Phantom Leg è il duo di improvvisazione che Geoff Leigh e Richard Harrison hanno costituito un paio d'anni fa, debuttando via Bandcamp con Booting Up, ripreso dal vivo - ma senza pubblico - a Manchester. Lo scorso primo maggio hanno rinnovato l'incontro - questa volta a Liverpool, negli spazi di una delle più antiche stazioni ferroviarie al mondo - su invito del collettivo artistico Metal: Metal May Day.
Sarà disponibile in cd da agosto, ma in formato digitale lo si può già ascoltare tramite Bandcamp: è l'atteso album del sassofonista Marc Hadley - il primo realizzato a proprio nome come titolare - contenente tra mille riferimenti canterburyani anche le ultime registrazioni in studio del compianto Phil Miller: How To Cut Water.
L'autore ne parla per esteso a Phil Howitt per Facelift: "This record was inspired by my time playing with Phil Miller, who had a built-in preference for the road less-travelled, thus he might choose to write a 5/4 melody rather than a 4/4. My connection to Phil came via bassist Jack Monck; the first bassist in one of the Canterbury origin bands, Delivery. After decades of orbiting one another, Phil, Jack, the late Paul Dufour, and I finally formed a quartet, recording a studio demo in 2016. Following Phil’s death in 2017, I was left with a sense of unfinished business. We had a collection of tunes to which Phil had been a generous contributor, including the enigmatically challenging piece he called Thing in 5. To capture Phil’s lifetime of fluid, evolving influence felt like a creative and emotional attempt at “cutting water” - trying to impose shape on an element that inherently resists it. I’ve felt at times with my own writing that I’m actually fishing for something I didn’t conceive but already exists - it just doesn’t want to linger in one place and time very long."
https://marchadley.co.uk
https://marchadley.bandcamp.com/album/how-to-cut-water
https://canterburyscene.com/an-interview-with-marc-hadley
Hugh Hopper e il suo distintivo utilizzo del fuzz-box sono in bella evidenza anche in Illusion, secondo capitolo degli Isotope che Esoteric e Cherry Red Records ripresentano in questi giorni nel box Upward Curve-The Recordings 1973-1976. Ci sono tutti gli album ufficiali del gruppo, più alcune sessioni registrate dal vivo per la BBC nel 1973 e 1974 e un pugno di brani ritoccati nel 2001; per una più completa conoscenza dell'impatto dal vivo della formazione guidata da Gary Boyle nel periodo clou del jazz-rock britannico rimangono però ineludibili i documenti pubblicati qualche anno fa da Hux (Live at the BBC, 2004) e Cuneiform (Golden Section, 2008).
Della sua breve permanenza nel gruppo disse Hopper: "We played a lot of gigs with Isotope, touring all the time in the UK and Europe and once in the States. The band had good sponsorship and backing, and jazz-rock was almost desirable for a few months in 1974-75! We were playing at least four or five times a week, all the time. Isotope certainly was good for me from the point of view of doing a lot of music. Since we were gigging so much, I was probably playing with more technical facility than when I was in Soft Machine."
In un suo curioso post su FB Dave Newhouse celebra le glorie del fuzz-box - che leggenda vuole sia nato per un involontario incidente tecnico attribuibile a Glenn Snoddy durante una sessione di country & western a Nashville nei primissimi anni Sessanta - pubblicando la foto dello strumento usato dall'amico fraterno (e compagno di mille avventure) Billy Swann. E invita all'ascolto di tre illustri esempi: il brano Don't Worry di Marty Robbins contenente appunto l'esito di quella storica anomalia, Queenside (The Muffins, Open City) e As Long As He Lies Perfecty Still (Soft Machine, II).
.jpg)
Come è ormai gradita consuetudine ogni anno a giugno - perché proprio a giugno, chissà - i wyattiani ottengono in dono da Jean-Paul Marillier la raccolta completa e aggiornata in formato pdf dei materiali via via pubblicati al suo impareggiabile sito Une discographie de Robert Wyatt. E oggi come oggi sono quasi cinquemila pagine... Merci infiniment!
