On a snowy evening in Toron­to, in 1953, five of the great­est jazz musi­cians of all time played togeth­er for the one and only time. Dizzy Gille­spie, Char­lie Park­er, Hal Roach, Charles Min­gus, and Bud Pow­ell, all at the cre­ative acme of their careers. A rag­ing bliz­zard and a cru­cial hock­ey game reduced the audi­ence to a hand­ful — a pho­to shows most­ly emp­ty seats. The checks to pay the per­form­ers bounced. But this is con­sid­ered by many to be the great­est jazz con­cert of all time, and I’m in no mood to doubt that con­sen­sus. Gille­spie’s trum­pet blazes like the archangel Gabriel took pos­ses­sion of him. If you are going to own only one jazz album, this should be it.

Roach, Gille­spie & Park­er play­ing at Massey Hall, 1953

Massey hall was built in 1894. This was, for­tu­nate­ly, where I first heard for­mal con­cert music played. It’s ugly on the out­side, but when I first set foot in it, the inte­ri­or was still a late Vic­to­ri­an, pseu­do-ori­en­tal fan­ta­sy of mel­low wood­work. It’s acoustics ranked it among the best halls in the world. A lat­er ren­o­va­tion, unfor­tu­nate­ly, removed most of its charms. The Toron­to Sym­pho­ny long ago moved to mod­ern quar­ters, but Massey still hosts impor­tant rock, folk and cham­ber concerts.

The fatal pop­u­lar­i­ty of “Land of Hope and Glo­ry” and the Pomp and Cir­cum­stance march­es long obscured the fact that Elgar has con­sid­er­able depth. Those who lis­ten the Sym­phonies and the Cel­lo Con­cer­to close­ly know this, of course, but it’s also worth pay­ing atten­tion to his mod­est out­put of cham­ber music, the best pieces of which were all com­posed in the sum­mer of 1918. Read more »

20373. (Valery Gore) Avalanche To Wan­der­ing Bear
20374. (Giuseppe Ver­di) Un Bal­lo in Maschera [com­plete opera; d. von Kara­jan; Domingo,
. . . . . Barstow, Nuc­ci, Quivar]
20375. (Antonín Dvořák) Husit­ská, dra­mat­ická ouver­tu­ra [Hus­site Over­ture], Op.67, B.132 Read more »

Cape Bre­ton Island is for Canada’s folk music what the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta is for Amer­i­ca’s. Dur­ing the infa­mous High­land Clear­ances, the impov­er­ished High­landers of Scot­land were dri­ven off their land. Many of those who did not die of star­va­tion or expo­sure (the clear­ances were often done in the dead of win­ter), were shipped off to Cana­da in the “cof­fin boats”, a cross­ing that many did not sur­vive. Read more »

20347. (Somat­ic Respons­es) Dig­i­tal Darkness
20348. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #79 in F
20349. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #80 in D Minor
20350. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny #81 in G
20351. (Yous­sou N’Dour) Noth­ing’s In Vein
20352. (Doves) King­dom of Rust Read more »

Somat­ic Respons­es is the tag for two Welsh broth­ers, John and Paul Healy. Dig­i­tal Dark­ness is break­beat, rhyth­mic noise, or sound­scape, or some­thing like that. I like it. It has inter­est­ing rhyth­mic intri­ca­cies, with­in a rel­a­tive­ly slow-paced frame­work. I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked the strings in “Strand­ed” and the grim bass line in “Human Bass”. Not some­thing you would play as back­ground or to make your­self feel hap­py, but stimulating.

20178. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in A, Op.3 #12,
20179. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in F Minor, Op.3 #9
20180. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in B‑flat, Op.3 #3
20181. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in G Minor, Op.3 #11
20182. (Arcan­ge­lo Corel­li) Sonata da chiesa in F, Op.3 #1 Read more »

Kwak­waka’wakw [Kwak­i­utl] music in British Colum­bia comes as a sur­prise to any­one who is more famil­iar with the pow-wow music of the rest of Cana­da. It’s meant to accom­pa­ny indoor cer­e­monies and the pecu­liar dance dra­mas with elab­o­rate cos­tumes that pre­vailed on the Pacif­ic coast. Orches­tras of log, box, and hide drums are accom­pa­nied by a vari­ety of rat­tles and whis­tles play with uni­son chants in Kwak’wala, sup­ple­ment­ed by solo “hollers”. It’s the rat­tles that car­ry the aura of sacred­ness. The rhythms are noth­ing at all like what you would hear on the plains. Some are rem­i­nis­cent of Japan­ese forms, like gagaku. I don’t know how this par­tic­u­lar album, by the Gwa’wina Singers of Alert Bay, com­pares to oth­er stuff from the Coast. This whole area of music is unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry for me.

Dur­ing the era of silent films, the­atre organ­ists were big stars. After the arrival of talk­ing films, most of them lost their jobs, but the best of them found work in oth­er media, or lin­gered on as names. Such was Jesse Craw­ford, who fol­lowed suc­cess as a film organ­ist with suc­cess on radio, as a record­ing artist, and as an instruc­tor. In lat­er years, he became asso­ci­at­ed with the pop­u­lar Ham­mond organs. I have a Dec­ca Vocalion record­ing, Sweet and Low, of him per­form­ing a dozen stan­dard tunes, and anoth­er album which he shares with Don Bak­er and Marv Mer­lin, called Organ Greats. Bak­er was a Cana­di­an organ­ist whose career close­ly par­al­leled Crawford’s.

This stuff was very pop­u­lar in the 1950’s, when it was thought of as sooth­ing and mel­low, prob­a­bly pro­vid­ing the equiv­a­lent of “lounge” music today. In fact, Bak­er’s ren­di­tion of “The Third Man Theme” is includ­ed in Capi­tol’s “Ultra Lounge” com­pi­la­tion, Organs in Orbit. With the pas­sage of time, this genre has acquired a sort of unin­tend­ed creepi­ness. You could use these albums quite effec­tive­ly as a sound­track for a David Lynch film.

This is an Aus­tralian met­al­core band that sticks to con­ven­tion. It’s in the same vein as Pan­tera or Slay­er, with noth­ing to sug­gest that they are record­ing in this decade. Might be fun at a live venue, but not like­ly to be played repeat­ed­ly at home. They’ll be com­ing to Toron­to next month, and I might check them out if I’m in a nos­tal­gic mood for ‘core. I have two albums: Killing with a Smile (2005) and Hori­zons (2007), with dif­fer­ent bass play­ers. I like the drum­mer, who does some nice machine-gunning.