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Good Night
Dec. 16th, 2018 12:07 am
Dec. 16th, 2018
Relaxing Morning
Dec. 16th, 2018 09:59 am'Tis a sunny morning as I look out the windows of my abode.
Completed the report for yesterday's cinema visit.
Listening to some cool jazz right now.
Today is a do little day, except reading and listen to music on the whole.
Tomorrow I am doing just five jobs, and most likely will be the last four before the new year. Thankfully, none of these covert shops includes a purchase scenario, except for the cafe visit (Unlike the £27 I had to spend on my cinema visit).
A straightforward run to Queensborough on the island and then down to Maidstone and then up to Bluewater and Dartford. Then fini for the year.
Completed the report for yesterday's cinema visit.
Listening to some cool jazz right now.
Today is a do little day, except reading and listen to music on the whole.
Tomorrow I am doing just five jobs, and most likely will be the last four before the new year. Thankfully, none of these covert shops includes a purchase scenario, except for the cafe visit (Unlike the £27 I had to spend on my cinema visit).
A straightforward run to Queensborough on the island and then down to Maidstone and then up to Bluewater and Dartford. Then fini for the year.
Book 96 - Shamsie Kamila "Home Fire"
Dec. 16th, 2018 02:01 pmShamsie Kamila "Home Fire" (Bloomsbury)
Home Fire is quite simply an extraordinary novel, absolutely essential reading for the times in which we are living. It is a novel about love, and the sacrifices we make in the name of that love, and what happens when loyalties and politics come up against each other. It has been described as a modern re-imagining of the 5th-century play Antigone by Sophocles. Whether you know anything about Antigone or not probably doesn’t matter. It is a novel about divided loyalties, politics and extremism, beautifully written, poignant and important, it is a novel for the messed-up world in which we currently find ourselves – with a final scene so shockingly memorable it will leave you gasping.
“The interrogation continued for nearly two hours. He wanted to know her thoughts on Shias, homosexuals, the Queen, democracy, the Great British Bake Off, the invasion of Iraq, Israel, suicide bombers, dating websites.”
As the novel opens Isma is undergoing an exhausting interrogation as she leaves the UK for America where she is going to study. It was an interrogation she had expected and prepared for. Several years earlier, Isma had been studying under a Dr Hira Shah, but when her mother died, nineteen-year-old Isma gave up her studies to bring up her twelve-year-old siblings, twins Aneeka and Pervaiz. Now, finally it is Isma’s time, the twins are now nineteen, and Dr Shah has persuaded Isma to take up her studies in Massachusetts where she is now teaching. The interrogation at an end, Isma finally makes her flight – albeit a later one – and arrives in America to be greeted by her old mentor. It’s hard for Isma to shake off the responsibility she has had so long for her siblings, she still has worries, particularly about Pervaiz.
Their father was largely absent and considered a terrorist by the British government. He reportedly died en route to Guantanamo. Isma was 19 when her mother died, and put her life on hold to raise the twins. Now Isma is 28, Aneeka & Parvaiz are 19, and Isma accepts an opportunity to resume her studies in the US. She meets Eamonn, son of the UK Home Secretary, and despite coffee dates her hopes of romance don’t materialize. It’s a different matter when Eamonn returns to England and meets Aneeka. Sparks fly, but Aneeka insists on keeping their relationship secret due to his father’s public anti-Muslim views. Meanwhile, Parvaiz has disappeared, and the sisters quickly learn he has been recruited for terrorist activity in Istanbul.
Each section of the novel is narrated by one of the principal characters, and the timing of each narrative overlaps somewhat. The reader experiences events from different perspectives, and can connect the details in each narrative into a story that is not fully visible to those involved. Tension mounts as Parvaiz’s activities unfold, and as Aneeka’s relationship with Eamonn inevitably sees the light of day. The novel delivers a climax that I absolutely didn’t see coming. Despite the horrifying content, the final pages are brilliantly written and cap off a stellar work.