Nel pieno dei festeggiamenti per i cinquant'anni dall'apertura del celebre negozio Rough Trade Records in Notting Hill a Londra, che culmineranno in tre giorni di concerti e iniziative pubbliche in tre diverse sedi del Southbank Centre a metà luglio, Geoff Travis e Jeannette Lee ricordano tra i momenti più rilevanti dell'intera storia dell'etichetta l'incontro con Robert Wyatt, che con loro firmò quell'indimenticabile serie di singoli poi riuniti in Nothing Can Stop Us (1982): "The first time I ever met Robert, I went to the recording of Launderette by Vivian Goldman. John Lydon was producing it, and Robert did the percussion. I went down to the studio and everyone was there, everyone was contributing. They were making it up as they went along – he used to just lend his hand to anything that he liked." (Jeannette Lee) "He liked the indie community, he felt much more at home there. He hated being on Virgin for years after, the later period. They wouldn’t let him make any records for a while, and that’s when we came up with a plan: ‘let’s not make an album which you can’t contractually do, let’s just make some singles’. That was a way of getting rid of Virgin." (Geoff Travis).
Heiner Goebbels compose Walden sul finire degli anni Novanta, traendo ispirazione dai testi del naturalista ottocentesco Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) considerato un precursore sia dell'ambientalismo moderno che della disobbedienza civile soprattutto alla luce del personale esperimento condotto vivendo per due anni in una capanna sulle rive del lago Walden vicino a Concord, nel Massachussetts, raccontato in quel Walden or Life In The Woods (1854) amatissimo tra l'altro dai grandi della Beat Generation per il suo individualismo radicale, solitario e spartano. Goebbels ne affidò l'esecuzione all'Ensemble Modern Orchestra con la direzione di Peter Eötvös e con la voce narrante di Bob Rutman, presentando il lavoro prima di tutto a Colonia e Francoforte nel novembre 1998. Da lì provengono le registrazioni dell'album ora in uscita per l'Ecm, intitolato appunto Walden. In anni successivi, in più occasioni e fino ai giorni nostri, è stato invece l'Ensemble Klang con Keir Neuringer nel ruolo di narratore a presentarne in pubblico un proprio adattamento - documentato poi in cd, nel 2013 - forte di raffinate competenze sceniche e dell'efficace utilizzo di strumenti musicali eterodossi (tra cui anche il daxophone ideato da Hans Reichel).
https://www.heinergoebbels.com
https://www.ensembleklang.com/programmes/walden
https://ecmrecords.com/heiner-goebbels-walden
Tornano disponibili in formato digitale al Bandcamp di Fred Frith due suoi album divenuti nel tempo introvabili o assai rari: Dearness (Spool Records, 2002) registrato dal vivo a Toronto nell'agosto 1998 in trio con Anne Bourne (violoncello) e John Oswald (sax contralto) e Tempted to Smile (Spool Records, 2003) registrato in studio con Joëlle Léandre (contrabbasso, voce) e Jonathan Segel (chitarra, violino, voce), ora con un brano in più e diversa immagine di copertina rispetto all'originale.
https://fredfrith1.bandcamp.com
https://www.discogs.com/Dearness
https://www.discogs.com/Tempted-To-Smile
Battesimo di fuoco - anzi da ciclone tropicale, come quello abbattutosi su Tokyo al loro arrivo due sere fa - per il tour in Giappone di Tim Hodgkinson e Atsuko Kamura: trasmesso in live streaming dal club Super Dommune di Shibuya e con ospiti Yagi Michiyo, Ichiraku Yoshimitsu e Yasunaga Momose, con selezioni dal nuovo lavoro Songs of Resistance sull'anarco-femminista giapponese Kanno Sugako (1881-1911).
