Dr Cath Annabel

Stunning concert @musicintheround.bsky.social Shani Diluka (piano) with a programme interspersing Bach with works by Glass, Jarrett, Cage, Moondog & Bill Evans, so that each piece resonated with the one before & the one after it, & we could hear & feel the connections. Beautiful & exhilarating.

Current reading. Plus Rebecca West’s Black Lamb & Grey Falcon on Kindle

Brilliant evening at the Showroom for @otsfestival.bsky.social talk & film about Sheff musical history, Studio Electrophonique - Jamie Taylor's excellent book out now from @manchesterup.bsky.social - & Ken Patten's part in that musical history.

Currently reading: Hilda Bernstein’s The World that was Ours (middle left) plus Tana French’s The Hunter on kindle.

Another fab Sheffield Jazz gig - Josephine Davies’ Satori.

Music afternoon. Following up Duke & Coltrane with Duke's Big 4 (Duke, Joe Pass, Ray Brown & Louis Bellson). Kicks off with Cottontail, which we heard a cracking version of last night.

Music afternoon. Before I fire up the wake playlist, which will see me through the rest of the day, some Ellington to follow up last night's concert. Coltrane & Duke, released 1963. Starts with In a Sentimental Mood, which is v precious to me because M loved it so. A gorgeous album altogether.

Things I never thought I'd witness: Robert Fripp heckling & gesticulating furiously at Craig Revel Horwood for (rightly) giving Toyah a low score. Felt like two v different worlds colliding.

Probs a good thing (for my equilibrium) they didn't play In A Sentimental Mood as that was one of M's fave tunes to improvise around. Will play it tonight at home on the 4th anniversary of his death.

Gorgeous Sheffield Jazz gig last night at the Crucible. The Pocket Ellington. Classic Ellington with only 4 horns and rhythm section. Alex Webb piano, Alan Barnes baritone & alto sax/clarinet, Robert Fowler tenor sax, Simon Finch trumpet, David Lalljee trombone, Dave Green bass, Alfonso Vitale drums

Dreading it.

My annual (since 2021) Jazz Record Requests pick in memory of M is on the show this pm (4.00pm Radio 3/Sounds), just ahead of the anniversary on 9/10 and what would have been his 70th birthday in November.

Last night’s music

Music night - following up last night's James Allsopp Quartet tribute to Stan Getz with the man himself, Getz/Gilberto from 1964 with Joao Gilberto, also feat. Antonio Carlos Jobim (piano), Tommy Williams (bass), Milton Banana (drums) & Astrud Gilberto on vocals.

Buffy Revamped! Turns out Brendan Murphy's one man (one vampire?) show compressing 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer into 1 hr 20 mins of loving & ridiculously funny parody was precisely what I needed tonight.

Music Night: paying tribute to Danny Thompson with Pentangle's Reflection, from 1971.

Great opener for SheffJazz autumn season: James Allsop Quartet paying tribute to Stan Getz.

As a former Uni administrator I am appalled - it may be 'one isolated error' but so many people must have had the opportunity to query it, and didn't - surely if he got a 2:1 the erroneous result would have prompted someone to check? So not just one error, not really.

Not only that but many us somehow manage to love superhero movies AND French new wave movies, Proust AND Stephen King, Boulez AND Motown. And why the hell not?

The article also assumes that if one likes, thinks about, even (gasp) writes academic studies of 'lowbrow' culture, one has abandoned any interest in or love of 'highbrow' stuff. I think it's daft to stick to just one kind of brow. Popular stuff is interesting & its popularity worthy of analysis.

Music night - Summers & Fripp - I Advance Masked, from 1982. Their first collaboration. Both basically play the same instruments (apart from Summers contributing some piano) - guitar, synthesisers, bass, percussion

It's growing on me.

Music night - back to vinyl. Springsteen - Greetings from Asbury Park NJ. Springsteen's solo debut, from 1973. I have no memory of hearing this before, & the opening track is far more familiar in Manfred Mann's Earth Band's version. Kind of enjoying it.

...Janis Ian, Fleetwood Mac, Velvet Underground, 10CC, Global Village Trucking Co., Billy Cobham, David Essex, Genesis, Clapton, Crimson, Bee Gees, Lou Reed, Tange Dream, Eno, Diana Ross, Purple, Queen, Sparks, Cockney Rebel & Graham Kendrick.

Music Afternoon - a playlist put together for a reunion of friends who came to Sheffield in 1975 to train as teachers. Of the 8 of us, 3 have died in the intervening 50 years, so we honoured them, and reminisced with help from Bowie, Hendrix, Floyd, Hatfield, Tull, Mahavishnu, Joni, Steely Dan...

Current reading. Plus Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road on the Kindle

Thank you for alerting me to this - I've been looking out for opportunities to see it for years, but never spotted it because of the change of title - though I fear other commitments will now have to be downgraded to 'optional' whilst I immerse myself in it!

One of the most sublimely beautiful pieces of music I've ever known. And guaranteed to make me weep, as I recall my lovely mum, a huge VW fan, who also loved the Tallis so deeply.