On the Beat

I have been listening to the East/Western Divan Orchestra playing Brahms symphony no. 4.

Those of you that are there, I wish I could have joined you.

I really enjoyed that prom!

ETA: ...and I loved the encore!!!

I am listening to Abdullah Ibrahim on Radio 3, with the BBC Concert Orchestra. I have seen Abdullah Ibrahim play many, many times - a couple of the best gigs (evah) were his, but also a couple of the most prissy, stuck-up and irritating ones, too.

He does this thing where he comes across all zen-like, and refuses to hear applause - or bans it outright, playing through from one tune to the next to the next... It can actually be quite irritating, because there is no release of the beautiful tension he builds up.

He is a great pianist and composer, and he is one of the few jazz composers who I am pleased to say breaks my private rule that jazz and strings don't mix. (The favourite "jazz" albums that people that don't like jazz like are Bird with Strings, Billie with Strings, or Ella with Strings. Sickly sweet syrupy confections. That don't swing.)

His "African Suite" - tunes he wrote in other contexts played by his trio and a string orchestra - is just beautiful, sublime music.

But not tonight. Introduced by Petroc Twelawney (how come it is always him MCing Radio 3 concerts I don't like?) as if Abdullah Ibrahim playing with an orchestra is new (the African Suite recording is ten years old), the BBC Concert Orchestra are - well, syrupy suite; they're not adding anything, and they don't swing. They are getting in the way.

The vocal trio featuring Iain Shaw and Cleveland Watkiss (I think) are little better - Shaw's recognisable voice sounded strangled and angst-ridden, strange among what is fairly chilled, relaxed music.

It can’t have escaped your notice that I listen to jazz; and that I like listening to the radio.

For a while, in the dim and distant past, these two passions came together: London started a jazz radio station, Jazz FM. They played jazz during their test broadcasts – lots of proper jazz, that is – but when it came to regular broadcasts, they tended to play blues and soul and so on, leaving their jazz programming to the evenings and late nights. (I used to go to sleep with the radio on; a trick I learned when visiting friends in New York.)

Then they dumbed down, because no one apart from me was listening, and Jazz FM became Smooth FM, instead. Nice.

Then about 18 months ago, theJazz was launched: a nationwide, digital (DAB) only station. It stuck to pretty much the more listenable side of things, but when I wanted to listen to jazz and couldn’t think what I wanted to play, it was there, and I could hear music I liked anytime on the radio.

But GCap, who owns theJazz, has had a change of management; and the new boss doesn’t believe DAB is going to payback their investment, so GCap’s DAB-only stations are being canned.

( Read more... )
And then I thought I would try out LastFM an internet based service (that lots of you already listen to, I know!). I had read that LastFM had got licences to play all sorts of tracks, so I thought I would try it out.

I think their Tag Radio is brilliant. The thing I like about listening to the radio is the randomness and unpredictability of it – listening to things that are new to me or that I wouldn’t listen to. This widget picks up tracks tagged with “jazz”; and I can skip any that I don’t like.

I can even play it through my hifi (by linking my little handheld machine up to my amplifier).

Magic!

After the recent discussions about the foolishness of BBC 6Music management, Liberal conspiracy has an interesting article on BBC Asian Network, refuting some thoughtless racism.

This morning on Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland, they interviewed Simon Calder, the Independent's travel writer, about an article in today's paper on the new St Pancras station, and what it means for travel within Britain.

During the interview, either Calder or the GMS team (I can't remember who) said the fast rail link both "redraws the map of Europe" and "brings [Europe] closer to London".

I am pleased to say that neither of these things happened. The Channel is safe - Paris hasn't suddenly been dumped nearer Kent; and the maps are the same - though I guess someone may need to redraw the OS maps of south east England to include the new rail line. And it will take less time to get to Paris.

I must remember to visit the redeveloped St Pancras - the photos look wonderful.

I haven't been online much recently, and I am catching up with my friends list for the last week or so. There have been a couple of posts about the Archers.

I actually dreamt about the Archers last week. I dreamt it was the last episode, and all the characters came alive, and were living with their animals in north London.

It was a very strange dream; as most dreams are.

I have been listening to this evening’s Prom on the radio, featuring the newly knighted Johnny Dankworth leading a big big band in a couple sets of largely Ellington numbers; they’re just finishing with a feisty reprise of Take the A Train. A family affair – son Alec is on bass – the vocals are provided by Lady Dankworth, Cleo Laine. (Lady Laine has a kind of Billie-like air to it.)

( I’m not a fan of jazz vocalists, really... )

I am sitting listening to the Proms. The introducer - I think it is Petroc Trelawney, but I wasn't really paying attention - has just described Bruckner's Seventh Symphony as having two opening movements.

Surely one has to come first?

On Tuesday I watched a tv programme about Paris. Rather than the in-depth inverview with Ms Hilton I had been expecting, it was a travelogue of the city. It reminded me that I hadn't been to Paris for many years (which made me a bit sad).

It was a fairly cliched travelogue - lots of pictures of Montmartre, the Eiffel Tower, patisseries, cafes and bars; and the Louvre. But in the Louvre, as well as Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa and the Mona Lisa, they showed a full screen image of Courbet's Origin of the World. The reviewer in the Independent described this as "the greatest crotch shot in world art", and it was kind of surprising to see it given such prominence on BBC2.

On the radio this evening, they described Jacqui Smith, the newly appointed Home Secretary, as "a former teacher, mother and housewife". I am still trying to work out how she could be a former housewife mother.

Edited after frankie_ecap and white_hart correctly pointed out that I meant to write mother rather than housewife...

I was half listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 as I ate my breakfast. John Humphries was interviewing an American, and the debate got more and more heated.

I then heard John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the UN, describe George Soros as "extremely left wing".

I had to laugh.

Soros is a capitalist who made a lot - an awful lot of money - in hedge funds before they became famous; he made billions by betting against the pound on Black Wednesday in September 1992, when the pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

He may be a philanthropist, and a critic of US foriegn policy; even left of centre. But not "extremely left wing"!

Bolton finished off by criticising Humphries and the BBC for being leftist, too.