Tuesday, March 22, 2016

THIS WEEK AT HEDSOR JAZZ

I am pleased to say that our redoubtable leader, Clive Burton, has recovered from last Thursdays bout of nastiness, and will lead his quintet this week at The Hedsor Social Club. As I understand it, it will be the regular band, but with an as yet unnamed drummer, both Martin and Mike, our regular percussive persons, are having another holiday each!!

Having said “we missed you last week Clive” I will say that it was a really enjoyable session, not BECAUSE Clive was missing, but because Martin Nicholas joined us at short notice to play his part in the evening entirely on clarinet. The overall sound of clarinet, and either alto or tenor sax played by Mike Wills, playing mostly tunes associated with Benny Goodman made it a very pleasant night out.

A recent pleasant evening from earlier in the month did get recorded for posterity. The evening was with Nigel Price and Robert Goodhew. If anyone would like to listen to this do follow the link to my DropBox folder, where all of the music is there in MP3 format.


This link will lead you to a folder that contains both the music and pdf files to enable you to make a cd cover.

RECENT CD LISTEN

Sweden has produced some extremely good jazz musicians. One of them is trombonist Nils Landgren, who is good not only in jazz trombone form, but as a classical trombone player as well.

Leonard Bernstein was a classical music conductor, and writer of orchestral works of extreme perception. Combine the two, and add a voice from “Manhattan Transfer” and you have an enjoyable hybrid recording. “Some Other Time” is their tribute to Leonard Bernstein. The voice is that of Janis Siegel and this new release is truly delightful. Most of the music is taken from “West Side Story” or “On The Town” but the last track is from the Mass that Bernstein wrote in 1971, “A Simple Song”. As a piece of music it isn’t simple, I once tried to read the words to the song whilst the late dear Zane Cronje played the melody behind me, and this we did in public!!


It is a hybrid album, but don’t get scared off by that. Some of the time (!) Nils is accompanied by bass and drums, some of the time by a small symphonic ensemble. Not all the tracks have the added voice of Janis Siegel and I would point out that Nils does sings on some of the tracks and pretty well too. The recording is of Hi Fi demo quality, and the whole thing can be got at from the record label ACT under number 9813-2. This is a very recent 2016 release that I would recommend you try. 

I think this is a very appropriate message for today!

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