Home Fire is quite simply an extraordinary novel, absolutely essential reading for the times in which we are living. It is a novel about love, and the sacrifices we make in the name of that love, and what happens when loyalties and politics come up against each other. It has been described as a modern re-imagining of the 5th-century play Antigone by Sophocles. Whether you know anything about Antigone or not probably doesn’t matter. It is a novel about divided loyalties, politics and extremism, beautifully written, poignant and important, it is a novel for the messed-up world in which we currently find ourselves – with a final scene so shockingly memorable it will leave you gasping.
“The interrogation continued for nearly two hours. He wanted to know her thoughts on Shias, homosexuals, the Queen, democracy, the Great British Bake Off, the invasion of Iraq, Israel, suicide bombers, dating websites.”
As the novel opens Isma is undergoing an exhausting interrogation as she leaves the UK for America where she is going to study. It was an interrogation she had expected and prepared for. Several years earlier, Isma had been studying under a Dr Hira Shah, but when her mother died, nineteen-year-old Isma gave up her studies to bring up her twelve-year-old siblings, twins Aneeka and Pervaiz. Now, finally it is Isma’s time, the twins are now nineteen, and Dr Shah has persuaded Isma to take up her studies in Massachusetts where she is now teaching. The interrogation at an end, Isma finally makes her flight – albeit a later one – and arrives in America to be greeted by her old mentor. It’s hard for Isma to shake off the responsibility she has had so long for her siblings, she still has worries, particularly about Pervaiz.
Their father was largely absent and considered a terrorist by the British government. He reportedly died en route to Guantanamo. Isma was 19 when her mother died, and put her life on hold to raise the twins. Now Isma is 28, Aneeka & Parvaiz are 19, and Isma accepts an opportunity to resume her studies in the US. She meets Eamonn, son of the UK Home Secretary, and despite coffee dates her hopes of romance don’t materialize. It’s a different matter when Eamonn returns to England and meets Aneeka. Sparks fly, but Aneeka insists on keeping their relationship secret due to his father’s public anti-Muslim views. Meanwhile, Parvaiz has disappeared, and the sisters quickly learn he has been recruited for terrorist activity in Istanbul.
Each section of the novel is narrated by one of the principal characters, and the timing of each narrative overlaps somewhat. The reader experiences events from different perspectives, and can connect the details in each narrative into a story that is not fully visible to those involved. Tension mounts as Parvaiz’s activities unfold, and as Aneeka’s relationship with Eamonn inevitably sees the light of day. The novel delivers a climax that I absolutely didn’t see coming. Despite the horrifying content, the final pages are brilliantly written and cap off a stellar work.
Just Wondering
Dec. 16th, 2018 05:24 pmAnd before you ask, nothing wrong with me as i amin fine fettle.
Do you, personally, feed a cold and stave a fever?
When you don't feel well, do you want to be left alone or pampered?
Would you rather have the cold or a stomach flu?
Do you, personally, feed a cold and stave a fever?
When you don't feel well, do you want to be left alone or pampered?
Would you rather have the cold or a stomach flu?
Bill Evans Village Vanguard Sessions
Dec. 16th, 2018 06:07 pmFrom the Feb 1986 issue of the Wire magazine -
GREAT RECORDINGS
ANDY HAMILTON EXAMINES A BILL EVANS CLASSlC
THE VILLAGE VANGUARD SESSIONS (Milestone M-47002) Recorded: Village Vanguard, New York City, I June 25 1961.
My Foolish Heart; My Romance; Some Other Time; Solar; Gloria's Step; My Man's Gone Now; All Of You; Alice In Wonderland; Porgy; , Milestones; Detour Ahead; Waltz For Debby; Jade Visions.
Bill Evans (p); Scott La Faro (b); Paul Motian (d).
COMMENTING ON how Bill Evans belongs to the European side of jazz pianism, his playing thoughtful rather than directly emotional, James ,Collier writes: "The result is a predilection for pensive moods - the poet at twilight, so to speak. Melancholia is, of course, a perfectly legitimate mood. If Milton can write 'I1 Penseroso', surely Bill Evans can produce a 'Turn Out The Stars'. But Milton also wrote 'L'Allegro' and Evans is not often seen dancing in the chequer'd shade . . ."'
