It's wintry outside but up here in the BSH operational centre (my bedroom) suddenly it's spring!
At last, an album has come along that represents what I envisaged when I first set up this site all those years ago.
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| (© Mike Tilley) |
“Being nominated for a GRAMMY® is, of course, a great honor and maybe the thirteenth time will be my lucky charm. But win or not, I will be forever grateful,” Barron shared in a statement.
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The Globe's usual cabaret-style arrangement of tables and chairs was augmented by several rows of seats set out close to the stage, a sure sign advance sales had been rather good! The regular faces took their seats, joined by more than a few long-time fans of the evening's star attraction. At a little after eight the quartet tore into Wayne Shorter's Yes and No.
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| (© Pam) |
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| (© Pam) |
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However, rather than go for the legendary Blue Note albums which, in truth, I've almost worn out - let's face it, they are the modern jazz equivalent of the Armstrong Hot Fives, the 1940 Ellingtons or the Beethoven Symphonies - so, I went back to his earlier Savoy recordings.
https://www.ayclifferadio.co.uk/listen/
Aycliffe Radio is now available on DAB in County Durham & Darlington Area.
Playlist 26/11/23. (Repeated Tuesday 28/11/23)
Birthday Memory: Teddy Wilson/Billie Holiday/Lester Young.
Check out Nigel Price’s Charity : Grassrootsjazz.com
You can listen to the show anytime from noon on Saturday Nov. 25 HERE.
Plus, you can request tunes for future programmes by
emailing Colin at jazz.tyne.hive@gmail.com
or heading to www.jazzonthetyne.org.
The pendulum does indeed swing albeit not without some tender moments particularly when Wojciechowski leaves his tenor on the stand and blows alto flute. He's a star on both horns which is why he is so highly rated in Chicago and it surely can't be long before he is equally acclaimed in Europe and the UK.
His sound on tenor is as big as Dexter Gordon was tall with an angular agility that was common to both men. On flute his tone is round and mellow - a thing of rare beauty.
It’s a crime story with all the links and sub-plots interspersed with scenes from a jam session, ostensibly featuring Lester Young, but the actual cast of musicians includes Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton, David Murray, Geri Allen and others.
In the early days of BSH I was very naive so that when the opportunity arrived to do a live interview with Darius Brubeck ahead of the Brubeck brothers concert at, as it was then, Sage Gateshead I jumped in head first.
Firstly, I decided I needed a phone bug. It was raining proverbially, if not literally, cats and dogs - my cat had the sense to stay indoors - whereas I went down the mean streets.
One of the most daunting and impressive highlights of the 2023 London Jazz festival was this two-hour programme of “symphonic music” by Wayne Shorter, who died in March 2023 while writing and planning this music for a concert that would have celebrated his ninetieth birthday this year.
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The Scottish
National Jazz Orchestra tours a new programme of jazz master Duke Ellington’s
music, In an Ellington Mood to Glasgow, St Andrews and Edinburgh from
8th to 10th December.
The music of Ellington and his co-writer, Billy Strayhorn has become one of the SNJO’s specialisms and has earned the ensemble recognition internationally for faithful interpretations such as its enthusiastically received in-concert recording from 2012, In the Spirit of Duke.
In a break from the orchestra’s previous Ellington concerts, this latest celebration of Ellington’s genius will see the orchestra joined for part of each concert by the exceptional young vocalist Lucy-Anne Daniels.
A debut quartet album by Pino who certainly knows his way around the horn. His technique is such that were his solo on Fred Hersch's Phantom of the Bopera transcribed and included as an anonymous exercise in the advanced section of a saxophone tutor he himself would struggle to play it whereas mere mortals would either sell their saxophones and buy a ukulele or spend the rest of their life practising.
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| (© Roly Veitch) |
Northern Line is open for applications until Monday 18th December
Jazz North, development agency for northern jazz, has been supporting artists to take the next step in their live careers since its inception in 2012 through its programme, Northern Line.
The scheme is a transformational artist development programme, offering dedicated 1:1 support across an artists’ career alongside a live touring bursary up to £3000.
