Prende il via oggi a Londra l'undicesima edizione del festival Freedom of the City, tre giorni di musiche di ricerca, improvvisazione e sperimentazione con numerosi concerti pomeridiani e serali coordinati da Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost. In programma quest'anno c'è anche un omaggio al compianto Tony Levin, scomparso di recente.
London's improvised and experimental music community has been revolutionising music for over forty years, refusing pre-determined structures and inherited hierarchies in favour of the spontaneous, the collective and the emergent. Convened by leading avant-garde figures Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost, Freedom of the City celebrates and continues that radical tradition of dissent and creativity, providing a vital annual forum for new musical explorations. Featuring an international selection of performers, the festival covers the whole spectrum of current activity, from the patiently exploratory to the restlessly expressive, all linked by a shared appetite for the unknown and a common delight in discovery.
Freedom of the City
Cecil Sharp House
2 Regent's Park Road, Camden
London NW1 7AY
www.freedomofthecity.org
Ogun pubblica un inedito tratto da un concerto fuori programma di alcuni Blue Notes con il sassofonista Frank Wright a Eindhoven, in Olanda, la sera del 22 giugno 1979: Spiritual Knowledge and Grace.
Ogun is extremely proud to present a previously unreleased recording documenting a one-off collaboration between members of The Blue Notes and tenor sax giant The Reverend Frank Wright. Recorded live in Eindhoven, Holland on what was meant to be the opening night of The Blue Notes’ Dutch tour in 1979, the collaboration was spawned by the unavoidable absence of pianist Chris McGregor and prompted by Louis Moholo-Moholo’s experience of playing alongside Frank in Peter Brotzmann’s Alarm. The tour of Holland proved prolific for The Blue Notes - another Dutch date is set for future release on Ogun - but this meeting of musical titans could not be left in the vaults. Great empathetic performances and an engrossing listen.
Ogun Recording Ltd.
79 Farrant Avenue
London N22 6PD
ogunrecords@googlemail.com
http://music.geocities.jp/softsjp/moholo05.html
Vistosamente assente dal box retrospettivo David Thomas, Monster nel 1997 - in qualche occasione se ne è perfino negata l'esistenza, forse perché la fonte, una registrazione dal vivo su audiocassetta, è andata irrimediabilmente perduta - l'album Winter Comes Home di David Thomas & His Legs torna disponibile presso Hearpen.com sotto forma di file audio tratti da una copia in vinile. Con Thomas la sera dell'11 dicembre 1982 in un rumoroso ristorante tedesco poco fuori Monaco c'erano Lindsay Cooper e Chris Cutler (e Maggie Thomas alla regia del suono). Un'iperbole!
http://www.hearpen.com/hr160.html
Dal concerto per il settantacinquesimo compleanno di Mike Westbrook il programma radiofonico della BBC Jazz on 3 trasmette domani sera in versione integrale The Serpent Hit, brano per voce, quartetto di sassofoni e percussioni presentato in prima assoluta al Kings Place londinese la sera dello scorso 2 aprile. Dei temi della violenza e della distruzione del pianeta, di cui tratta il testo, scrive nel programma di sala l'autrice Kate Westbrook: "The fable of the Serpent Hit is rather like a children's circle game. The tale starts with a small act of violence against innocent pleasure (on the merry-go-round), then proceeds to a wanton gesture against art (at the potter's wheel), the next one against nature (in the whirlpool). Pitch is concerned with the threat to abstract virtues. In Trigger a political impasse leads to the destruction of the planet (with the spinning of the earth). With the Coda, in Biblical imagery, we fall and wheel from Armageddon to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. And, somewhere in our universe, the whole story begins over again."