It would be foolish to claim that the implied criticism of Bill Evans'work is quite groundless; perusal of the Evans discography would certainly reveal a predilection for ballad numbers, and the criticism might well be made of the Village Vanguard recordings themselves.
The charge is an exaggerated one, however. First, it.is often confused with a different and fallacious charge - that Evans' thoughtful and reflective attitude towards his playing, his concern with, as he put i t in an interview, "the science of building a line", must accompany an emotional dessication that jazz can have no truck with (advocates of this view would find a slmilar target in Wynton Marsalis). Clearly, though, an intellectual outlook does not preclude passion as such. It may merely influence its direction and expression (to put the matter as dispassionately as possible!) Second, there is abundant recorded evidence of Evans "dancing in the chequer'd shade" - live recorded evidence in particular. Cecil Taylor's ill-considered put-down (that Evans is "so uninteresting, so predictable and so lacking i n ~ i t a l i t y " ) ~ hardly survives when one listens to the playing on a brilliant 1968 Montreux LP or the 1979 Paris Concert recordings - let alone the furious performancesfrom Montreux in 1970.3
Having said that, the Village Vanguard sessions do exhibit more of the mood of "I1 Penseroso" than of "L'Allegro". Why, then, should the criticisms of Taylor, Larkin and Collier be set aside and these sessions (together with the contemporaneous studio recordings) be recognized as a summit of piano trio performance in jazz?
Much of the answer lies in the extraordinary empathy apparent between the three participants, and in particular between Evans and the bassist Scott La Faro, which encouraged rich and complex musical expression. Evans had formed the trio with La Faro and Paul Motian in the autumn of 1958, after his spell with Miles Davis which secured his position as one of the most influential young jazz pianists and was notable for his imoortant contributions to the LP "Kind of Blue" ~ Great Recordings", Wire 6). The trio made recordings in December 1959 (Portrait In Jazz) and February 1961 "Exploration"). Ten days after their final recording session at the Village Vanguard, in July 1961, Scott La Faro was killed in a car accident, at the age of 25. It is impossible to listen to these last recordings, with their promise of long and fruitful collaboration, without feeling that the aptest Miltonic echo is found in "Lycidas", that commemorationof tragic early loss of seemingly limitless talent. It was in La Faro that Evans found his artistic 'alter ego', the bassist's natural exuberance complementing his own generally more understated approach, and the former's death coming so violently soon after what had appeared to be their first wholly successful recording left Evans devastated.
It is indeed La Faro's bass-playingthat is most immediately striking on the 1961 performances. One is impressedat once by his guitar-like facility (assisted, apparently, by lowering the bridge), and the exciting use of the upper register. Like Evans, La Faro has his favourite licks. But the incorporation of such phrases contributes to the expression of a musical personality. It is a joy to hear how Evans will fit a distinctive rhythmic figure, or La Faro a favourite dying fall, into the line, the effect being like that of a friend's familiar mannerism rather than a cliche..
It is in terms of their rhythmic freedom - principally for the bass - that the performances are most revolutionary, however. Evans noted that Scott La Faro and l understood music on pretty much the same basis . . . at that time nobody else was opening trio music in quite that way, letting the music move from an internalized beat, instead of laying it down all the time explicitly.
In fact, none of the tracks on the Village Vanguard sessions matches the freedom of some of the 1968 Montreux performances, where no one plays time as such, but in almost all of them the time-keeping role is reserved for the drums alone. It would be wrong to conclude from this advance, as Evans himself and some other writers seem to have done, that what has been developed is a new form of 'simultaneous improvisation', however.' The pianist commented at the time: "If the bass-player, for example, hears an idea that he wants to answer, why should he just keep playing a 4/4 background?. . .After all, in a classical composition, you don't hear a part remain stagnant until it becomes a solo. There are transitional development passages . . ."'
