Tre anni fa, nel periodo più difficile della pandemia e dell'isolamento, David Greenberger e Tyson Rogers realizzarono un lavoro dal titolo Everybody's Home, con testi e musiche basati su oltre 150 conversazioni telefoniche tenute con amici, vicini e parenti. Una di queste, la numero 33, fu con Robert Wyatt ('He has outlooks and sensibilities that make all those around him feel that life is indeed a wonderful thing'): The Lovely Thing About Being Human.
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Altra importante etichetta che avrà presto motivo di festeggiare la propria lunga attività - ben quarant'anni l'anno prossimo! - è la Cuneiform Records. Che intanto anticipa qualcosina...
The Real McGregor (1967, dir. Ian Hutchison) is a documentary featuring interview material with Chris McGregor, followed by a concert at Ronnie Scott’s Old Place in Gerrard Street, where the group, also known as The Blue Notes, enjoyed a year-long residency. On this occasion the classic quintet included Louis Moholo-Moholo, Johnny Dyani, Mongezi Feza and Ronnie Beer as well as McGregor. This film was recovered by documentary filmmaker Dr. Paul D.J. Moody of International Media Productions. Paul has restored the image and soundtrack, and is seeking broadcaster interest to bring the project to the widest possible audience. Tonight's showing is the first public screening since the early 1970s. Early film of The Blue Notes is extremely rare and this is the only known footage of their time in London and at the Old Place, so a hugely significant event.
https://ogun-cadillac-records-50th-birthday-celebration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_(record_label)
https://www.discogs.com/label/45652-Cadillac-Records
https://ogunrecording.co.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogun_Records
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/shop/category/ogun
Maggie Nicols e Viv Corringham iniziano questa sera da Bonn una lunga serie di concerti per Soundtrips NWF - si tratta della numero 65 - che nei prossimi giorni le vedrà protagoniste in duo e con ospiti musicisti di volta in volta diversi in varie sedi della Renania Settentrionale-Vestfalia (Germania). L'appuntamento di stasera, promosso dall'In Situ Art Society, si svolge negli spazi artistici e culturali della Kreuzung an St. Helena e viene trasmesso in live streaming su YT a partire dalle ore 20.00.
Maggie und Viv lernten sich Ende der siebziger Jahre beim London Musicians Collective kennen, wo neue und erfahrene Improvisatoren frei miteinander spielen konnten. Viv besuchte mehrere von Maggies Gesangsworkshops und ihre außergewöhnlichen freien und einladenden "Gatherings". Die beiden Sängerinnen fanden eine Verbindung, die über die Jahre hinweg anhielt. Obwohl beide in verschiedene Länder gezogen sind, sind sie aufgetreten, wann immer sich ihre Wege gekreuzt haben, und freuen sich sehr, für diese Tournee wieder als Duo zusammenzukommen.
Die Konzertreihe Soundtrips NRW präsentiert spannende musikalische Rundreisen durch NRW. Die inzwischen 12-jährige Kontinuität wird durch die Förderung des NRW Kultursekretariats sowie der beteiligten Städte möglich gemacht und bietet die Chance eine qualitativ hochwertige Konzeptidee weiterzuentwickeln und lebendig zu gestalten.
Caroline Kraabel, Charlotte Hug e Maggie Nicols riprese in tempo reale al Vortex londinese l'estate dell'anno scorso, accordando voci movimenti e suoni alle vertigini di una poesia di Jenny Xie: On Dizziness.
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Charles Hayward parla con Ben Graham (The Quietus) del suo nuovo progetto Abstract Concrete - quintetto con Agathe Max, Otto Willberg, Roberto Sassi e Yoni Silver fondato in piena pandemia - alla vigilia della pubblicazione dell'atteso album di debutto per state51.