La puntata offre anche un assaggio del primo set del concerto dei Westbrook, dedicato al ciclo Fine 'n Yellow, e una conversazione con John Fordham; in chiusura, un breve ricordo del violinista newyorkese Billy Bang recentemente scomparso. Lunedì 25 aprile, BBC3 Jazz On 3, ore 23.15 (in Italia le 0.15), anche sul web: http://tinyurl.com/64ed76w
Jez Nelson presents the 75th birthday concert of distinguished British bandleader and composer Mike Westbrook. Since the early 1960s, Westbrook has been prolific as a bandleader, jazz pianist and composer whose music is characteristically bold and presented in unusual formats. He has been commissioned by numerous international big bands and with his wife, the singer/librettist Kate Westbrook, has written a number of cabaret and music-theatre pieces, alongside music for classical ensembles and smaller jazz groups. This concert features the premiere of a new work, The Serpent Hit, for voice and saxophone quartet.
http://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/emails/serpent_bbc.html
http://tinyurl.com/64ed76w
http://tinyurl.com/3jlamrs
Un triplo cd per la Erstwhile Records documenta l'incontro musicale, il primo, tra Keith Rowe e Radu Malfatti. L'album si intitola Φ, contiene versioni di brani di Jürg Frey e Cornelius Cardew, due composizioni originali e un'improvvisazione. Un dialogo tra i due musicisti e il produttore dell'etichetta, Jon Abbey, condotta nei giorni delle registrazioni - a Vienna, lo scorso novembre - è riportato in Erstwords mentre l'album è commentato e discusso in dettaglio nel forum di I Hate Music.
Keith Rowe and Radu Malfatti are two of the most influential experimental musicians in recent decades, each with extensive bodies of highly distinctive work and a combined 80+ years at the forefront of their respective areas of exploration. On Φ, their first meeting ever is documented via one disc of selected compositions (Frey and Cardew), one disc of their own compositions, and one disc of improv. Malfatti and Rowe met in Vienna in November 2010, their first musical meeting of any kind, for three days of recordings at Amann Studios. They began with Jürg Frey's Exact Dimension Without Insistence, selected by Malfatti, then proceeded onto Cornelius Cardew's Solo with Accompaniment, selected by Rowe. Next was Malfatti's nariyamu, then a version of Rowe's Pollock '82, and lastly an extended improv. Almost all of the recordings are included on Φ in the order in which they were made, three of the four compositions (excluding the Frey) only required one take. The playing order allowed the two musicians to gradually build a rapport of sorts, finding a remarkable amount of common ground despite their widely differing perspectives. The progression over the three days and the connections between the pieces are quite evident, leading to an improvisation meeting that is both confident and thoroughly uneasy.
http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/catalog/060.html
http://erstwords.blogspot.com/2011/02/malfattirowe-interview.html
http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6718
Nuovi titoli si aggiungono in questi giorni al catalogo dell'etichetta psi: Agustí Fernández con Joan Saura "Vents", Dj Sniff "Ep" - il titolo non è dato dall'abbreviazione di extended play, ma dalle iniziali di Evan Parker, cui il lavoro si riferisce - Adam Linson Systems Quartet "Figures And Grounds", Evan Parker con Matthew Wright "Trance Map" e "Lio Leo Leon", registrazione integrale del concerto tenuto dalla London Improvisers Orchestra lo scorso anno al festival Freedom of the City.
L'etichetta compie quest'anno i suoi primi dieci anni di attività. Così il fondatore Evan Parker: "psi is new chapter in the work of self determination that started in 1970 with Incus Records. After leaving Incus I began a long period of working with other independent labels. I am especially grateful to Leo, FMP, Okka and ECM for the collaborations in this period. In 2001 I decided to start a new label. Martin Davidson of Emanem agreed to help me - without his support, technical know-how and work it would not be a practical proposition. His own label Emanem and psi are both committed to documenting improvised music. Each label however is very firmly independent of the other in terms of their artistic policy. Much has changed since 1970! The LP format with all its attendant technical woes and disappointments has been replaced by CD; although when Nimbus first introduced me to the idea of CD it seemed hopelessly expensive and beyond our reach but gradually the technology and economics have changed markedly in favour of the small independent producer; a whole global culture for improvised music has developed. Thousands of CDs of hard core improvised music are now available - a cursory glance at Peter Stubley's website will astonish anyone who thinks this music is hard to find. Obviously neither the idea of free music nor the small musician controlled label are the news they were back then. As one of the pioneers in the field I am optimistic.
