For German readers: some thoughts and notes and quotes on the music I'm listening - to be found
on my new blog:
ubus-notizen.blogspot.com

Also check out the great new, independent magazine get happy!?, reporting on music, movies and more:
gethappymag.de

Friday, January 25, 2008

Emil Viklicky Trio with Daniel Pezzotti & special guest Franco Ambrosetti - Round about Martinu - Basel 2007 (FM) - now on dime!


Emil Viklicky Trio: Uhlir, Tropp, Viklicky (l. to r.)

Here's a very special concert by czech pianist Emil Viklicky's trio with two swiss guests, Daniel Pezzotti on cello and Franco Ambrosetti on trumpet. The concert took place as the one jazz even during the Bohuslav Martinu music festival in Basel in November and the first set was broadcast on swiss radio DRS 2.

Viklicky is probably unknown in the US and also remains little-known around here, but Franco Ambrosetti should be a bit better known. He's one of most important contemporary jazz musicians (hey, not "adult contemporary" or how that crap is named in the US!) of Switzerland, kind of an elder statesman by now, who has played with just about everyone and has a lot of disc availabe, some of them on the great Enja label. He was also subject of some previous seeds of mine (one as a leader only, I think).
Daniel Pezzotti has also worked with Thierry Lang's project dedicated to Swiss folk music (their Cully 2007 was subject of a seed of mine).
Anyway, this isn't really a third stream thing or some such, rather a very successful integration of different strains of music into one organic and very beautiful project. I was aware of Viklicki (the only other show I have is mostly commercially released, alas), but this still caught me totally off-guard - a stunning recording, in my humble opinion!

Check out the samples or just give something new a chance!

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Emil Viklicky Trio featuring Daniel Pezzotti, special guest: Franco Ambrosetti
"Round about Martinu"
Internationale Musikfesttage B. Martinu
Basel (Switzerland), Musée Tinguely
November 14, 2007 (Set 1)

Emil Viklicky - piano & arrangements
František Uhlír - bass
Laco Tropp - drums
Franco Ambrosetti - trumpet
Daniel Pezzotti - violoncello

FM intro (1:50)
1. Moravian Girl (Bohuslav Martinu) 12:52
2. Band Intros & Announcement Pezzotti (1:56)
3. Highlands, Lowlands (Emil Viklicky) 14:43
4. Announcement Pezzotti (0:24)
5. unknown (Bohuslav Martinu) 15:14
6. Announcement Pezzotti (0:22)
7. Blame It On My Youth (Levant-Heyman) 12:02
FM outro (0:23)

TT: 59:51

Sound: A
Source: DRS 2 "Jazz Live" / 2008-01-11
Recording engineer: Martin Pearson
Lineage: FM > HD > WAV > FLAC (8,asb,verify)
Recorded, edited & shared by ubu

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=180703

Thursday, January 24, 2008

David Liebman / Ellery Eskelin - Tübingen 2005



Here's another show, not as progressive as those all over the Schlippenbach post might wish for, but still a bit of a departure from the 40s stuff...

This is a mighty fine recording by the two tenor band of Dave Liebman and Ellery Eskelin, who also put out an official album on the great Hat Records label (hatOLOGY 615 / 2005). And even better, they're scheduled to do another album for Hat's current hatOLOGY series (see the "recent & upcoming" section of Eskelin's website).

And remember: support the artists! Go to their concerts, buy a disc or two from them!

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David Liebman / Ellery Eskelin Quartet
Sudhaus, Tübingen (Germany)
April 29, 2005

David Liebman - tenor & soprano sax
Ellery Eskelin - tenor sax
Tony Marino - bass
Jim Black - drums

1. Off A Bird
2. Tie Those Laces
3. You Call It
4. Ghosts
5. Tempos

TT: 63:24

Sound: A
Source: SWR 2 "Jazz Session" / 2005
digi-fm (MPEG 1, Layer II, Stereo, 48000khz, 192kbps)
Received uncut MP2 in online-trade, tracked with mp3DirectCut & shared by ubu


DL link

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Johnny Griffin 1969 - date corrected

for those of you who care, please note that the Griffin show from this earlier post:
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2008/01/johnny-griffin-live-in-1969-on-dime-and.html
was recorded on May 16, not May 21, 1969!

