VINYL OF THE MONTH
Emily Saunders Moon Shifts Oceans (The Mix Sounds)
Songlines Encounters is your round-the-world ticket to great world music and performances, a chance to travel widely in music and culture without the burden of check-ins, passport control, flight delays, or transfers.
London's iconic Roundhouse, packed to the rafters, provided the perfect setting for the UK premiere of Louis Cole's groundbreaking album nothing – his fifth album and third on Brainfeeder. This one-night-only performance, featuring Cole on drums and keys with an orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley, delivered electrifying musicianship, fascinating stylistic mash-ups, and melodies that imprinted themselves on your consciousness.
It would have been hard to pick up a copy of the album credited to and titled 1001 Est Crémazie in 1975. Just 500 copies were pressed. It didn’t reach shops but was circulated amongst the musicians playing on it, their friends, families and fellow students at Montréal’s Collège André-Grasset, the school at which those on the album were pupils.
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Rattle Encircle (Upset! The Rhythm)
The sax-player Kenny Garrett established a reputation as one of Miles Davis’s band in the Amandla (1989) period. He was also a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the launching-pad for scores of talented young musicians.
Stereo Instrumental Music was recorded in July 1976 and originally issued only on cassette. The release was organised by what was credited as the “Sun Shine Music Shop,” an enterprise which seems to have left no additional imprint. No further “Sun Shine Music Shop” albums are known.
Few symphonies lasting over an hour hold the attention (Mahler’s can; even Messiaen’s Turangalîla feels two movements too long). Wynton Marsalis is a great man, but his Fourth, “The Jungle”, is no masterpiece, not even a symphony – a dance suite, maybe, with enough bold textures to recall wandering attentions. We needed less of this, and more of the Duke Ellington selections superbly played by the 15-strong Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in the first half.
Spare a thought – please – for Leipzig-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003). In 1956, she became the very first woman to record albums in her own name for the Blue Note label. Earlier this month was the centenary of her birth. It went by more or less unremarked.
If you saw Upstart Crow on television or on stage in the West End, you’ll know the schtick of Sheldon Epps’ dazzling show Play On! Take a Shakespearean play’s underlying plot and characters and relocate them for wit and giggles. “Make it a musical“, you say? Okay, but who’s going to do the score, who’s going to dare to follow in the footsteps of Lenny and Steve, of Cole, of Elton (okay that one came a bit later)? “Duke Ellington!” Right. You’ve sold it.