A short excerpt from a lovely film by husband and wife duo, Irena & Vojtěch Havlovi (The Havels) playing improvised piano and cello music inspired by a visit to Pushkar in India.
Pushkar
Category: Music
Walk To The Mountain
The exuberant force of music that was Don Cherry taking a Walk To The Mountain, then going much further. It’s a wonderful performance by a great jazz magician and one of the pioneering champions of world music. Multikulti was one of his final projects. I found it here and couldn’t resist.
Away With The Birds
Hanna Tuulikki’s ‘Air falbh leis na h-eòin’ is a body of work exploring the mimesis of birds in Gaelic song. On the 29th and 30th of August it becomes a sited performance on the Isle of Canna.
Hanna’s vocal composition, ‘Guth an Eòin | Voice of the Bird’ is the heart of the project. Written for a female vocal ensemble, it reinterprets archival material, fragmenting and re-weaving extracts of Gaelic songs into an extended soundscape. The music emerges from, and responds to, island landscapes and lives. It explores the delicate equilibrium of Hebridean life, the co-existence of tradition and innovation, and suggests the ever-present inter-relationship between bird, human, and ecology.
“The piece is made from weaving together fragments of traditional songs and poems that imitate or emulate birdsong” Tuulikki explains. “Each of the five movements represents a different habitat and bird community – wader, sea-bird, wildfowl, corvid, and cuckoo. In August we will perform the concert in the historic harbour of the beautiful Isle of Canna, where the music reverberates with the bird-calls and the ebb of the tide. The setting is so important to the piece. The Small Isles are a magical place and, to me, the performance begins as soon as people climb on-board the ferry-boat to make the crossing: the richness of the experience is people sharing a journey.”
Paco de Lucía
I’m out of the frame for a while. Whilst I’m away I’m leaving Paco in charge. This is some of the most suprising and exciting music ever invented. It’s diverting and engaging and definitely worth a look. He begins solo, then he’s joined by cajón, fingersnaps and handclaps, then voices and eventually a whole band of virtuosos, including a great flamenco dancer. The concert culminates in a dynamic duet finale with Al Di Meola. ¡Olé!
The Sky At Snape
SNAP HQ, a cor-ten steel shed at Snape Maltings, nerve centre of the SNAP visual arts programme for this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, directing our gaze towards the great Suffolk sky. Continue reading “The Sky At Snape”
The Gown Of Green
The Gown of Green is a song by The Collection from their album Ars Moriendi. This video comes via NPR Music. I first heard of them from Bill at Practicing Resurrection, his blog from White Flint Farm, a good place to wander and always full of wise words.
For Charlie Haden
I first knew Charlie Haden from his Liberation Music Orchestra in 1970. It still stands as my favourite album. I later discovered his work with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Carla Bley, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny, Alice Coltrane, Bill Frisell, Geri Allen… He stood as a signpost to some of the best music of the past 50 years. His death last Friday from post-polio syndrome is a sad loss of a truly great artist. There’s a beautiful reminder of him here, but the best way to know Charlie is to listen to his music…
Charlie Haden: Song For Ché
Kind Of Red
A quintet of five new paintings by Sean Scully entitled Kind of Red, at the Timothy Taylor Gallery. This is painting as a martial art: prepare, focus, get to work; there’s a no-nonsense approach to these blocks of colour thrown onto huge sheet metal plates, rocking in rhythm across the wall. It’s easy to imagine Scully dancing before them wielding a fat wall-painting brush. And in the exhibition catalogue there’s a wonderful, curious and perceptive essay by Richard Williams. Continue reading “Kind Of Red”
All That Other Mother Jazz
My new exhibition, All That Other Mother Jazz, starts next Tuesday, in the fair city of Portsmouth. Come along if you can. Cheers, Jonny.
Jonny Hannah / The Rowley Gallery
B For Barcelona
This large letter B is on a rooftop in the Born district of Barcelona. Is it B for Barcelona or is it perhaps B for Born in Barcelona (that old Springsteen classic)? Or maybe it doesn’t stand for either, especially since it’s lying on its back. Maybe it’s B for Brossa, the Catalan poet, playwright and artist Joan Brossa. He liked to play around with letters and it seems to be on the roof of his theatre. We found it when we came looking for Lottie who lives nearby. We met her under the B for Beer. Continue reading “B For Barcelona”