On the first Sunday of each month the streets of Arezzo are lined with stalls filled with antiques and bric-a-brac for the Fiera Antiquaria, one of the best known antiques markets in Italy. Continue reading “In Arezzo”
In Arezzo
Category: Video
Ode To Joy
Thanks to a tweet from The Fife Psychogeographical Collective I found this video by Bill Drummond at the Birmingham Mail website. It feels like a small miracle. A band of outlawed Romanian buskers performing the anthem of the European Union under Spaghetti Junction – a perfect metaphor for the knot we’ve tied ourselves in. I’m offline now for a few weeks while I check if Europe will still have me.
Unknown Countries
I’d not been to Hastings before. Strange to admit, especially since I lived in Maidstone for three years just 30 miles away, though that was over 40 years ago. Hastings was where John Martyn lived but, as much as I loved his music, we always by-passed the town on our way home from Brighton. Continue reading “Unknown Countries”
Radical Times
Radical Times is the title of an exhibition of paintings by Stanley Whitney at the Lisson Gallery. I walked here via Church Street Market, past the antique shops and the exuberant fruit & veg stalls. Continue reading “Radical Times”
Candalla
This is the old mill at Candalla in the hills above Camaiore in northern Tuscany. I think it’s possible to rent it as a holiday home, but it’s perhaps not the most peaceful retreat. The pool attracts lots of visitors in summer, all of them keen to jump in and cool off. Continue reading “Candalla”
TTB @ NPR
The Tedeschi Trucks Band recorded live last month at a Tiny Desk concert for NPR’s All Songs Considered. These intimate performances produce some great music and this is one of my favourites. We saw them last year at the O2 where they gave us the best music of 2015. They’d earlier celebrated Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen, and they performed some of those songs along with their own expansive blues/jazz/soul/gospel jams. They’re a great live band. This video gives a taste, but also try Tedeschi Trucks Band Live: Everybody’s Talkin’.
For Gato Barbieri
Gato Barbieri died last Saturday, 2nd April 2016, at the age of 83. He was a great and memorable saxophonist with a big-hearted sound (later celebrated as Zoot, the saxophone-playing puppet in The Muppet Show). I first knew him from recordings with Charlie Haden and Carla Bley, particularly Liberation Music Orchestra in 1969, an album that opened the door to so much influential music. This live recording of Brasil is from the 1971 Montreux Jazz Festival (released as El Pampero) with Lonnie Liston Smith on piano, Chuck Rainey on electric bass, Bernard Purdie on drums, Sonny Morgan on conga and Naná Vasconcelos on percussion and berimbau. It may not be completely representative of his best work, but it is wonderful and impassioned and a good way to remember him (I chose it for my daughter who is presently in Brazil, dancing capoeira and playing berimbau).
For a fuller tribute see Gato Barbieri 1932-2016 by Richard Williams.
San Gimignano
A roadside coffee stop en route to San Gimignano. They serve the best espresso macchiato I’ve ever tasted. Immediately refreshed and we’re watching out for our destination’s distinctive towers, checking the horizon for their silhouettes, easily confused by the outlines of countless cypress trees. Continue reading “San Gimignano”
Montefegatesi
We were on the lookout for ancient trees. I asked for directions at our local Tourist Information in Bagni di Lucca. The forests here are mostly sweet chestnut and we were told that there were some Castagni Monumentali in the hills of the Garfagnana, high above the town. Continue reading “Montefegatesi”
For Naná Vasconcelos
Here’s a reminder of the great Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, who died too soon last week aged only 71. I was fortunate to see him once, performing with Don Cherry and I heard him many times on recordings by Codona, Talking Heads, Jan Garbarek, Egberto Gismonti, Pat Metheny, Caetano Veloso, Laurie Anderson and Penguin Café Orchestra, as well as many albums under his own name. He was a master of the berimbau, a single-string percussion instrument, the soul of Capoeira.