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Alexander von Schlippenbach - Mainz 2007



Alexander von Schlippenbach
will soon turn 70. Last year, he was the winner of German radio station SWR 2's jazz award.

I just posted this one on dime tonight, too. As it's in original digi-fm format (MP @ 320 kbs), I post it here as well - hope you'll enjoy!

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Alexander von Schlippenbach - SWR-Jazzpreisträger 2007
Mainz (Germany), Foyer, SWR-Funkhaus
June 13, 2007


Alexander von Schlippenbach - piano

1. Trinkle Tinkle (2:26)
2. The One (2:11)
3. Twelve Tone Tales (3:06)
4. Out There (4:08)


Evan Parker - tenor sax
Alexander von Schlippenbach - piano
Paul Lovens - drums

5. Winterweise (31:05)


TT: 42:57

Sound: A
Source/Lineage: digital FM (MPEG-1 Layer 2, 320kbit/48kHz) - mp3directcut (direct cutting, no conversion)

DL link

More music & comments



Apologies for not having posted a lot of late.

I promise there will be more music up here soon (some out-ish stuff, for a change, and some smokin' tenors, too).
Also to all of those who posted comments in the last week or more, I will add replies now - finally!
I was just too busy to update my blog more regularly, sorry for that!

Just so no one thinks I'm taking another sabbatical again!



The images of course aren't here by chance - rather they're stills from a film of one of my all-time favourite directors, JLG. This film I'll catch tonight on the big screen - never had a change to see it before! 

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Johnny Griffin live in 1969 - on dime and right here, too!

The "Little Giant" has always been one of my favourite tenor sax players. The solo on the opening title of "Congregation" (Blue Note) is one of my favourites, and both "Way Out" and "Johnny Griffin Sextet" on Riverside are terrific albums.
Then there was his tenor combo with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis - smokin'!


Johnny Griffin in Dortmund 1969
© Karlheinz Klüter


Here's a great radio show from 1969, recorded at the Hungarian Albia Regia festival with the rhythm section of Kenny Drew (who plays on both mentioned Riverside albums, too), Jimmy Woode, and Art Taylor.

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Johnny Griffin Quartet
Alba Regia
Szekesfehervar (Hungary)
May 16, 1969 (NOT May 21 as originally stated!)

Johnny Griffin - tenor sax
Kenny Drew - piano
Jimmy Woode - bass
Art Taylor - drums

1. Stage Intro / Announcement JG (4:16)
2. The Jamfs Are Coming (Johnny Griffin) 16:33
3. Announcement JG (0:24)
4. All the Things You Are (14:06)
5. Announcement JG (0:49)
6. Body and Soul (Green-Sour-Heyman-Eaton) 13:45
7. Announcement JG (0:33)
8. A Night in Tunisia (Gillespie-Papparelli) 17:42
9. The Theme (Miles Davis) 2:17

TT: 70:25

Sound: A/A- (mono)
Source: FM BDC>?>CDR
Lineage: CD from trade > EAC > FLAC > dime (seeder: matt23)
Additional lineage: FLAC > WAV > Cool Edit > WAV
Edited & shared by ubu


Edits:
- split up tracks (came as just two, see notes below)
- cut duplication/spliced the one earlier mark between #4 and #5

Googling around to make sure this hasn't been released commercially, I found this:
http://www.fidelio.hu/hir_o.asp?id=12379
The date given there is May 16, 1969 - now I don't understand Hungarian, so most of the hits google delivered I'm unable to understand - can anyone clarify the date, please?
I took the date from the original seed!


**********************************************************

Here's the dime link:
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=178610

The link to the MP3 @ 320 kbs version will be in the comments, as usual.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Death of Hi-Fi... and the RVG series

I know some may find it strange to find this on a music blog... but still, most of time at home, I listen to one of my three or four or five thousand CDs (I refuse to count them), or to one of my few of dozen LPs, or to CDRs burned from radio broadcasts or lossless downloads of live shows.
Hardly ever do I play MP3s, only having a notebook and no equipment to hook it up with my amplifier helps... I do play MP3s when commuting or when I'm out for a run, on my ubupod. However, in these situations I don't really care for sound quality, anyway, normally I still prefer having my daily listening dose in good sound quality.