Combining sweet chamber pop hooks with dubwise bass, plaintive Balearic guitar licks, and a blend of folk and jazz-informed post punk, accompanied by lyrics that bend from the political to depressed toilet cleaning apparatus, Abstract Concrete follows a continuum of such melodic art school innovators as The Kinks, Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt and Penguin Cafe Orchestra, as well as Hayward’s own experimental post punk past, all the while nodding to a childhood spent listening to folk and pop.
The journey to this album, for Charles, has been long and complex, but in short, he brought a wealth of fragments with him; of musical concepts, of time changes, of hooks, of melodies and developed them with the group: “I work in a very strange way, which takes into consideration that I have been doing this for my whole life. I've always got fragments of songs just waiting to find a home, waiting for lyrics, waiting for a bridge section to something else. It involves saying to yourself, ‘I'm going to do this until I die.’ I’ve had one of the tunes, ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’, going round my head for over 25 years.” After this there was only one fixed rule: that he would write the lyrics in response to the compositions they were forging together, a process he describes as “weirdly democratic”.
The lyrics are, he explains, “a reaction to the times we’re living in” – often reflections on the political climate of today, the impact of Covid and the changing role of music itself, with the songs being composed and structured in unusual ways to emphasise these concerns.
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The Westbrook Trio is the longest established and most widely travelled of all Mike Westbrook’s ensembles. The Trio’s mix of composition, song, and improvisation has been at the heart of many Westbrook projects, from the seminal Brass Band of the '70s to the Westbrook Orchestra. From the early '80s, Kate, Mike and Chris Biscoe have continued to perform regularly throughout Europe as well as touring in Canada, Australia and the Far East. The group’s geographical and musical adventures were commemorated in their 20th Anniversary album L’ascenseur/The Lift. The group’s 30th anniversary was marked by the release of Three into Wonderfull, its title taken from a Times review of a Trio performance. To celebrate its 40th year the Trio is joined by saxophonist Pete Whyman, accordionist Karen Street, with Marcus Vergette on bass and Coach York on drums. A formidable septet to play the Westbrook Song Book.
Chi sta registrando un progressivo esaurirsi delle copie fisiche dei titoli in catalogo è la magnifica British Progressive Jazz di Matt Parker, che senza troppe cerimonie indica i pochi esemplari ancora disponibili e invita appassionati e curiosi a non esitare a procurarsene uno prima che sia troppo tardi. Anche se, a dire il vero, per qualcuno di essi si confida prima o poi in una ristampa (forse in vinile). Home Brewed, per esempio?
Forte di sei eccellenti uscite quasi in contemporanea la Discus Music di Martin Archer propone via Bandcamp alcune occasioni di ascolto condiviso con appassionati e curiosi: si inizia oggi con Alive! in the studio di Charlotte Keeffe con il suo Right Here, Right Now Quartet e Bars Without Measures della spettacolare Eclectic Maybe Band guidata da Guy Segers, cui si aggiunge in questa occasione Julie Tippetts.
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La scena della musica improvvisata europea e i suoi protagonisti gli devono moltissimo, e il ruolo dell'etichetta FMP - di cui fu tra i fondatori e poi a lungo il principale responsabile - è di importanza assoluta nella storia e nell'evoluzione del jazz più creativo e radicale in Germania (e non solo) dalla fine degli anni Sessanta fin quasi ai tempi nostri: se n'è andato pochi giorni fa all'età di 83 anni Jost Gebers, a pochi mesi dalla scomparsa del confratello Peter Brötzmann. Tra i primi a salutarlo sul web Jean Rochard (Le Glob) e Martin Schray (The Free Jazz Collective): "Er war ein bärtiger Mann mit Brille und struwweligem Haar - und er war ein Zupacker. Ein Energischer, der etwas bewegen wollte. Und der nicht so schnell nachgab. Wann immer man Jost Gebers begegnete, er strahlte stets etwas von kreativer Angriffslust und schöpferischer Unruhe aus. Es war nur folgerichtig, dass dieser aus Berlin stammende Bassist und Sozialarbeiter zu einem der Motoren der frei improvisierten Musik in Deutschland und darüber hinaus wurde."