In fact, however, the format is still almost always solo plus accompaniment, but while Evans is soloing, the accompaniment is rhythmically freer and more responsive to what the soloist is doing. What a difference this makes! The first trio recording in 1959 features a marvellous driving version of "Autumn Leaves", which in fact does contain some genuine simultaneous improvisation - % a contrapuntal passage where piano and bass are equal voices. But where La Faro is accompanying, he plays a straight four in the bar. None of the uptempo performancesfrom the Village Vanguard are driving i n the same way, since the bassist is now hardly ever playing a straight 44, while Paul Motian's drumming deploys subtle polyrhythmic effects - on "My Romance" and "All Of You" these are of beguiling complexity. In the miraculous account of "Milestones", La Faro plays sequences where the notes are so stretched out i t seems he is in a different metre from the others, Evans' solo appearing to float on top, and the whole effect is like a more fluid permutation of the metrical ambiguity behind Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman".
The rhythmic freedom of the trio is paralleled by harmonic adventurousness within a tonal framework - though of course Evans was a conservative i f one compares his work with what Coleman and Taylor were producing at the same time. Modal improvisation, whose use in jazz Evans had pioneered during his stay with Miles Davis, is exemplified in '"Milestones", while the rich and strange harmonies of the pianist's favourite "Nardis" are never presented by him to better effect than in the 1961 studio recordings (which in many respects are the equal of their more well-known live counterparts). Rather more conventional performances from the Village Vanguard include the haunting Billie Holiday ballad "Detour Ahead", and a joyful account of Evans' own "Waltz For Debby". La Faro is to the fore in the sombre "My Man's Gone Now" with a most beautifully resonating accompaniment and impassioned solo, but in no track is he simply in the background. His contributions show that, like Lycidas, he is "dead ere his prime . . .and hath not left his peer" - the Village Vanguard sessions are his memorial.
Personnel: Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (dr)
Released: Early October 1961
Recorded: June 25, 1961
Label: Riverside
Producer: Orrin Keepnews
"Gloria's Step" (take 2) (Scott LaFaro)
"My Man's Gone Now" (George Gershwin)
"Solar" (Miles Davis)
"Alice in Wonderland" (take 2) (Sammy Fain)
"All of You" (take 2) (Cole Porter)
"Jade Visions" (take 2) (Scott LaFaro)
"Gloria's Step" (take 3)
"Alice in Wonderland" (take 1)
"All of You" (take 3)
"Jade Visions" (take 1)
Sunday at the Village Vanguard was recorded live on June 25, 1961 at the Village Vanguard in New York City over five recorded sessions (2 matinee and 3 soiree). It is well remembered as the final performance by the Evans trio of the time, which included bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. LaFaro was killed in a car accident ten days after the recording.
Evans and producer Orrin Keepnews reportedly selected the tracks for Sunday at the Village Vanguard to best feature LaFaro's masterly performance on bass, beginning and ending with two tracks ("Gloria's Step" and "Jade Visions") written by LaFaro himself, and with all the others featuring solos by him. This album is routinely ranked as one of the best live jazz recordings of all time.
Additional material from the same day's performance was released in a second album Waltz for Debby (also 1961), as was other material in another LP Bill Evans — More From the Vanguard. The entire day's recordings were released in 2005 as The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961.
Writing for Allmusic, music critic Thom Jurek wrote of the album: "This trio is still widely regarded as his finest, largely because of the symbiotic interplay between its members. This is a great place to begin with Evans." Samuel Chell of All About Jazz wrote "Along with bassist wunderkind Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, Evans perfected his democratic vision of trio cooperation, where all members performed with perfect empathy and telepathy... It is these performances, currently available as Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby that comprise the number one best jazz live recording in this present series."
The album was included in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Notes 1. James L. Collier The Making Of Jazz
(19781, p. 395. 2. Quoted in Philip Larkin AN What Jazz
(19851
GREAT RECORDINGS
ANDY HAMILTON EXAMINES A BILL EVANS CLASSlC
THE VILLAGE VANGUARD SESSIONS (Milestone M-47002) Recorded: Village Vanguard, New York City, I June 25 1961.
My Foolish Heart; My Romance; Some Other Time; Solar; Gloria's Step; My Man's Gone Now; All Of You; Alice In Wonderland; Porgy; , Milestones; Detour Ahead; Waltz For Debby; Jade Visions.
Bill Evans (p); Scott La Faro (b); Paul Motian (d).
