose. But, then again, neither did many in the audience.

Humph himself (who died a year ago) does the announcement in that instantly recognizeable voice of his. The whole band plays wonderfully too, but I’d like to single out the clarinet of Wally Fawkes for special mention. In case you didn’t know, Wally Fawkes is actually a pseudonym for the award-winning cartoonist Trog. Anyway, on this track he gives an object lesson in how to build a solo: starting off in the smoky lower register then gradually building up steam until just after 2 minutes in he steps on the gas, switches to the upper register and wails like a banshee. He never plays anything very complicated and I must have heard that moment hundreds of times over the years but it still gives me a buzz!

They sure don’t make them like this any more.

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Christopher Logue

Posted in Jazz, Poetry with tags Christopher Logue, Poetry on May 3, 2009 by telescoper

Poetry is in the news today.

Yesterday’s announcement that the 23rd Poet laureate is to be Carol Anne Duffy has generated as much comment about her sexual orientation as the undoubted quality of her verse.

But that’s not the point of this post.

I don’t know why but all the stuff in the papers reminded of a very rare recording I heard years ago the poet Christopher Logue with a Jazz group led by the drummer Tony Kinsey.

Christopher Logue is now in his eighties and is probably best known as a regular contributor to the satirical magazine Private Eye (to which I have not yet cancelled my subscription). Among other things in the Eye, he edits the hilarious Pseuds Corner, a collection of the most pretentious drivel culled from newspapers and magazines.

But he’s also a fine poet in his own right and has been for many years.

The first time I heard this old recording made in the late 1950s, I didn’t listen very carefully to the words. I thought it was just a very funny skit – a posh British guy doing beat poems couldn’t possibly be serious, could it? Especially if it sounds like Allen Ginsberg meets Julian Clary…

..but listening to it again, and especially studying the words it’s grown on me so much I now think it’s a minor masterpiece.

large_8be9743ce0f84fa88d982cbdb1949b9c There is an audio-only version on Youtube, but it refuses to be embedded. Click here if you want to hear the performance on record.

Now read the lyrics:

Lithe girl, brown girl
Sun that makes apples, stiffens the wheat
Made your body a joy
Tongue like a red bird dancing on ivory
To stretch your arm
Sun grabs at your hair
Like water was falling

Tantalize the sun if you dare
It will leave shadows that match you
Everywhere
Lithe girl, brown girl
Nothing draws me towards you
The heat within you beats me home
Like the sun at high noon

Knowing these things
Perhaps through
Knowing these things
I seek you out
Listening for your voice
For the brush of your arms against wheat
For your step among poppies grown underwater
Lithe girl, brown girl

Steep gloom among pine trees
Waves’ surge breaking
Slow lights that interweave
A single bell

As the day’s end falls into your eyes
The earth starts singing in your body
As the waves sing in a white shell
And the rivers sing within you
And I grow outwards on them
As you direct them
Whither you make them run

I follow for you like a hare
Running reared upright to the hunter’s drum
You turn about me like a belt of clouds
the silence, though it is stupid
Mocks the hours I lay
Troubled by…… nothing

Your arms – translucent stones wherein I lie
Exhausted
And future kisses
Die
Lust
Your mysterious voice
Folds close echoes
That shift throughout the night
Much as the wind
Which moves darkly over the profitable fields
Folds down the wheat
From all its height

In the hot depth of summer
The morning is close, storm-filled
Clouds shift –
White rags waving goodbye
Shaken by the frantic wind as it goes and
As it goes
The wind throbs over us
Love-making silenced

Among the trees like a tongue singing
A warning or just singing the wind throbs
And the quick sparrow’s flight is slapped by the wind
Swift thief destructive as waves
Weightless without form
Struck through and through with flame
Which breaks
Soughing its strength out
At the gates of the enormous, silent, summer wind