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Difficile non incrociare John Marshall (1941-2023) nelle elettrizzanti avventure del rock jazz britannico (ed europeo) al tempo del suo sviluppo più innovativo, soprattutto agli inizi e nel corso degli anni Settanta: con Nucleus e Soft Machine, naturalmente, ma anche con Jack Bruce, John Surman, Centipede, Graham Collier, Mike Westbrook, Neil Ardley, Michael Gibbs, Gil Evans, Eberhard Weber, Jasper van 't Hof e decine di altri. Un po' di quell'epoca, e degli anni successivi, traspare nell'intervista finora inedita rilasciata da Marshall a Phil Howitt di Facelift un paio d'anni fa e che in suo omaggio viene pubblicata oggi alla notizia della sua scomparsa.
E così scrive su FB l'amico e collega Theo Travis nel ricordarne le doti di musicista: "John was a very special drummer, a one off and a unique musical voice. He had great technique, formidable power and a rounded flowing rhythmic ‘feel’ but these do not begin to describe the magic that he could bring to whatever music he was involved in. As an improviser he could add so much colour, texture, structure and energy to music. He could play incredibly delicately and quietly and at other times do this thing where he would sort of erupt with a gargantuan energy - like a volcano. I never really understood what he was doing rhythmically when he did that, but the emotional power of it was unmistakable. He really listened to others when he played always focussing on what benefited the music as a whole."
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Un omaggio al compianto Philip Jeck (1952-2022) con musica, cinema e danza si tiene questa sera a Londra all'Iklectik, con la partecipazione tra gli altri di Chris Watson, Claire M Singer, Jonathan Raisin, John Beaumont e il Liverpool Improvisation Collective. Watson presenterà una speciale versione dal vivo di Oxmardyke (Touch, 2023), l'album al quale Jeck ha lavorato con lui nelle sue ultime settimane di vita. Così ne rammenta la genesi: "In 2017 I was recording along the north bank of the Humber estuary and one morning driving back from Faxfleet I was stopped at the Oxmardyke rail crossing. The gates were down. After setting up a microphone array by the tracks for a passing freight train the signalman shouted an invitation to climb up into the gate box to make some more recordings. Over the following weeks I made several return trips to Oxmardyke and gathered a broad palette of recordings. I discussed the sounds, stories and history of the site with Philip after a show and we were both excited by the potential of making a work together. Philip was drawn to the ancient history of the area from 6th century Anglo-Saxon times to the Knights Templar and how the sounds, rhythms and textures from those periods may still inhabit the contemporary landscape. My thoughts took inspiration from ‘The Signalman’ by Charles Dickens and the painting ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’ by Joseph Mallord William Turner. We agreed to share ideas and exchange tracks. Oxmardyke gate box has now passed into history. I hope my contributions may frame Philip’s exceptional work."
Si ripresenta al Cafe Oto londinese l'occasione, rara ma ogni volta memorabile, per avventurarsi nelle fitte spirali sonore prodotte dal vivo da Himmel, l'ensemble di tastiere, distorsori, bassi elettrici e percussioni guidato da Andy Saunders con il programmatico titolo Music for Massed Fuzz Organs. La formazione, al solito variabile e imprevedibile, dovrebbe costituirsi stasera di una quindicina di elementi, tra cui Ian Paxton, Mike Barnes, Kath Gifford, Al Strachan, Alice Eldridge, Richard Miles, Dave Tribe e Chris Cutler.
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/himmel-music-for-massed-fuzz-organs
Una collaborazione di Fred Frith con il polistrumentista polacco Macio Moretti risalente a qualche tempo fa viene oggi ufficialmente alla luce grazie a un album e a un video registrati in occasione di un loro concerto a Varsavia: Works for Me Should Be The Title.
https://muzykazmozgu.bandcamp.com/fred-frith-macio-moretti
https://youtu.be/vvlj6mT1flU
E Fred Frith con il suo trio e Donald Robinson saranno domani a Berkeley assieme al Rova a festeggiarne il quarantacinquesimo anno di attività: Rovations!