.jpg)
Rattrista non solo il mondo zappiano la recente scomparsa di Ike Willis, da poco settantenne, uno tra i più fedeli allievi e alleati del Nostro - da Joe's Garage in avanti, attraverso You Are What You Is, Them or Us, il controverso Thing-Fish, Does Humor Belong in Music?, Broadway the Hard Way e quasi tutti gli album scaturiti dai live degli anni Ottanta - oltre che uno degli ultimi a raccoglierne le volontà (e a rispettarle): "Frank told me before he passed away to play it like you learned it. Just like he taught me. It's got to be the way it was written and performed. Those were my only instructions from Frank. He said, 'Don't change anything; don't ad-lib, don't try to get cute, don't try to spruce it up, don’t change the key that it was written in. Play the songs like I taught you.'"
Historical unreleased performances of Frank Zappa and the early Mothers Of Invention recorded in conjunction with a documentary film entitled Sex In Today’s World. Zappa was asked to stage a full fledged “Freak Out” complete with lights, smoke and featuring the typical Freak contingent of Los Angeles including Vito Paulekas and Carl Franzoni. The footage would serve as an example of the current Freak events and the youth culture of LA and beyond. Recorded in October 1966, the band was going through a transition gaining an additional drummer and percussionist in Billy Mundi and the first appearance of Don Preston on keyboards. Also, the tapes are significant as they are the only Vault recordings with session guitar player Del Casher in the group.
.jpg)
Un omaggio a Mike Westbrook si trova anche in apertura del numero di questo mese di Musica Jazz, con un ricordo di Enzo Capua legato a personali esperienze e ascolti formativi di gioventù, tra ammirazione e gratitudine. E un album rimasto sempre nel cuore: Metropolis (Rca, 1971).
https://www.musicajazz.it/musica-jazz-maggio-2026
https://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/mike-tribute2
https://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/mikewestbrook/mike-tribute.shtml
E Julie Tippetts è presente anche nell'album Back to the Garden allegato al numero di giugno 2026 della rivista Mojo interamente dedicato a cover di brani di Joni Mitchell: assieme ai Working Week interpreta Overture-Cotton Avenue (da Don Juan's Reckless Daughter) nella stessa versione uscita su Instant Replay (Lush, 2020).
Agli ascoltatori del suo programma Jazz Progression su One Jazz Mike Gavin ha proposto qualche giorno fa un breve excursus nella discografia - ufficiale e non - di Keith Tippett, coinvolgendo Martin Phillips, autore della bella biografia pubblicata da Jazz in Britain, Mujician. Tra i vari brani ha incluso Stately Dance for Miss Primm, This is What Happens, A Man Carrying A Drop Of Water On A Leaf Through A Thunderstorm e un estratto da Frames. In apertura ha voluto offrire anche un omaggio al compianto Mike Westbrook - i cui funerali si erano tenuti appena qualche giorno prima - con I See Thy Form, nella versione tratta dal doppio cd Enja del 1999 Glad Day (Settings Of William Blake).
https://www.onejazz.net/mike-gavin-presents-jazz-progression
Al pianoforte che fu di Keith Tippett - che come si sa è custodito da Janinka Diverio nel suo locale Three Cups a Malmesbury, nel Wiltshire - è dedicato un bel passaggio del libro di Martin Phillips Keith Tippett: Mujician – The Authorised Biography.
"Keith maintained long term friendships and working relationships with musicians, a trait extended to his own piano. When he and Julie moved in to their first shared flat in Beckenham, they acquired the instrument which would remain with him until the end of his life. “I bought that piano,” Julie remembers. “I paid forty quid for it. It was a Collard and Collard. A real beauty. It had a lovely mellow tone. I used to play it myself sometimes. I composed things on it. Keith played it every day when he was at home.” From the Beckenham flat, it moved with them, first to a cottage in Dyrham and then on to the living room in Tortworth. After Keith’s death, when Julie moved out of the cottage they and the piano had shared for over forty years, she didn’t have room for it in her new flat. Inca put out a post on social media asking if anyone would be able to house her dad’s instrument. By return, Janinka Diverio, who had worked very closely with Keith and Julie in the early 2000s, replied “Consider it done.”