COMMENTING ON how Bill Evans belongs to the European side of jazz pianism, his playing thoughtful rather than directly emotional, James ,Collier writes: "The result is a predilection for pensive moods - the poet at twilight, so to speak. Melancholia is, of course, a perfectly legitimate mood. If Milton can write 'I1 Penseroso', surely Bill Evans can produce a 'Turn Out The Stars'. But Milton also wrote 'L'Allegro' and Evans is not often seen dancing in the chequer'd shade . . ."'
It would be foolish to claim that the implied criticism of Bill Evans'work is quite groundless; perusal of the Evans discography would certainly reveal a predilection for ballad numbers, and the criticism might well be made of the Village Vanguard recordings themselves.
The charge is an exaggerated one, however. First, it.is often confused with a different and fallacious charge - that Evans' thoughtful and reflective attitude towards his playing, his concern with, as he put i t in an interview, "the science of building a line", must accompany an emotional dessication that jazz can have no truck with (advocates of this view would find a slmilar target in Wynton Marsalis). Clearly, though, an intellectual outlook does not preclude passion as such. It may merely influence its direction and expression (to put the matter as dispassionately as possible!) Second, there is abundant recorded evidence of Evans "dancing in the chequer'd shade" - live recorded evidence in particular. Cecil Taylor's ill-considered put-down (that Evans is "so uninteresting, so predictable and so lacking i n ~ i t a l i t y " ) ~ hardly survives when one listens to the playing on a brilliant 1968 Montreux LP or the 1979 Paris Concert recordings - let alone the furious performancesfrom Montreux in 1970.3
Having said that, the Village Vanguard sessions do exhibit more of the mood of "I1 Penseroso" than of "L'Allegro". Why, then, should the criticisms of Taylor, Larkin and Collier be set aside and these sessions (together with the contemporaneous studio recordings) be recognized as a summit of piano trio performance in jazz?
Much of the answer lies in the extraordinary empathy apparent between the three participants, and in particular between Evans and the bassist Scott La Faro, which encouraged rich and complex musical expression. Evans had formed the trio with La Faro and Paul Motian in the autumn of 1958, after his spell with Miles Davis which secured his position as one of the most influential young jazz pianists and was notable for his imoortant contributions to the LP "Kind of Blue" ~ Great Recordings", Wire 6). The trio made recordings in December 1959 (Portrait In Jazz) and February 1961 "Exploration"). Ten days after their final recording session at the Village Vanguard, in July 1961, Scott La Faro was killed in a car accident, at the age of 25. It is impossible to listen to these last recordings, with their promise of long and fruitful collaboration, without feeling that the aptest Miltonic echo is found in "Lycidas", that commemorationof tragic early loss of seemingly limitless talent. It was in La Faro that Evans found his artistic 'alter ego', the bassist's natural exuberance complementing his own generally more understated approach, and the former's death coming so violently soon after what had appeared to be their first wholly successful recording left Evans devastated.
It is indeed La Faro's bass-playingthat is most immediately striking on the 1961 performances. One is impressedat once by his guitar-like facility (assisted, apparently, by lowering the bridge), and the exciting use of the upper register. Like Evans, La Faro has his favourite licks. But the incorporation of such phrases contributes to the expression of a musical personality. It is a joy to hear how Evans will fit a distinctive rhythmic figure, or La Faro a favourite dying fall, into the line, the effect being like that of a friend's familiar mannerism rather than a cliche..
It is in terms of their rhythmic freedom - principally for the bass - that the performances are most revolutionary, however. Evans noted that Scott La Faro and l understood music on pretty much the same basis . . . at that time nobody else was opening trio music in quite that way, letting the music move from an internalized beat, instead of laying it down all the time explicitly.
In fact, none of the tracks on the Village Vanguard sessions matches the freedom of some of the 1968 Montreux performances, where no one plays time as such, but in almost all of them the time-keeping role is reserved for the drums alone. It would be wrong to conclude from this advance, as Evans himself and some other writers seem to have done, that what has been developed is a new form of 'simultaneous improvisation', however.' The pianist commented at the time: "If the bass-player, for example, hears an idea that he wants to answer, why should he just keep playing a 4/4 background?. . .After all, in a classical composition, you don't hear a part remain stagnant until it becomes a solo. There are transitional development passages . . ."'