An evening of adventurous music to celebrate Rova Saxophone Quartet’s 45 anniversary with friends drummer Donald Robinson and the Fred Frith Trio. These kindred spirits will join Rova for seamless and masterful blends of composed and improvised music, the interweaving of which has surprised and delighted audiences in the Bay Area and beyond for nearly five decades. Inspired by forward looking jazz, world music, contemporary classical music, and imaginative rock, the quartet has developed a personal and engaging approach to improvisation. The works are often framed by compositional structures that inform and ignite improvisations that are thoughtfully crafted and highly original. Since its inception Rova has collaborated with other individuals and ensembles to co-create the unexpected. For this special show Rova will present new works as a quartet, will play quintet improvisations with Robinson, and cook up some singular brews with Frith on guitar, Jason Hoopes on bass, and Jordan Glenn, drums. This is an exciting and rare opportunity to catch eight intrepid Bay Area practitioners of adventurous music.
Un nuovo doppio episodio immersivo della serie Drawing Sound con protagonisti Fred Frith e Heike Liss si è tenuto qualche giorno fa all'Exploratorium di San Francisco - celebre museo interattivo dedicato a scienza, arte e percezione umana - negli spazi del Fisher Bay Observatory prospicienti la baia, dialogando attraverso le vetrate con le variazioni della luce ambientale, dapprima al tramonto e successivamente al buio. Un breve estratto è su YT.
An unpredictable improvisational performance that considers sound and visuals in relation to each other. In their ongoing collaboration Drawing Sound, sound artist Fred Frith generates soundscapes while visual artist Heike Liss draws her sonic images directly on windows. Presenting their work in two sets, Fred and Heike will move through Fisher Bay Observatory and invite an additional collaborator: the shifting light of the world beyond the glass windows.
Yumi Hara invita amici ed appassionati - soprattutto coloro che non hanno potuto assistere al concerto londinese del mese scorso - a una presentazione online del suo nuovo album da titolare, Groove Study, alla cui realizzazione hanno contribuito a vario titolo Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson, Toshiaki Sudoh e Tatsuya Yoshida. L'appuntamento è per questa sera, alle ore 22.00, prenotando la propria partecipazione attraverso Bandcamp.
Ci sono ampie tracce dei lavori liquidi di Mark Boyle, Joan Hills, Mike Leonard e Peter Wynne Willson per i concerti di Soft Machine e Pink Floyd dell'epoca psichedelica all'Ufo Club di Londra nel libro di Kevin Foakes Wheels of Light (Four Corner Books, 2022), che segue l'evoluzione tecnologica e artistica dei light show britannici da metà-fine anni Sessanta ai decenni successivi - in ambito musicale, ma non solo - dando rilievo a quei primi esperimenti pionieristici e innovativi di grande impatto e fortissima esperienza sensoriale (non soltanto visiva).
The author’s research, triggered by a modern- day DJ’s encounter with a Solar 250 projector and Luton-based Optikinetics, has resulted in a book which is nothing less than a jewel of entertainment lighting history. Always engaging, and with an obviously warm regard for his subject, Foakes takes the reader back to the early days of effect lighting; to bubbling oils, to Aldis projectors and the extraordinary, hand-painted effect wheels that would today grace the walls of any art collection. Although it predominantly focuses on the artworks themselves, the book also provides a fascinating overview of those who drove this cultural phenomenon. Those early days of effects projection, from the early 1960s and through the 70s and 80s, have been a source of fascination and inspiration for light artists and lighting designers ever since. From strobing, monochrome op-art at the Fillmore, to The Soft Machine and The Pink Floyd bathed in swirling, coloured liquid projections at the UFO Club, they were innovations that have cast many long and wonderful shadows, through disco, punk, rave and beyond.