“When Inca asked, I didn’t have a second thought,” Janinka confirms. She arranged to have it moved to the pub she had recently taken over, The Three Cups in Malmesbury. “Although the piano had been sitting in the cottage unplayed for a few years, it wasn’t in too bad a state. I had it re-tuned and gave it a polish. It’s got the odd note that’s duff, but that adds to its character. I’m going to get some further restoration done on it. We use it for some of the gigs we run [at the pub], and sometimes people ask if they can play it. But I don’t think of it as ours. We are just the current custodians of it. One day it might move on somewhere else.”
To welcome the Collard and Collard to its new home, Janinka invited Matthew Bourne, a friend and collaborator of Keith’s, to give an inaugural concert on the instrument. He remembers being quite intimidated by the thought of performing a solo recital on Keith’s piano. “When I got to the pub and played it, I knew it was going to be really hard work. When I’d first visited him in his cottage, he’d showed me the piano – but he didn’t want me to play it. ‘Oh, it’s got a few dodgy notes,’ he’d say. So on the [Three Cups] night, I wrestled with it through the gig and at the end I said to someone ‘Now I know why he never wanted me to play it!’ It was the perfect piano to practise on because it’s really hard work to get anything out of it. I can’t help thinking that the things he would have practised on that piano would have been so hard to achieve, so when he then performed on a nicer one, he’d be like ‘oh, this is great!’ So there was method in having a really tricky old instrument.”
For the time being, the Collard and Collard has pride of place in the bar of The Three Cups. It has one photo of Keith on the top lid. Another is placed on the wall directly behind the piano so that Keith can observe those playing it. Open the lower lid and you can gaze on the keys which Keith’s fingers have touched a million times. Countless scales have run up and down these eighty-eight notes. The ivory and ebony strips are where Septober Energy was born. Where the motifs for Frames, A Loose Kite, Cider Dance and many, many more first drew breath. This keyboard has been worked hard. Some of the white notes are browning slightly, signs of sweat from Keith’s fingers as he worked and reworked ideas, sending those upper-register spirals and thunderous bass rumbles swirling around the Tortworth living room. Were he to look down on his instrument now, nestling in the Three Cups bar, he’d be thinking of it not as an old adversary but as a faithful friend."
http://www.three-cups.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/thecupsmalmesbury
.jpg)
Il libro biografico di Martin Phillips su Keith Tippett ha visto ufficialmente la luce qualche giorno fa a Bristol nel corso di una calorosa cerimonia cui hanno preso parte alcuni tra i più cari amici e collaboratori del Nostro, con Julie Tippetts, Maggie Nicols e Larry Stabbins oltre naturalmente all'autore e agli editori di Jazz in Britain, John Thurlow e Pete Woodman. Dello speciale evento circolano sui social alcune immagini, mentre nel frattempo nuove recensioni del libro sono apparse su Jazzwise, The Wire e UK Vibe. Per ottenerne una copia ci si può rivolgere, oltre che direttamente alla casa madre, anche a Soundohm: Keith Tippett: Mujician – The Authorised Biography.
Scrive Steve Williams: "Martin Phillips’s authorised biography arrives from Jazz In Britain in a limited hardback edition of 1,000, with a double CD of previously unreleased recordings and a foreword by Richard Williams. The Williams foreword matters. He was there in print during the years the dossier above describes, and his judgment - that Tippett’s body of work matches “any British musician of his generation, its range surely without rival” - carries the weight of someone who has watched the whole arc unfold. Cecil Taylor, no easy man to impress, once called Tippett “one of the most interesting and original European pianists in jazz and free music.” That assessment, and Williams’s, are not the language of a hagiographic project. They are evaluations, and Phillips’s book earns them. Where the book is at its best is in the relationships. The chapter on the South African family - the Blue Notes circle, and above all, the long partnership with the drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo - is the one I keep returning to. Two musicians from opposite ends of the world and opposite sides of history, both shaped as children by chapel and church music, both committed to a form of free playing that never lost its rootedness in song: Phillips finds the human shape of that pairing, and the book is richer for it. The seventies, often the thin chapter in jazz biographies of this generation, are given their honest weight here too. Phillips does not pretend the decade was easy, or that the institutional warmth of the late sixties did not cool. He stays with the difficult years, and the book is stronger for the staying."
