The Jazz House: EBU Archive Concerts December 3, 2009
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I’ve always enjoyed BBC Scotland’s The Jazz House, and it’s been particularly good over the past few months. They’ve been broadcasting some archive concerts originally recorded by various members of the EBU, which have had some great stuff among them.
A few weeks ago we were treated to a chunk from an Ornette Coleman concert which was, as we’re all alleged to say around here, pure dead brilliant. (Translation for Edinburgh readers: it was barrie). This week, it was Miles Davis: part of a 1971 concert by a group which included Keith Jarrett on keyboards and Gary Bartz on alto. Roughly speaking, this was the band which recorded the live sections of Live-Evil, but without John McLaughlin. It was electric Miles, but still small-group jazz as we know it: he hadn’t reached Dark Magus territory yet.
Rather than giving us a whole concert at once, the BBC has been breaking them up into 15 or 20 minute chunks and spreading the set over a few months, so hopefully there’s more Miles (and Ornette) to come. Next week’s live set is from saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins, and the week after that there’s part two of a Sarah Vaughan concert. Let’s hope there’s a lot more to come.
The Jazz House is broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland on Wednesday nights at 8pm (sometimes only on FM), repeated on Sundays (again at 8pm), and available online for a week after it goes out.
A couple of concerts and a couple of reviews November 21, 2009
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There are a couple of concerts on in Glasgow over the next few days which I haven’t mentioned yet.
John Williams and John Etheridge
On Sunday night, John Williams and John Etheridge are playing at the Old Fruitmarket. Just in case you’re in any doubt, this isn’t John Williams the film composer, but John Williams the guitarist. Williams is mainly a classical musician, although he’s musically fairly adventurous and has made forays into different musical territories through his work with Cleo Laine and as a member of late 70s MOR prog-classical abomination Sky. Etheridge has worked with a wide range of musicians in the jazz and jazz-rock world, including Stephane Grapelli and the Soft Machine. They will each be playing a solo set as well as performing as a duo. Details on the Glasgow Concert Halls site.
It looks like a must for all fans of serious guitar playing, although I do have my doubts about whether it’s the best venue for an event which will at least partly consist of solo acoustic guitar. The Grand Hall upstairs might have been a better bet.
Alyn Cosker
On Monday night, Alyn Cosker is playing at the RSAMD with the students of the RSAMD Jazz Ensemble. The concert starts at 6.30pm.That might not give you enough time to hear them and then get down to the City Halls to hear Brass Jaw, who will be performing in the Recital Room at 8pm.
Reviews
Kenny Mathieson reviewed Empirical’s Perth concert for the Scotsman. He was less impressed by them than I was.
Rob Adams enjoyed Mercy Mercy Mercy’s performance in Dundee.
Brass Jaw; Dundee Jazz Festival part 2 November 18, 2009
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Brass Jaw
The “quite simply stunning” Brass Jaw are interviewed on the BBC’s London Jazz Festival blog. Topics discussed include their London appearances and meeting Sonny Rollins. I wonder if the BBC know that part of the URL for the article is “festival-on-the-move-with-bras.shtml”?
They are playing in Glasgow, at the City Halls Recital Room, on Monday 23rd (an 8pm start).
Dundee Jazz Festival
Brass Jaw also have a gig on Thursday night as part of the continuing Dundee Jazz Festival. Phil Mason’s New Orleans All Stars are playing elsewhere in the city at the same time.
The closing weekend features a couple of Scandinavian acts. Singer Josefine Lindstrand, who has worked with Django Bates and Uri Caine and was voted Jazz in Sweden’s Act of the Year for 2009 has a concert on Saturday night, while saxophonist Frøy Aagre is playing on Saturday. (If you don’t know much about her – and I must admit I don’t – there’s an article about her on the London Jazz site). Salsa Celtica play the Caird Hall on Friday, and on Sunday local band the Sellars Brothers Quintet will be sharing a bill with the Dundee University Big Band. Details of venues and prices for all shows are on the festival’s web site.
MOBO Awards 2009: the token jazzers September 30, 2009
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This year’s Music Of Black Origins award ceremony is being held at the SECC in Glasgow tonight.
Although you wouldn’t know it from the coverage in the media, there’s a jazz category. This year’s nominations are Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, Melody Gardot, Madeleine Peyroux and Yolanda Brown. Hancock’s clearly head-and-shoulders(-and-chest-and-stomach) above the others in terms of importance, but I don’t know what criteria the judges are using. Is it lifelong achievement? What they’ve done this year? How many extra copies of a glossy lifestyle mag a cover photo of them will shift?
One thing’s pretty certain though: this particular award will get minimal coverage on tonight’s BBC3 broadcast. (Go on Beeb, prove me wrong!)
Update: 1st October
Yolanda Brown won.
Jazz at the Proms August 12, 2008
Posted by byased in British Musicians, Media, Music but not jazz.2 comments
Stravinsky, Bernstein and Simcock
The BBC prom on Saturday 2nd August was devoted to jazz, or rather to jazz-classical crossover music. Sad to say, it didn’t really work. Some of the pieces were okay – Bernstein’s “Prelude, Fugue and Riffs” and Stravinsky’s “Ebony Concerto” are fun – but it was all a bit lightweight. There were a couple of premieres: Jason Yarde’s arrangement of part of “Porgy and Bess” contained more real jazz than the rest of the concert put together; and there was a piece for piano and orchestra by Gwilym Simcock which, although colourful and skillfully put together was terribly conservative in its musical language and didn’t come across as having any real depth.
Gwilym Simcock is an odd case. BBC Radio 3 loves him, to the extent of having made him one of their “New Generation Artists“, but I sometimes get the feeling that he’s got the gig because he’s got the most convincing classical credentials of his jazz peers, rather than because of his jazz credentials. That’s not to say that he’s a bad musician, it’s just that I think there are several other folk of his generation who are equally deserving of publicity.
It’s not Gwilym Simcock himself who’s the problem, it’s the way the BBC New Generation Artists scheme is being applied to jazz that’s the problem. It’s less of a concern when you’ve got a dozen New Generation Artists (like the classical part of the scheme), but when you’ve only got one token jazzer a couple of issues arise:
1. Unless there’s one musician who is head and shoulders above his or her contemporaries in talent, the scheme effectively builds one person’s career at the expense of other equally talented musicians. I certainly think there’s more than one potentially excellent up-and-coming jazz musician around: Konrad Wiszniewski, Paul Towndrow, Zoe Rahman, the folk in Empirical, and no doubt someone I haven’t heard yet because he or she is gigging away in pubs in Leeds or Leicester, unnoticed by London medialand.
2. The musician you pick might not make it, for one reason or another. Think about some of the young stars of the 80s jazz scene: Steve Williamson rarely plays jazz these days; Gail Thompson’s had health problems which forced her to more or less give up playing; and Phil Bancroft (although still an interesting player) has been rather eclipsed by his John Rae Collective bandmates Brian Kellock and Colin Steele.
Maybe the BBC needs to rethink how the scheme is applied to jazz, for instance by offering several musicians rehearsal time and a tour of small-scale venues, rather than concentrating on the one player all the time.
As far as classical-jazz crossover in general goes, I was listening to Simon Nabatov’s “A Few Incidences” recently and wondering what it would sound like done by a good classical new music group (the Ensemble Modern or similar). Maybe if there is to be a successful interaction between jazz and classical music it will be at the more avant-garde end of things? Heiner Goebbels and Mark-Anthony Turnage have both done some interesting jazz-related stuff, although I don’t think either of them have managed to get an orchestra to swing properly yet. And there’s always Anthony Braxton’s operas….