PS: I called it 'psi' for all the associations with irrational numbers, golden ratios etc but above all for the Psi phenomena which I am convinced are at the heart of improvised music making."
http://www.emanemdisc.com/psi11.html
http://evanparker.com/psi.php
Definito finora solo per metà - ma già da capogiro - il programma di concerti che Steve Feigenbaum di Cuneiform Records curerà nella seconda metà di novembre 2011 presso il locale newyorkese The Stone. Tra i nomi ad oggi confermati ci sono The Muffins, Hamster Theatre, Thinking Plague, David Borden, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, Motor Totemists Guild, Upsilon Acrux, Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown, The Claudia Quintet, Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores e Gutbucket. "I was very, very pleased - scrive Feigenbaum - to be contacted by John Zorn and offered the opportunity to book his amazing music space The Stone for two weeks in November. The Stone is a great listening space with good sound, comfortable chairs and great music six nights per week (they are closed on Mondays). There are two separate shows per night with a different act at each show and a separate admission to each show. Every cent of your admission money goes to the artists."
www.cuneiformrecords.com
www.thestonenyc.com
Festeggia dieci anni di attività l'etichetta MoonJune Records: nel rinnovato sito web un po' di autocelebrazione e un compendio delle principali produzioni passate e presenti, sia discografiche sia concertistiche. "MoonJune Records came into being in 2001. The company represents the fruition of vision from entrepreneurial producer, tour manager and promoter Leonardo Pavkovic, and draws its name from Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt’s famous 1970 epic “The Moon in June”. MoonJune has already long established its pedigree with “in-the-know” progressive music fans. The focus of MoonJune is to discover and release music by artists from a variety of international settings, exploring the expanding boundaries of genuine, challenging "non-over-produced music" that cannot be easily categorized into any specific format. MoonJune’s ongoing goal is to support music that transcends stylistic pigeon-holing, but operates within an evolutionary progressive musical continuum that places jazz at one end and rock at the other. The ever-expanding boundaries of these two musical categories have since come to include everything from progressive rock to ethno-jazz, from experimental avante-garde to jazz-rock, and anything in between."
http://www.moonjune.com
Burning Shed inizia a raccogliere le prenotazioni del nuovo album della Michael Giles Mad Band In the Moment, ufficialmente in uscita il 10 maggio, frutto della collaborazione avviata l'anno scorso con Keith Tippett.
The second album from The Michael Giles MAD Band adds pianist supreme (and occasional King Crimson collaborator) Keith Tippett into the mix. Sometimes challenging, sometimes lyrical, and sometimes playfully humorous, In the Moment is a collection of contemporary improvised music, which moves skilfully between free jazz and free rock territory. "In a spirit of freedom, The MAD Band explores the universe of sound, silence, space and time." (Michael Giles)
http://www.burningshed.com/store/jazz/product/140/2827
http://www.michaelgiles.com/MICHAEL_GILES/home.html
Pronto per l'etichetta Drag City un nuovo eccellente album degli High Llamas, Talahomy Way, in perfetta continuità sonora e tematica con i precedenti lavori. Un'intervista recente al leader Sean O'Hagan - con molti riferimenti ai numi tutelari di sempre, Brian Wilson e Beach Boys - è disponibile in forma di podcast presso Sock Monkey Sound.
www.highllamas.com
Robert Wyatt interviene oggi all'ultimo giorno del festival letterario The Laugharne Weekend, in corso nella cittadina del Galles immortalata dal Dylan Thomas di Under Milk Wood, preceduto da un'esibizione in solo di Euros Childs (già in Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci). Il programma completo della rassegna, quest'anno alla sua quinta edizione, è in http://www.thelaugharneweekend.com (anche in pdf).