So here's an interesting article on this issue, courtesy of Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print

Bear in mind that I am no audiophile at all, still I enjoy music much more - even at relatively low volume - if it unfolds in the air, in some kind of space (my messy chaotic room full of CDs, books, CDRs, and other stuff, usually).

As a jazz-related side-note: the RVG Edition by Blue Note - which has its merits, or rather had its merits once it was a series of albums that had not been out on CD for years - nowadays, many RVGs are reissues of albums that had been on CD just three or four years earlier, which is a pity, even more so as the CD reissue market seems to dry out slowly, and as there'd been some Blue Note material that has never been on CD in a regular way... why not bring out the Art Hodes sessions that only were part of a Mosaic set years ago, when I wasn't there to buy it... also lots of 60s material hasn't been on CD yet - more Rare Grooves would be a great idea, in my opinion! Okay, I got off the track, let me begin anew: the RVG series seems to me to be an example of that trend, to make reissues louder and more compressed. I have more or less stopped upgrading older Blue Note CDs since more often than not I feel the difference is not in quality, but rather in loudness and volume. If you know of discs where the sound is really an upgrade, other than the early BN sessions (Monk, Powell, Miles), please let me know - I'd be glad to get some recommendations! I got plenty of RVG discs myself, yet most of them are from the first years of the series (before EMI started throwing their copycrap cactus sh*t on the European market).

Possibly I'm much too harsh to good ole RVG to put this second topic in the same post as the third - I'm sure his efforts still are fine, compared to much of the crap that the majors keep flooding the market with. Apologies for that!

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Post #100 - Some Food for Thought

Some thoughts in this jubilee post.

The year has started in an utterly bad way, by now I'm quite depressed - our kitten has been away ever since we let her out late night on December 30th. I looked around and asked some neighbours, but no one has seen her later than we did... I'm by now slowly accepting the thought that we might never see her again.

Update: bad news: Alas, as we were hanging up some notes about our missing cat, we got news that she was picked up close by on 31st. This morning we were finally able to reach the person in charge, and indeed she died on the evening of the 31st of December - may she rest in peace - she brought us (and most notably me) many moments of joy, and she had a good life at our place (at least for the past five years, before she was pushed around a bit, but then we offered to take care of her, as I had fallen for her charms...) 

***** 

Then let me add a little bit of info for new readers of my blog.

:: 1 ::
I post music (tags: musical offerings, for europeans only, exclusif)

:: 2 ::
I post links to music that I share via that great bit torrent tracker, dimeadozen.org - usually I do not share that music here, too. Dime is lossless only, and my bandwidth isn't good enough to share lossless files via RS. Also it's a lot of work to create fully tagged MP3 files from the FLAC files I have prepared for dime upload - so please don't ask for me to share it all here, rather try your luck and join dime. Dime, btw, is a place where you have to give in order to take - just some food for thought! (tags: dime pointers)

:: 3 ::
I sometimes post some thoughts, reviews, whatever (tags so far: cinema, concert reviews, literature, on the air, recommendations, references, reflectativity, remembering, reissues, varia)
If I mention a concert I've had the luck to attend, that doesn't mean I have taped it, so quite possibly the answer to obnoxious requests is: no, I don't have any links, I don't even have a tape. And if I had a tape, it would go up on dime anyway (see #2).


I hope this clears some things!

Something else, about politeness etc: I don't see much of a point in anonymous comments (or comments from people with "profile not available").
Also, as live is - or in a more ideal world ought to be - "give and take", rather than "grab and run", I'd enjoy very much to see a few more comments from you who read and download what I post. Not just "thanks this is great" (that's far - I repeat: far! - better than not adding any comment at all), but I'd also enjoy some actual discussion of the music, some more comments in short that are more content than form!

Enough preaching and teaching for now - I hope you all had a more joyous start into 2008 than I had!

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Dinah Washington - The Best in Blues (For Europeans Only #12)

Here's a great supplement to the Mercury 1940s session - the Verve Elite CD of Dinah Washington's album "The Best in Blues", which compiles a Keystone Session with various Mercury sessions - stylistically, it fits very well with the "Blues, Boogie, & Bop" box!
Sidemen include Arnett Cobb, Paul Quinichette and Ben Webster on tenor, Wynton Kelly on piano, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and of course the great Lionel Hampton!