https://jazzinbritain1.bandcamp.com
https://www.soundohm.com/keith-tippett-mujician
Le riprese video effettuate tra il 1970 e il 1971 da Steve Gebhardt (1937-2015) durante la complessa realizzazione di Escalator Over The Hill sono ora pubblicate integralmente su YT. ...And It's Again!
Sulla genesi dell'opera disse a suo tempo Carla Bley: "In the beginning, around January 1967, Paul Haines, a friend who had written pieces for the back covers of many albums I had been involved in, sent me a poem. It fit mysteriously with a piece of music I was working on, Detective Writer Daughter. When I told him how amazing this was, we decided to write an opera together, or rather, apart, as he was then living in New Mexico and about to move to India. The term “opera” was used loosely from the start, an overstatement by two people who didn’t have to watch their words. We ended up calling it a chronotransduction, which was a word coined by Sherry Speeth, a scientist friend of Paul’s, although we still call it opera for short. Over the next three years we worked on it. Paul would send a batch of lyrics from India and I would put them on the piano and stare at them for hours. Sooner or later certain lines would seem to have a melody to them. Then it would just be a matter of working at it, with the form and rhythm of the words leading the way. Sometimes I would have to skip around or omit things as the musical viewpoint developed, but more often whole blocks of words would end up exactly in their original order with music to them. The possible meaning of the words didn’t matter to me. I just thought they were strange and wonderful. If I was stuck Paul would send me another batch and in it somewhere would be the solution. Through this process (I can only speak of my end of the work - God knows how Paul managed to write the words in the first place) we eventually accumulated about twelve major pieces of music, and I started thinking about Escalator Over The Hill (the title was there from the beginning) as a whole."
Per festeggiare 25 anni di attività la britannica Burning Shed torna alla mission delle proprie origini: stampare spartani cd-r su richiesta e a tiratura limitata contenenti documenti audio inediti, rari o sconosciuti ai più. Favorendo per questa occasione hopperiani e machinisti: Morbida Macchina - ovvero Theo Travis, Hugh Hopper, Bernhard Woestheinrich e Tim Bowness - ripresi dal vivo a Norwich nel 2002.
A one-off 42 minute performance for the Burning Shed festival in Norwich 2002 consisting of three improvisations by Soft Machine alumni Theo Travis and Hugh Hopper with Bernhard Woestheinrich (Centrozoon) and no-man’s Tim Bowness (who performs vocal loops on one of the pieces). Audio taken from an original desk recording by Andy Butler, edited by Tim Bowness and mastered by Brian Hulse in April 2026. As part of Burning Shed's 25th anniversary celebrations, an online on-demand cdr in reverse card packaging featuring the label's signature ink stamp.
Anthony Garone di Make Weird Music parla con Leonardo Pavkovic a proposito del MoonJune Festival in programma a Teramo dal 22 al 25 luglio prossimi: "This year’s festival brings together an absurdly good lineup of progressive rock, jazz fusion, Canterbury scene legends, avant-garde musicians, and MoonJune family members from around the world. Leonardo shares the story behind the festival, why Teramo is such a meaningful location, and what makes this event more than a normal music festival. We discuss Gong with Steve Hillage, Soft Machine with Gary Husband, Osanna with David Jackson, Diego Amador, Markus Reuter Truce, Dewa Budjana, Nicolas Meier, Beledo, Boris Savoldelli, Stephan Thelen Fractal Trio, Derek Shulman, and many more."
Da seguire sul web è anche la conversazione tenuta da Ian Beabout, Steve Feigenbaum e Pontus Norshammar con Aymeric Leroy a proposito dell'edizione in lingua inglese del suo corposo studio sulla scena canterburyana or ora pubblicata da Cuneiform Records: Legends in Their Own Lunchtime-An Exploration of the Canterbury Scene.