Mentre Sid Smith si accorge di Suspended Moment e ne scrive - elogiandolo - per il britannico Prog Magazine, dalle nostre parti si presentano due nuove occasioni per avvicinarsi allo splendido Bournville incontrando l'autore in persona, Jonathan Coe: a Mantova questa sera per il Festivaletteratura - anche in diretta streaming sul web - e domani a Milano per Il tempo delle donne.
In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave. As we travel through seventy-five years of social change, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question starts to emerge: will these changing times bring Mary's family - and their country - closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before?
https://www.festivaletteratura.it
https://eventi.corriere.it/il-tempo-delle-donne
https://twitter.com/jonathancoe
E' una proiezione continua in forma di loop il nuovo collage concepito - anzi, scolpito - da Christian Marclay come un inesauribile labirinto tra suoni e immagini di porte che si chiudono e si aprono incessantemente entro ingannevoli ambienti spazio-temporali creati e manipolati a partire da frammenti filmici preesistenti: Doors, in visione fino a fine mese presso il White Cube di Mason's Yard a Londra.
Constructed from cinematic footage collected over a decade, Doors constitutes a montage of short, sampled film clips featuring the opening and closing of doors. Continuing the vocabulary of some of Marclay’s most celebrated video works including Telephones (1995), Video Quartet (2002), Crossfire (2007) and The Clock (2010), this new moving image collage is made of film sequences of all genres, black and white and colour, from French New Wave to Hollywood blockbusters. Deftly edited by the artist, the result is a visual narrative that follows actors as they walk through a door to enter a new space. The passage marks the editing point, facilitating the transition not only from one film to another but also from one soundscape to another. Marclay harnesses the potential of the medium to construct non-synchronous, palimpsestic notions of tempo-spatiality. As he states, ‘the trick is to create a flow, an illusion of continuity’. With no defined beginning or end, each cut acts as a fulcrum to another film, allowing the actors to move through endless passageways, navigate architectural spaces and traverse timeframes. The resulting virtuosic montage suggests a labyrinthine wandering; a realm in which the protagonists get lost and then find themselves again. ‘This video is very sculptural’, Marclay remarks, ‘it’s a sort of mental architecture that the viewer might or might not follow and get lost in.’
Non solo sugli scaffali di qualche libreria: ora i due eccellenti volumi iconografici sui Residents curati da Aaron Tanner per Melodic Virtue, A Sight for Sore Eyes, fanno bella mostra di sé anche nella collezione permanente del Museum of Modern Art a Manhattan, New York, assieme ai pioneristici video prodotti dai Nostri a inizio-metà carriera e uno dei due unici esemplari al mondo del loro famigerato Ultimate Box Set.
https://www.residents.com
https://www.moma.org
https://www.melodicvirtue.com/the-residents
A festeggiare i quarant'anni di attività del celebre Westbrook Trio - Mike e Kate in fraterna alleanza con Chris Biscoe - si uniscono in squisita sintonia Karen Street, Pete Whyman, Marcus Vergette e Coach York, così che da un semplice anniversario nasce un vero e proprio nuovo progetto: Band of Bands, atteso al debutto tra qualche giorno a Londra, dopo l'imprevista (e improvvisa) cancellazione del concerto previsto domani a Torquay.
Formed in 1982 the Trio is the longest established and most widely travelled of all Mike’s ensembles. The group’s mix of composition, song and improvisation has been at the heart of many Westbrook projects, from the seminal Brass Band of the ‘70s to the current Uncommon Orchestra. The unique repertoire around which the performance of the Band of Bands is based, has been shaped by the experience of touring and of collaborating with artists in many countries. There are re-creations of Westbrook classics alongside new compositions, and arrangements of some lesser known standards, all interpreted by some of the UK’s most original and distinctive soloists.