In fact, however, the format is still almost always solo plus accompaniment, but while Evans is soloing, the accompaniment is rhythmically freer and more responsive to what the soloist is doing. What a difference this makes! The first trio recording in 1959 features a marvellous driving version of "Autumn Leaves", which in fact does contain some genuine simultaneous improvisation - % a contrapuntal passage where piano and bass are equal voices. But where La Faro is accompanying, he plays a straight four in the bar. None of the uptempo performancesfrom the Village Vanguard are driving i n the same way, since the bassist is now hardly ever playing a straight 44, while Paul Motian's drumming deploys subtle polyrhythmic effects - on "My Romance" and "All Of You" these are of beguiling complexity. In the miraculous account of "Milestones", La Faro plays sequences where the notes are so stretched out i t seems he is in a different metre from the others, Evans' solo appearing to float on top, and the whole effect is like a more fluid permutation of the metrical ambiguity behind Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman".
The rhythmic freedom of the trio is paralleled by harmonic adventurousness within a tonal framework - though of course Evans was a conservative i f one compares his work with what Coleman and Taylor were producing at the same time. Modal improvisation, whose use in jazz Evans had pioneered during his stay with Miles Davis, is exemplified in '"Milestones", while the rich and strange harmonies of the pianist's favourite "Nardis" are never presented by him to better effect than in the 1961 studio recordings (which in many respects are the equal of their more well-known live counterparts). Rather more conventional performances from the Village Vanguard include the haunting Billie Holiday ballad "Detour Ahead", and a joyful account of Evans' own "Waltz For Debby". La Faro is to the fore in the sombre "My Man's Gone Now" with a most beautifully resonating accompaniment and impassioned solo, but in no track is he simply in the background. His contributions show that, like Lycidas, he is "dead ere his prime . . .and hath not left his peer" - the Village Vanguard sessions are his memorial.
Personnel: Bill Evans (p) Scott LaFaro (b) Paul Motian (dr)
Released: Early October 1961
Recorded: June 25, 1961
Label: Riverside
Producer: Orrin Keepnews
"Gloria's Step" (take 2) (Scott LaFaro)
"My Man's Gone Now" (George Gershwin)
"Solar" (Miles Davis)
"Alice in Wonderland" (take 2) (Sammy Fain)
"All of You" (take 2) (Cole Porter)
"Jade Visions" (take 2) (Scott LaFaro)
"Gloria's Step" (take 3)
"Alice in Wonderland" (take 1)
"All of You" (take 3)
"Jade Visions" (take 1)
Sunday at the Village Vanguard was recorded live on June 25, 1961 at the Village Vanguard in New York City over five recorded sessions (2 matinee and 3 soiree). It is well remembered as the final performance by the Evans trio of the time, which included bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. LaFaro was killed in a car accident ten days after the recording.
Evans and producer Orrin Keepnews reportedly selected the tracks for Sunday at the Village Vanguard to best feature LaFaro's masterly performance on bass, beginning and ending with two tracks ("Gloria's Step" and "Jade Visions") written by LaFaro himself, and with all the others featuring solos by him. This album is routinely ranked as one of the best live jazz recordings of all time.
Additional material from the same day's performance was released in a second album Waltz for Debby (also 1961), as was other material in another LP Bill Evans — More From the Vanguard. The entire day's recordings were released in 2005 as The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961.
Writing for Allmusic, music critic Thom Jurek wrote of the album: "This trio is still widely regarded as his finest, largely because of the symbiotic interplay between its members. This is a great place to begin with Evans." Samuel Chell of All About Jazz wrote "Along with bassist wunderkind Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, Evans perfected his democratic vision of trio cooperation, where all members performed with perfect empathy and telepathy... It is these performances, currently available as Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby that comprise the number one best jazz live recording in this present series."
The album was included in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Notes 1. James L. Collier The Making Of Jazz
(19781, p. 395. 2. Quoted in Philip Larkin AN What Jazz
(19851
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