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A welcome return to the Railway by Neil Yates who had with him the same London based band that he brought along last time he was here. I remember being impressed by their approach then and they sounded even better tonight with Neil concentrating on playing flugelhorn and getting a great sound from what looked like a vintage instrument.
Jazz singer and acclaimed author of bios
on Mark Murphy and Jon Hendricks, Peter Jones has scored a hat trick with Nightfly: The Life of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen. Despite lacking the assistance of his subject,
Jones’ 368 page tome is insightful, heavily researched and spares no detail. It
picks up the Steely Dan tale post 1994 when Brian Sweeting’s Reelin' in the Years was published. This includes new and
valuable coverage of Fagen's solo albums Morph the Cat (2006) and Sunken Condos (2012) which are welcome and important
additions to Fagen’s oeuvre.
Aycliffe Radio is now available on DAB in County Durham & Darlington Areas.
Playlist 19/11/23.
(Repeated Tuesday 21/11/23)
Birthday Memory: Ella Fitzgerald (Johnny Mercer).
Request: Woody Herman.
Paul Skerritt.
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Due to mobility problems I hadn't managed to attend any of the previous gigs on Greg's 2023 UK tour but this was one that I did not want to miss even though it meant an overnight stay in Leeds and some travel by train, coach, and local bus to reach the venue. I have been to some great concerts at the Seven Arts all organised by the multi-tasking bassist Steve Crocker who is also involved in all sorts of jazz-related activity in this location and others including jam sessions and workshops.
If not hot then certainly warm on the heels of his first solo piano outing, The Trondheim Concert, which came out in October last year, Berg now releases another album of solo improvisations. Trondheim made it into my personal top two of 2022 and I suspect that The Hamar Concert will finish up near the top of my list this year. Whilst Trondheim had taken 3 years to make it from recording to release, this set took about 370 days as it was recorded around the time that Trondheim was released, though I see from his website that there has been a Nidaros Concert release in between.
Cécile McLorin Salvant is a storyteller in song with a wide-ranging songbook that gives voice to her appeal as a luminous communicator. The Miami-born American singer is a child of Haitian and French diasporas, and sings with an immaculate bel canto in English, French and even Occitan. A passion for language and a crisp articulation combine with eclectic musical influences and make for a rising reputation in this three-time Grammy-winning singer’s magnetic performances. It was no lesser than Wynton Marsalis who said, "You get a singer like this once in a generation or two.”
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One of the most distinctive voices on the European jazz scene and both a strikingly inventive composer and a notably imaginative interpreter of other writers’ work, Tobin comes to Scotland for the first time since 2014, having launched her latest album, Returning Weather at London Jazz Festival this month.
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| (© Jeff Pritchard) |
Gair Carson is a familiar face in saxophone sections throughout the north west having played in numerous big bands and in smaller outfits where his multi instrumental skills have been much in demand. I am always interested in hearing a flute played well and Mr Carson did some nice work on alto flute during a Keith Jarrett tune entitled Koln Concert Part 2.
However, this EP by one of my favourite singers goes someway to dispelling my apathy.
At least for the first four tracks it does!
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On previous visits to the Railway Phil Nicholas has usually been featured as part of guitarist Paul Hartley’s quartet but for this Sunday night spot he brought his own rhythm section along and I was pleased to see Robin Joyner who I’ve not seen for a while playing a Nord2 keyboard and getting a great sound on it. Together with the great bassman Ed Harrison and drummer Eryl Roberts they got things cooking from the start with the Jerome Kern classic All The Things You Are done at a medium tempo. The material covered by this excellent quartet included many well known standards and one tune I don’t recall hearing before Moon Alley written by Tom Harrell. He also played as an encore Mercy, Mercy, Mercy which I can’t remember anyone playing for quite a while, or at least not at this venue.
This is intense and demanding, (and frequently entertaining across its 35½ minutes) stuff. It was recorded at a performance at the Literary & Philosophical Society as part of last year’s Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music.