Concerti, seminari, registrazioni e incontri di vario tipo attendono il poliedrico Elliott Sharp in questi giorni in Italia a Firenze, Modena, Trieste, Roma, Cuneo e Milano. Intanto sul web si può seguire una sua conversazione con Tim Motzer nel più recente episodio della serie Searching for Sparks.
https://linktr.ee/elliott_sharp
Le tracce lasciate da Banksy su copertine di lavori discografici e prodotti editoriali più o meno ufficiali sono molte, notorie e più che bastanti a costituire un vero e proprio percorso tematico: vi fa riferimento una delle sezioni della mostra in corso a Bologna, aperta fino a inizio agosto a Palazzo Fava, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, con esposte opere associate a One Cut, la trilogia We Love You... So Love Us, Scratch Perverts, Monk & Canatella, le serie Kick Off e Badmeaningood, quelle forse più celebri per Blur e Nick Cave. Più qualcosina meno in evidenza ma cara ai wyattiani: Banksy Archive 01- The School of Bristol 1983-2005.
https://banksy-archive-01-the-school-of-bristol-1983-2005
https://visita-guidata-con-focus-sulla-musica
Domenica scorsa si sono prodotti in una performance estemporanea volta a rendere sonanti le sculture metalliche di Eduard Habicher facenti parte dell'installazione Memory in Motion presso il Museion di Bolzano; nei giorni precedenti Robyn Schulkowsky e Joey Baron hanno visitato diverse sedi europee assieme a Otomo Yoshihide, proponendo questo loro nuovo trio come Lavish Joy. Su YT circolano alcuni brevi estratti dai vari concerti, quello di Lido di Savio (Ra) è integrale su Vimeo.
Dal Museion: "Last night we celebrated Eduard Habicher’s birthday with a special concert inside Memory in Motion: an evening where sculpture, sound, and space came together in real time. Yoshihide, Schulkowsky & Baron entered into an improvised dialogue with Habicher’s works, gently activating the exhibition as a living instrument. Forms, materials, and spatial tensions revealed unexpected sonic layers, letting the space itself resonate and evolve throughout the performance. The evening unfolded as a shared experience of listening and presence, where memory, movement, and perception were constantly in flux."
https://otomoyoshihide.com
Le toccanti parole pronunciate da Richard Williams in omaggio a Mike Westbrook durante il funerale della scorsa settimana a Exeter sono ora riportate per intero al suo blog The Blue Moment: "I wouldn’t want to slight any other musician, from any era, when I say that Mike’s place as the pre-eminent composer and bandleader of British jazz is hard to dispute. As is his role in enabling jazz made outside America to establish its right to an independent existence. Most important of all, everything he did was based on a recognition that when a jazz group is working properly, it becomes a model for a decent society: a vehicle for individual expression in full and unselfish collaboration with others. How lucky we were to have him."
E un omaggio a Westbrook lo offrirà questa sera Chris Biscoe, amico e collaboratore in innumerevoli progetti nel corso di lunghi decenni, nonché uno dei suoi più fidi interpreti. In concerto a Stratford upon Avon (Regno Unito) in quintetto con Alcyona Mick, Mike Outram, Dave Whitford e Gary Willcox: Music Is - Chris Biscoe plays Mike Westbrook.