Prosegue con l'amatissima I See Thy Form la pubblicazione di materiali nella preziosa serie The Westbrook Songbook curata da Chris Topley presso il sito web dei Westbrook in collegamento diretto con Bandcamp, da cui di volta in volta si possono acquisire partiture per voce e pianoforte, file audio di riferimento, testi e ulteriori informazioni. In questo caso il poema di William Blake - tratto dalle cento tavole di Jerusalem, adattato da Adrian Mitchell - è preso dal 45 giri pubblicato nel 1980 da Original Records, dove era in coppia con A Poison Tree, in una versione leggermente diversa da quella dell'album capolavoro Bright as Fire.
The song writing partnership of composer Mike Westbrook and vocalist/librettist Kate Westbrook began in the 1970s with their award-winning jazz cabaret Mama Chicago. This was the first in a long succession of touring theatre shows with their own ensembles or collaborations in theatre, dance, opera and television. They have composed original song cycles about artists, notably the oratorio Turner in Uri. Other works are concerned with contemporary issues, as in their political fable The Serpent Hit, and in Earth Felt The Wound, about the environment. Operas for the stage include Coming Through Slaughter, Jago, Cape Gloss and for television Good Friday 1663. They have generated a number of large-scale concert works for jazz and classical ensembles, involving settings of European poetry, among them The Westbrook Blake, The Cortège and London Bridge is Broken Down. From these projects, The Westbrook Songbook aims to create a collection of individual songs. Each recording is accompanied by an arrangement for voice and piano. At regular intervals on the WestbrookJazz website, song copies plus recordings will be available as a pdf for download via Bandcamp.
E pubblicazione preziosissima è quella curata proprio da Duncan Heining per Jazz in Britain, And Did Those Feet…, dedicata alla vita e alle opere di sei tra i più importanti protagonisti del jazz britannico, Michael Garrick, Mike Gibbs, Barry Guy, John Mayer, Keith Tippett e Mike Westbrook. Il libro - accompagnato da un esclusivo doppio cd contenente registrazioni rare o inedite, tra cui una perla westbrookiana d'epoca The Cortège - uscirà ufficialmente il prossimo 19 ottobre, data di compleanno dell'autore, ma lo si può richiedere già ora presso il sito dell'etichetta.
Scrive Heining: "The idea for this collection of profiles of British jazz composers came about for two reasons. Firstly, several people involved in the British jazz scene had proposed separately that I might write biographies on three of the artists featured in And Did Those Feet…. Much though each one deserved their own full biography, I felt unable to oblige. Given the state of this small corner of the publishing industry, any such book would be unlikely to sell in sufficient quantities to warrant the outlay of money, time and resources that would be involved. That said, it occurred to me that a series of detailed career retrospectives on each of these subjects in a single volume might at least do some justice to their rich and varied careers in British jazz. Moreover, such a book would not preclude others picking up the mantle later and producing specific biographies on any of these major figures in the music. The second reason arose from my realisation that the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Ian Carr’s seminal Music Outside (Latimer 1973/Northway 2008) was drawing near. The composers, bandleaders and improvisers Ian discussed, in the main, went on to long and hugely productive careers and it seemed that it was high time to look again at the work of several of those artists in depth. Additionally, these musicians have had to chart very different waters from those described by Carr in 1973. One important criterion for inclusion was, therefore, that the artists discussed here had all had careers that stretched into, at least, the late part of the last millennium. The second criteria was that we would focus on musicians, who were both band-leaders and composers."