Kawabata Makoto e Tsuyama Atsushi, gli esilaranti Zoffy del Japanese New Music Festival, rifanno per intero la versione di Quadri di un'esposizione di Mussorgsky che fu di Emerson Lake and Palmer, ma con tastiere e chitarrine, voci, flauto, violino, percussioni e strumenti etnici. "ELP were a revolutionary supergroup who left the 70s in their dust, then Zoffy are an anti-revolutionary dusteating superduo careening the wrong way back down the 21st century. On this, their most problematical work yet, they present an utterly audacious, unprecedented cover of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. And guess what? ELP covered it too."
http://acidmotherstemple.blog10.fc2.com
http://www.acidmothers.com/cgi-bin/crew/B_zoffy/index_main.html
Sarà pronta a fine maggio 2011 la riedizione celebrativa dello storico album dei Caravan In The Land Of Grey And Pink, a quarant'anni dalla sua prima pubblicazione. A curarne il 'restauro' - nei tre cd/dvd ci saranno versioni rimasterizzate, stereo e surround, brani aggiuntivi e un paio di filmati tratti dagli archivi di Beat Club - è Steven Wilson, già responsabile di alcune recenti rivisitazioni degli album dei King Crimson. Pareri e ragguagli tecnici, con qualche riserva, sono in alcuni interventi al forum di What's Rattlin'?
To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the release of Caravan’s In The Land Of Grey And Pink, Universal is pleased to announce a special three-disc, deluxe edition of the album. The original multi-track session and album masters have been revisited by Steven Wilson who has prepared new stereo and 5.1 Surround Sound mixes. Disc One features the original album newly remastered by Paschal Byrne at The Audio Archive plus three new Stereo mixes by Steven Wilson. Disc Two features two previously unreleased versions of “It Doesn’t Take A Lot” and “Nigel Blows A Tune” plus four non-album tracks remixed by Wilson Disc two also includes three songs recorded live for BBC radio’s Sounds of the Seventies - “Love To Love You”, “Love Song Without Flute” and “In The Land Of Grey And Pink” plus two songs recorded live for John Peel’s Sunday Concert which included a superb cover version of Soft Machine’s “Feelin’, Reelin’, Squealin’” and Caravan’s own magnum opus, “Nine Feet Underground”. Disc Three is a DVD featuring the brand new 5.1 Surround Sound and Stereo mix of the album plus two performances recorded for German TV’s Beat Club in June 1971. “Golf Girl” was broadcast at the time but “Winter Wine” has never been seen.
http://www.caravan-info.co.uk/#/news/landofgreyandpink40thanniversaryedition
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/whatsrattlin
Si sono ascoltati anche gli Stormy Six nel corso di Prospettive Musicali domenica scorsa, ripresi dal vivo al concerto del 1° aprile all'auditorium Di Vittorio della Camera del lavoro di Milano con alcuni inediti dal nuovo progetto a cui il gruppo sta lavorando con Moni Ovadia: Canto dei sarti ebrei della Wehrmacht, Il violinista sul tetto e Benvenuti nel ghetto (cocktail molotov). La puntata, condotta da Alessandro Achilli, è quella del 10 aprile 2011 ed è disponibile in mp3 in http://prospmus.blogspot.com.
L'acronimo si basa sui cognomi dei suoi componenti: Clive Bell, Hans Joachim Irmler, Robert Lippok e Jaki Liebezeit. Esce a giorni l'album di debutto del quartetto B.I.L.L. prodotto a ridosso del loro primo e unico concerto insieme, quello tenuto la scorsa estate a Scheer in occasione del festival dell'etichetta faustiana Klangbad. Si tratta del secondo capitolo di una serie, denominata Spielwiese Scheer, dedicata a registrazioni musicali frutto di incontri al buio, a sorpresa o fuori programma. Il lavoro è disponibile sia in cd sia in vinile - quest'ultimo in una speciale confezione che comprende lp, cd, copertina artigianale serigrafata e una chiave per il download digitale - direttamente presso l'etichetta: http://www.klangbad.de. Un estratto dal concerto a Scheer è su YouTube.
http://tinyurl.com/3deyd5h
http://tinyurl.com/43w4c29
Ci sono anche il banjo di Eugene Chadbourne e il violino di LaDonna Smith tra gli strumenti dell'orchestra 'eterodossa' immaginata da Annie Gosfield per il suo Shoot the Player Piano: li si vede in azione nel filmato da lei stessa pubblicato qualche tempo fa su YouTube.