That you may hear me
My words narrow occasionally
Like gull-tracks in the sand

Or I let them become
Tuneful beads
Mixed with the sound

Of a drunk hawk’s bell
Flick me your wrists…..
Soft as grape skin – yes

Softer than grapeskin I make them
Which is a kind of treachery against the world

Yet
You who clamber
Over all the desolations of mine
Gentle as ivy
Eat the words’ meaning

Before you came to me
Words were all that you now occupy
And now they’re no more these words
Than ever they knew of my sadness

Yet
Sometimes
Force and dead anguish still drags them
And yes

Malevolent dreams still betimes
Overwhelm them and then

In my bruised voice
You hear other bruised voices
Old agues crying out of old mouths

Do not be angry with me
Lest the wave of that anguish
Drown me again

Even as I sit
Threading a collar of beads for your hands
Softer than grape skin
Hung with a drunk hawk’s bell

I think these are beautiful poems made even more effective by the musical setting. In fact they are loose re-workings of some of the famous love poems of Pablo Neruda. Logue moved far away from the Neruda’s originals, but put them into impressionistic free verse, which he reads in his plummy English accent, while the band provides appropriate backing for the sentiments of the poetry as well as providing improvised passages in between the verses.

Looking at this now, I have no idea why I thought it was meant to be funny.

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Bixology

Posted in Jazz with tags Bix Beiderbecke, In a Mist, In the Dark, Marian Macpartland, Ralph Sutton on April 21, 2009 by telescoper

Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke became a jazz-age romantic legend by playing brilliant trumpet and by drinking too much bad prohibition liquor resulting his premature death in 1931, at the age of only 28. His short life was punctuated by episodes of very bad health caused by chronic alcoholism in an era when the only booze that was available was bathtub gin or rotgut whisky. Nevertheless, Bix still gave us some of the greatest ever jazz records.

Although he was of middle-class white origins, Bix’s playing was deeply admired by leading black musicians of the day. No less a trumpeter than Louis Armstrong refused to play Singin’ the Blues because he felt Bix’s version was so good that it shouldn’t be touched. High praise indeed. Many jazz trumpeters to this day still play some of Bix’s trumpet licks, though few do them justice.

Bix’s trumpet-playing was all quicksilver virtuosity but, above all, he possessed a beautiful ringing, bell-like tone that is quite unlike that of any other trumpeter before or since. His clarion sound even pierces through the hiss and crackle produced by contemporary recording techniques. My favourite example is this, an old tune called At the Jazz Band Ball, where Bix’s trumpet lead is matched in exuberance and skill by Bill Rank (trombone), Frank Signorelli (clarinet) and, particularly, the superb Adrian Rollini on bass saxophone, who managed to play his enormous and unwieldy instrument not only with great swing but also with a fine sense of humour.

But Bix wasn’t just a trumpeter. He also composed a few pieces for solo piano. I didn’t know about these until about 18 months ago, when I found a recording my Dad had kept of a concert at Newcastle City Hall in which he had played the drums in a trio led by the American jazz pianist Ralph Sutton. Among the numbers they played was a nice tune called, appropriately enough for this blog, In the Dark. The other day I found a clip on Youtube of Ralph Sutton playing the same tune (although not with my Dad). I hadn’t realised that this tune was written by Bix Beiderbecke.

Perhaps I should use it this blog’s signature tune?

Bix composed other pieces for solo piano too. The most famous, and probably the most interesting because of its unusual harmonic structure, is called In a Mist, but for some reason when Bix’s own recording of this tune was released in the United Kingdom it was renamed Bixology. Here it is played by the wonderful Marian Macpartland

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The Land of Song

Posted in Music with tags Luciano Pavarotti, Myfanwy, Trelawnyd Male Voice Choir on April 18, 2009 by telescoper

I’m sure the Welsh get a bit fed up with everyone saying that they sing so beautifully. But the problem with cliches such as “The Land of Song” is that they are so often true. At Friday’s dinner in honour of Leonid Grischchuk we were treated to a solo rendition of the beautiful old love song Myfanwy in Cardiff Castle, but today I found a much better version featuring the excellent Trelawnyd Male Voice Choir. I think it’s a really wonderful version, but the thing that struck me most was how on Earth can a small farming village with a population of less than a thousand produce so many wonderful tenor voices?