.jpg)
Lo scorso 6 maggio, nel giorno del funerale di Mike Westbrook, il canale televisivo BBC Four ha trasmesso il lavoro del celebre drammaturgo e sceneggiatore britannico Stephen Poliakoff Caught On A Train, per la cui colonna sonora compose le musiche originali appunto Westbrook. Ne ha accompagnato la visione uno speciale contributo ora pubblicato anche sul web: Stephen Poliakoff Remembers… Caught On A Train. Il film, diretto da Peter Duffell e prodotto nel 1980 da Kenith Trodd, è disponibile da qualche tempo anche in dvd.
https://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002w1t6
https://www.stephenpoliakoff.com/caught-on-a-train
Anche Eugene Chadbourne circola in questi giorni alle nostre latitudini: si può incontrarlo per esempio a Roma, Parma, Magione (Pg), Bologna e Savona, dove sarà alta la probabilità di sentire tra le mille imprevedibili cose in scaletta la sua nuova versione del classico antimilitarista di Country Joe McDonald Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die, da lui proposta negli anni con testo aggiornato ai conflitti in Iraq, Panama e ora Iran.
Dei brani che hanno animato musicalmente il ritrovo insieme vivace e commosso che ha fatto seguito alla celebrazione del rito funebre di Mike Westbrook il primo è stato - e forse c'era da aspettarselo, caro com'era al Nostro - Blues for Terenzi: lo hanno proposto magnificamente Chris Biscoe, Matthew Bourne, Marcus Vergette e Graham York.
.jpg)
Matthew North pubblica su FB l'immagine di copertina del libretto che ha accompagnato ieri a Exeter lo svolgimento del commovente rito funebre in memoria di Mike Westbrook: To Celebrate the Life of Michael John David Westbrook (21st March 1936 - 11th April 2026). E' lo stesso North che ha documentato l'ultima apparizione pubblica di Mike in occasione del Westbrook Blake a Blackheath Halls a Londra lo scorso dicembre: da quella sua registrazione è stata tratta - e diffusa nella gremita St Peter's Chapel, proprio nel cuore della celebrazione - The Price of Experience, con un'urgente (e veemente) declamazione del Nostro. Vivo più che mai.
Un'ora tutta dedicata alle musiche di Mike Westbrook, proposta su Radio 3 della BBC da Alyn Shipton scegliendo tra i brani suggeriti dagli ascoltatori del suo programma Jazz Record Requests: Parade, un estratto di Metropolis, Wheel of Fortune, View from the Drawbridge, Erme Estuary, Factotum al Bebop, I See Thy Form, Starcross Bridge e Golden Slumbers (nella versione da After Abbey Road).
Ai festeggiamenti per il novantesimo compleanno di Steve Reich si affiancano quelli per i vent'anni di attività dell'ensemble guidato da Colin Currie, con la pubblicazione in questi giorni dell'album Steve Reich: The Sextets, registrato nel cuore dell'estate scorsa al Kings Place a Londra. Ne parla Currie stesso su YT.
Celebrating Steve Reich’s 90th birthday and the 20th anniversary of the Colin Currie Group, this landmark release brings together four of Reich’s most iconic works for chamber ensemble. United by the elegant symmetry of sextet forces, these pieces showcase the rhythmic vitality, harmonic clarity, and emotional depth that have defined Reich’s music for generations. From the scintillating textures of Sextet, the driving power and poignancy of Double Sextet, and the hypnotic time-bending sonorities of Six Marimbas, the album offers a journey through Reich’s unparalleled sound world. Colin Currie Group’s fresh interpretation of Dance Patterns adds a lesser-known gem to this celebration, highlighting the composer’s enduring fascination with movement and pattern.
Il giorno del suo speciale compleanno - il novantesimo - sarà il prossimo 3 ottobre, ma i festeggiamenti sono già iniziati e si estenderanno per buona parte della stagione 2026-2027 in molte prestigiose sedi europee, americane e asiatiche con la partecipazione di orchestre sinfoniche, interpreti solisti tra cui Nico Muhly, Lisa Kaplan e Bryce Dessner e vari ensemble come l'Ensemble Signal, Bang on a Can, Alarm Will Sound, Synergy Vocals, membri dello storico Steve Reich Ensemble e lo strepitoso Colin Currie Group: Steve Reich.