"Shoot the Player Piano is a 1999 work for an imaginary orchestra of aged and unusual mechanical instruments. Almost all of the sounds that you hear did not come from the accompanying instruments on the screen (with two exceptions: the sound of the paper roll turning, and the banjo tremolo). Using a combination of old and new recordings of calliopes, nickelodeons, German jahrmarkt organs and their interior bells and percussion, prepared piano, accordion, the violin of LaDonna Smith, the banjo of Eugene Chadbourne, and various machine sounds, I created a large library of samples and then detuned, altered, edited, and arranged these sounds. The antique instruments that I videotaped for this project were so well-maintained they sounded as if they could have been manufactured yesterday. Because my original inspiration was the unpredictable quality of deteriorating instruments, I chose to compose the music with sounds drawn from outside sources".
http://www.youtube.com/user/agosfield
http://anniegosfield.com
Inizia domani la parte italiana del tour dei Van der Graaf Generator a sostegno dell'ultimo fortunato capitolo discografico, A Grounding in Numbers (Esoteric Recordings). Alcuni dei nuovi brani - Mr. Sands, Your Time Starts Now, Bunsho, All Over the Place - figurano in scaletta accanto a classici scelti soprattutto dal periodo Godbluff-World Record, senza tralasciare Lemmings o Man-Erg. La formazione è quella del trio Hammill-Banton-Evans più volte confermata negli ultimi anni. Suonano il 4 aprile a Roma (Auditorium, Sala Sinopoli), il 7 a Milano (Conservatorio, Sala Verdi), l'8 a Vicenza (Teatro Comunale) e infine il 9 a Cesena (Carisport).
www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk
www.cherryred.co.uk/esoteric/artists/vandergraafgenerator.php
Green Gartside partecipa ad Invisible Jukebox per la rivista inglese The Wire, in edicola questo mese con il numero 326: tra gli ascolti proposti Martin Carthy, Janet Kay, Matching Mole, Alterations, This Heat e Miles Davis. Del suo debito nei confronti di Wyatt dice: "What I remember particularly about Robert was his gift for melody, which is extraordinary. Blew my fucking mind lyrically, melodically, texturally, musically - I owe him a great deal. He's one of a handful of people that when the so-called year zero of punk arrived, his power did not diminish at all".
http://www.thewire.co.uk
Uno speciale concerto si tiene a Londra questo fine settimana, il 2 aprile al Kings Place, nell'ambito dei festeggiamenti per il settantacinquesimo compleanno di Mike Westbrook. Si tratta della prima mondiale di The Serpent Hit, lavoro in cinque movimenti per quartetto di sassofoni, percussioni e voce, scritto da Mike con scenario e libretto di Kate Westbrook. A commissionare il brano in origine fu il Delta Saxophone Quartet, che un paio di anni fa lo presentò, in versione ancora provvisoria, nel corso di una prova pubblica presso la Kingston University; l'esecuzione di domani sera sarà integrale, con una sezione conclusiva appena ultimata, e affidata a Chris Biscoe, Karen Street, Andy Tweed e Chris Caldwell (sassofoni), Simon Pearson (batteria) e Kate Westbrook (voce). Il concerto, registrato dalla BBC, sarà poi trasmesso probabilmente assieme a qualche estratto dalla prima parte della serata, laddove al gruppo si uniranno Steve Berry (basso) e lo stesso Mike Westbrook (piano) per alcuni brani di Fine 'n Yellow, anch'essi in prima esecuzione dal vivo.
Notizie sui Westbrook sono al solito raccolte nel periodico Smith’s Academy Informer - il numero 89 è da qualche giorno disponibile online - mentre le iniziative di 'buon compleanno' sono riassunte in http://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/emails/mw75.html
http://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk
http://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/sai/sai.shtml
http://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/emails/mw75.html
http://www.kingsplace.co.uk
http://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on-book-tickets/music/mike-westbrook-the-serpent-hit