Incidentally, the great Luciano Pavarotti, who died in September 2007, gave his first ever professional performance at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in Wales, in 1955. It was his success at this festival, with a small choir from Modena that made him decide to turn professional.

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Tommy Flanagan

Posted in Jazz with tags Raincheck, Tommy Flanagan on April 8, 2009 by telescoper

I’ve only got time for a quick post today so I thought I’d put up a clip of someone I think is one of the most consistently enjoyable but underrated Jazz pianists of all time. He was probably best known as the long-time accompanist of Ella Fitzgerald but he also played on a number of really important Jazz albums with Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, to name just two. He also loved to play within the classic Jazz trio format of piano, bass and drums as represented here.

This is the marvellous Tommy Flanagan playing yet another tune by the great Billy Strayhorn; this one’s called Raincheck.

Neville Dickie

Posted in Jazz with tags Jelly Roll Morton, Neville Dickie, Wolverine Blues on April 4, 2009 by telescoper

Just a quick post in response to a suggestion from a friend:I do requests on here, but only if they’re asked for.

Neville Dickie was born in County Durham in 1937 and did national service in the RAF around the same time as my Dad. He’s still going strong, playing lovely jazz mainly in the Harlem stride piano style of the 1920s with those infectiously bouncing left-hand tenths.

Here is he recorded in 2007 with Danny Coots on drums or, rather, drum. They’re playing a lovely tune by the great Jelly Roll Morton called Wolverine Blues.

The sound balance isn’t great but I think it’s a wonderful version of a classic bit of good time Jazz.

Take it away Mr Dickie!

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Chelsea Bridge

Posted in Jazz with tags Ben Webster, Billy Strayhorn, Chelsea Bridge, Copenhagen, Duke Ellington, James McNeill Whistler, Stan Tracey on March 29, 2009 by telescoper

When the great American songwriter Billy Strayhorn saw the beautifully evocative painting (left) by James McNeill Whistler of one of the bridges over the River Thames, it inspired him to write an equally evocative song to be performed by his longstanding musical collaborator and friend Duke Ellington. The song was written in 1941, but it was only years later that he realized that he had named it after the wrong bridge.

The painting was of Battersea Bridge; but he had named the song Chelsea Bridge, a much less romantic location. Nevertheless, the tune quickly became a standard, and a feature for the band’s star saxophonist, Ben Webster who carried on playing it after he left Duke Ellington’s orchestra in 1943.

By all accounts Ben Webster was a drunken brute of a man but when he played ballads like this he produced music of great warmth and delicacy. In fact, his technique on the tenor sax would probably be called “wrong” by a teacher: he didn’t use his tongue properly on the reed so his notes had to be produced by much more lung power than “normal” players use. Instead of a clean attack, each note is wafted in on a sort of phoohing sound. The breathiness of his tone is a consequence of this and, although he produced a huge volume which was good for playing in front of a big band like Ellington’s, it also made him unable to play well at faster tempos. His playing on slow ballads, though, was often exquisitely beautiful. Who says everyone has to be a speed merchant?

Ben Webster moved to Copenhagen in 1964 along with several other great Jazz musicians, to escape the racism and consequent lack of opportunity for black artists in his homeland. He was buried in the part of Copenhagen called Nørrebro when he died in 1973.

I am a fairly frequent visitor to Copenhagen – I’m going there again in June, in fact – and I did visit his grave once. There’s also a restaurant named after him in the city centre.

Anyway, here he is in in 1964 playing Chelsea Bridge with the marvellous Stan Tracey on piano who featured in a previous post of mine.

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In the Dark