Dinah Washington - The Best in Blues

1. Evil Gal Blues
2. I Know How to Do It
3. Baby Get Lost
4. Trouble in Mind
5. Fat Daddy
6. TV Is the Thing This Year
7. Salty Papa Blues
8. New Blowtop Blues
9. Gambler's Blues
10. Don't Hold It Against Me
11. Long John Blues
12. Homeward Bound
13. TV Is the Thing This Year [Alternate Take]
14. Baby Get Lost [Alternate Take]
15. Good Daddy Blues
16. Good Daddy Blues [Previously Unissued Alternative Take]
17. Drummer Man
18. Drummer Man
19. Be Fair to Me

bonus tracks - Lionel Hampton w/Dinah Washington:
20. Evil Gal Blues
21. Blow Top Blues
[taken from: "Lionel Hampton: Hamp - The Legendary Decca Recordings" (CD1)]

Discography

#1,2,7,12
Joe Morris (t), Rudy Rutherford (cl), Arnett Cobb (ts), Milt Buckner (p - out 12), Vernon King (b), Fred Radcliffe (d-out 2), Lionel Hampton (vib,d-2,p-12)
WOR Studios, NYC, December 29, 1943 [Keynote]

#3,14,15,16,17,18
Teddy Stewart's Orchestra: Georoge Hudson (t), Rupert Cole, Ernie Wilkins (as), Cecil Payne (bari), James Forman (Hen Gates) (p), Freddie Green (g), Ray Brown (b), Teddy Stewart (d)
NYC, March 4, 1949 [Mercury]

#4
Jimmy Cobb's Orchestra, incl. Ben Webster, Wardell Gray (ts), Wynton Kelly (p), Keter Betts (b), Jimmy Cobb (d)
Los Angeles, January 18, 1952 [Mercury]

#5,6,13
Paul Qunichette (ts), unknown (p), Jackie Davis (org), Keter Betts (b), Jimmy Cobb (d), Candido Camero (cga)
Fine Sound, NYC, June 10, 1953 [Mercury]

#8
Nook Shrier's Orchestra, incl. Paul Quinichette (ts), Wynton Kelly (p), prob. Freddie Green (g), poss. Keter Betts (b), Gus Johnson (d)
NYC, September 24, 1951 [Mercury]

#9
Jimmy Cobb's Orchestra, incl. Clark Terry (t), Russell Procope (cl,as), Paul Gonsalves (ts), Beryl Booker (p), unknown (g), Keter Betts (b), Jimmy Cobb (d)
Universal Recording Studios, Chicago, June 3, 1952 [Mercury]

#10,19
Ike Carpenter's Orchestra: Clyde Raesinger, Tony Reeves (t), Art Pearlman, Roger White (tb), Ed Freeman (as), Bob Hardaway, Bob Robinson (ts), Joe Koch (bari), Wynton Kelly (p), Chuck Norris (g), Joe O'Rear (b), Dick Stanton (d)
Los Angeles, June 1, 1951 [Mercury]

#11
unknown personnel
Chicago, July 1, 1948 [Mercury]

#20
Joe Morris, Lamar Wright Jr., Dave Page, Wendell Culley, Al Killian (t), AL Heyes, Andrew Penn, Abdul Hamid, John Morris (tb), Herbie Fields (cl,ss,as), Gus Evans (as), Arnett Cobb, Jay Peters (ts), Lionel Hampton (vib), Milt Buckner (p), Billy Mackel (g), Charles Harris, Ted Sinclair (b), Fred Radcliffe (d)
Carnegie Hall, NYC, April 15, 1945

#21
Wendell Culley (t), Herbie Fieds (as), Arnett Cobb (ts), Lionel Hampton (vib), Johnny Mehegan (p), Billy Mackel (g), Charles Harris (b), George Jones (d)
NYC, May 21, 1945

Everything as usual:
CD rip @ 320 kbs (lame)
link in the comments
no scans but accurate tags including full personnel and recording info as listed above & more