Due preziose pubblicazioni, uscite nelle scorse settimane quasi in contemporanea, hanno per protagonista Graham Collier (1937-2011), figura centrale nelle vicende del jazz nel Regno Unito a cavallo tra gli anni Sessanta e Settanta, noto e stimato tra colleghi ed estimatori come musicista, compositore, intraprendente band leader, valido educatore e prolifico autore di testi di insegnamento musicale. A una - Live At Ronnie's, da un concerto dell'ottobre 1969 - provvede John Thurlow di Jazz in Britain, dell'altra - Smoke-Blackened Walls & Curlews, con registrazioni del luglio 1971 - si occupa Matt Parker di British Progressive Jazz, con Collier nel ruolo di contrabbassista assieme ad Alan Wakeman, Harry Beckett, Geoff Castle, Stan Sulzmann, Nick Evans e John Marshall tra gli altri. I due album offrono interessanti materiali inediti e assieme contribuiscono a richiamare lo spirito avventuroso e pionieristico del jazz britannico dell'epoca, accolto e perfino promosso - ma solo per una breve stagione - presso i canali televisivi ufficiali della BBC, come ricorda Duncan Heining citando soprattutto il programma Jazz Scene: "BBC 2 had been established to provide more ambitious programming than its more populist sibling. Jazz 625 was the channel’s first jazz offering and ran for eighteen episodes between 1964-1966. Jazz Scene lasted from 1969-1970 totalling thirty-two episodes. In theory, the channel was an ideal host for the left-field music that was coming out of the British scene at the time. However, when its run came to an end, a decision was clearly taken not to recommission or replace the series. Jazz on BBC television over the next few years – and beyond – would be confined to segments on general arts programmes and occasional TV specials. Explaining why this was so is beyond my brief here. What I would stress is that a change was in the air culturally and jazz was a victim of that change not least in terms of its access to broadcast media. By the early seventies, Britain was shifting away from the cultural pluralism that had characterised the previous decade. Composer/bandleaders like Graham Collier would continue to produce important music over their careers. The difference was that they would do so in the margins and often against the odds. Collier was, in many ways, cannier than most of his peers in creating work opportunities. He became adept at getting money out of arts bodies, his groups played in schools, he ran workshops, he wrote books on jazz and composed music for radio plays and films. In fact, quite how he did all that while running a regular band is simply astonishing. But thank crikey he did. As Collier’s biographer, I refuse to pander to the notion that musicians like Collier, Michael Garrick, Mike Westbrook and others were at their creative peak in those heady years. Yet, I must allow that the music these artists made then – not least a consequence of working with top producers and engineers and recording in top-flite studios – offers a unique glimpse into a special time. The music of these jazz pioneers has an immediacy and sense of urgency, as if they felt that their time had come. Everything seemed possible, for a moment at least."
https://jazzinbritain.co.uk/live-at-ronnies
https://britishprogressivejazz.com/smoke-blackened-walls-curlews
E' aperta al pubblico per l'intero mese di settembre presso l'Università di Huddersfield (Regno Unito) la mostra Free to Improvise: The Derek Bailey Story, con esposizione di materiali vari tratti dall'archivio del Nostro curata dal dipartimento di catalogazione e conservazione del prestigioso ateneo, l'Heritage Quay. L'ingresso, naturalmente, è libero.
Heritage Quay’s latest exhibition explores the life and work of Derek Bailey (1930-2005), a guitarist who was a major force in the development of Free Improvisation. Bailey’s remarkable musical journey began in Sheffield, with a young lad entranced by the music he heard on his uncle’s radio, and fascinated by the guitar. After leaving school he began to pick up work as a musician, and by the 1960s was playing for big names including Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield and Morecambe and Wise. Around 1969 he left behind this successful - though always precarious - career as a commercial musician to concentrate solely on Free Improvisation. Intent on a sort of music which went beyond style and genre, he worked with people all over the world, ran a record label, Incus, and brought very different people together for spontaneous, organic music-making. Heritage Quay’s exhibition tells this story, using photographs, notebooks, letters, programmes, and the plectrums Bailey made himself using dental acrylic. Many of the items on display have never been seen by the public before. They are all part of the Derek Bailey Archive, which is cared for by Heritage Quay. The exhibition is part of our Kirklees Year of Music series.
https://heritagequay.org/free-to-improvise-the-derek-bailey-story
https://heritagequay.org/archives/DBY
