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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 »