Molto atteso è il debutto in queste circostanze di un suo nuovo lavoro, In All Your Ways, che così viene illustrato dallo stesso Reich: "Just before In All Your Ways, I wrote two pieces that set religious texts for voices and ensemble. I relied on the texts for both their syllabic structure and their meaning. For this new piece, I wanted a similar text — even if there were no singers. “In all your ways” is the opening of Proverbs 3:6, and a four-note instrumental ‘setting’ of those words can be heard, now and then, throughout the work. The piece is divided into four rhythmic sections: sixteenths, eighths, quarters, and triplets. These sections are repeated, more or less in that order, throughout. There are four harmonic sections: three sharps, two flats, five flats, and all naturals. Each signature may be major, minor, or modal. These harmonic sections are similarly repeated. However, the combination of rhythmic values and key signatures sometimes varies from section to section. In All Your Ways is scored for two flutes, two clarinets, two marimbas, two vibraphones, two pianos, and string quartet. It is 18 minutes in duration."
Tra quanti esprimono dolore e rammarico per la scomparsa del celebre direttore d'orchestra, pianista e compositore statunitense Michael Tilson Thomas (1944-2026), a soli due mesi dalla perdita del partner Joshua Robison, c'è naturalmente Steve Reich: "Michael was a great musician and a lifelong friend. He championed my music starting in 1971, when he and I and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed my Four Organs in Boston and two years later in Carnegie Hall. In 1984, he conducted the world premiere performances of The Desert Music and recorded it for Nonesuch. In the early ’90s he performed and recorded Three Movements and The Four Sections with the London Symphony Orchestra. He remained a steadfast supporter through his many years leading the San Francisco Symphony performing several of my works, including a particularly amusing performance we did together of my Clapping Music. Michael Tilson Thomas was one of the world’s finest musicians. He and Joshua Robison were both generous, exceptionally perceptive, and altogether extraordinary human beings. I will treasure their memory as long as I live." E per l'occasione rispunta un video dove i due insieme ricordano il clamore suscitato dall'esecuzione di Four Organs alla Carnegie Hall di New York: era il 18 gennaio 1973, e fece storia.
Invece per quasi tutto giugno Tim Hodgkinson sarà impegnato con Atsuko Kamura in una quindicina di concerti un po' ovunque nel Giappone occidentale. Quasi una luna di miele, con amici e ospiti speciali ad ogni tappa. Buon viaggio!
https://www.facebook.com/tim.hodgkinson.18
https://www.facebook.com/atsuko.kamura
Chris Cutler e Tim Hodgkinson erano a Bratislava (Slovacchia) lo scorso 15 ottobre, subito dopo Praga: su YT ci sono estratti di una loro intervista e del concerto in duo tenuto presso il centro di cultura A4.
A4 – Space for Contemporary Culture is an independent cultural centre focusing on contemporary forms of professional theatre, dance, music, film, visual art and new media. Established in 2004 as a result of a joint effort between several civic cultural organisations, it became one of the first cultural centres in Slovakia founded by a bottom-up initiative. Since its beginning, A4 has been a vivid and active location on the Central European cultural scene, an open field for creative experimentation as well as a home for fresh and unique experiences. Besides presenting innovative contemporary art, it actively supports the new creative activities and education. A4 engages in public debate on important social issues, and attempts to foster conditions for non-commercial cultural activities, culturing of public space, urban development, etc.
https://youtu.be/Cf-nAkV9j30
https://www.youtube.com/@wstudionet
Problemi tecnici nello streaming hanno reso difficile seguire da remoto l'esecuzione collettiva di Conspiracies, composizione di Chris Cutler affidata il mese scorso a un gruppo di studenti del primo anno del corso di Esecuzione e Produzione Musicale presso l'University of East London; con loro c'erano Yumi Hara Cawkwell e Guy Harries, che all'UEL sono di casa come professori associati, oltre naturalmente a Cutler e per l'occasione anche alcuni titolari del progetto Household Objects. La performance è stata comunque registrata in video ed è ora visibile senza interferenze - priva però dell'interessante discussione che vi ha fatto seguito - presso il canale YT di Yumi Hara.
%20%5Bphoto%20Sergio%20Amadori%5D.jpg)