Taubkin's back in town

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that that masterful Brazilian pianist Benjamin Taubkin will be appearing in London on Saturday November 6th. The bad news - well for me at any rate - is that I will not be there for the concert. I can't tell you how cheesed off I am to be missing the gig. As followers of this blog will know, Benjamin Taubkin is one of my favourite musicians and I was fortunate enough to be able to interview him  the last time he was here. All I can say is - go and see him if you possibly can. You won't regret it!

How the Voltarol got his name

 (With apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

Left to right: Ganja the Dwarf, Voltarol, Alcohol

On the right hand side of this blog you will see my profile, which includes a reference to my two brothers – Alcohol and Ganja the Dwarf – and the fact that we have been known to go on the occasional mystic quest together. This apparent nom de blogish whimsy is in fact firmly rooted in reality and I have had several requests to explain more. So – as senior brother Alcohol has already written about this for publication elsewhere, I thought I would reproduce his piece here but with the addition of a few appropriate links and photographs. Only the names have remained the same to identify the far from innocent…

Three Old Farts in a Boat.

It was all the fault of my younger brother Pete. We bought him a first edition of one of his favourite books, “Three Men in a Boat”, for his sixtieth birthday last August and it reminded him of the enormous fun that he and I and his little brother Bob had on, in, and around the River nearly fifty years ago.

            Within a week he ‘phoned me to suggest that the three of us get together and, using the book as a model, have a week on the Thames. He had already propositioned Bob, searched the Web, and found a small company that hired out Victorian camping skiffs.

           

 I hesitated for about a millisecond before agreeing. It has always been my ambition to grow old disgracefully and this seemed like a significant step in the right direction. As the plan was elaborated we decided that we would follow as directly as possible in the footsteps of Jerome K Jerome’s heroes. We would start from as near Kingston as we could. We would take small tent for one of us and the other two would sleep under the canvas awning of the boat. If the weather was foul we might take refuge in a pub for the night. We would also exactly retrace their path by rowing upstream to Oxford, ninety-one miles and thirty-one locks. Circumstances even ensured that we did it at the same time of the year, the third week in May.

            

Just after three o clock on the afternoon of Wednesday the 17^th the three of us shoved off from the landing slip at Thames Ditton. Pete and Bob were at the sculls and I was on the rudder lines. I uttered a confident and seamanlike cry of “give way” and we rowed out manfully into the stream. At this point Judy, our chauffeuse, began to look less apprehensive but we rather spoiled it by hailing her to ask which way was upstream.

Left to right: Ganja the Dwarf, Voltarol, Alcohol

Once this tricky point was resolved we made our farewells and set off pulling along the boundary of Hampton Court palace. It was bright when we started out but the sky had been clouding over for a while and it was not long before it started to rain. At this point we were very pleased that our gear was all stowed in waterproof stuff bags. Three hours later it was still drizzling and we made our first nights camp moored alongside a rather muddy island near Shepperton.

Alcohol wrestles with the camping cover

 It was something of a pantomime. None of us had erected a camping cover since I was a lad, the Victorian folding hoops seemed intent on inflicting painful injuries on our fingers and the heavy canvas cover weighed more than we remembered. Eventually we got it up, Bob’s tent was pitched, and with the aid of an entrenching tool sanitary facilities were provided in an adjacent thicket. This first night it took well over an hour and a half to set up camp but we got faster with practice

Ganja and Votarol work on the wine lake

Once order was established Pete cooked supper and I opened the first bottle of wine. We washed up in the river (We carried our drinking water with us but relied on the Thames for washing water) and then opened the second bottle. We followed that with Pete’s secret camping potion, hot chocolate laced with about a quadruple brandy and by bedtime we were three deeply contented men. When we retired to our sleeping bags we slept like logs. We woke at about seven the next morning, breakfasted on tea, dried fruit and muesli, struck the tent and the cover, tidied the camp site and rowed off up river.

That first day set the pattern except that we abandoned the notion of cooking a main meal in the evenings as the weather worsened. From then on we found a pub for a couple of pints, a substantial lunch and coped with plenty of tea and cold food for breakfast and supper besides making serious inroads on the European wine and brandy lake. 

Alcohol, Voltarol, Montmorency, a friendly landlord and Ganja the Dwarf

The weather worsened and the wind was pretty consistently against us. On one day it recorded a mean speed of twenty-five knots, and as the heavy rain continued the lock keepers progressively opened the weir sluices and the current ran faster and faster. Passing through Reading we were overtaken by a three year old riding a fairy-cycle along the towpath and several times we were rowing flat out and only just managing to breast the current, while we hunted across the stream for slack water.  

           Ganja and Alcohol ,  Rosalind and Actief

 On the fourth night we decided that a shower and a dry bed would be a good idea but discovered that most of the cheerful riverside pubs of our youth had been tarted up and become hideously expensive. What is more, in our wet and mud splattered condition we would have been about as welcome as a mild dose of amoebic dysentery. In the end, the friendly keeper at Sonning lock introduced us to “J” and Charlotte, the owners of the hotel boat “Actief” which was moored just above the lock. Despite the fact that they had just said farewell to a full complement of guests and had been looking forward to an evening off, they provided comfortable beds, hot showers, a great deal of wine and a magnificent breakfast.

           

 Restored by good company and this touch of luxury we pressed on upstream and despite being awarded a yellow card, which told us that the current was now too strong for unpowered boats, we continued to head for Oxford and became increasingly confident that we were going to make it. We developed a sneaking feeling of smug superiority when we encountered two more of Tom Balm’s skiffs coming downstream, the crew of one of them announcing that they had asked to be retrieved after only two days.

Alcohol, Voltarol and Ganja the Dwarf 'having a ball'.                  

 Despite the weather we were having a ball and despite an average age of sixty- two, reverting to our juvenile selves. We are none of us the sort of blokes to take readily to stuffed toys but Montmorency, the toy dog that had been loaned to us in place of Jerome’s very real one, began to develop a personality. 

Montmorency availing himself of the facilities...

Dafter still, we boozily decided that we were on a quest and adopted the characters of Voltarol, Alcohol, and Ganja the Dwarf. Any one that has suffered from arthritis will be familiar with Voltarol, Alcohol needs no explanation, and two years teaching in a school for disturbed adolescents provided me with the third name. We later added a fourth character to our pantheon, Offa’s Dyke, a Celtic princess of indeterminate gender.

           

 The week wasn’t merely a combination of a nostalgia fest, an endurance trial and a geriatric booze cruise. It was also a journey through a positively magical landscape. Once above Windsor, apart from a rather dreary passage through Reading, the Thames Valley is every bit as beautiful as it was fifty years ago. There wasn’t very much river traffic and because a rowing boat makes very little noise the wild life took next to no notice of us and we saw at close range Red Kites, Parakeets, Herons, innumerable water-fowl, and a quietly busy little water vole. The banks were as leafy as ever and the May blossom brought to mind hackneyed comparisons with lace and foam, and an odour that booted all three of us back to being about ten years old again.

           

 The lock keepers were almost universally helpful, there were still a few cheerful unpretentious riverside pubs which gave us a very warm welcome and most of the folks we shared the river with were friendly and good natured.

           Elderly hooligans

When we emerged from the final lock at Iffley we ran directly into a flotilla of Oxford regatta crews who were evidently bewildered by a trio of elderly hooligans chanting “Voltarol, Alcohol and Ganja the Dwarf” but before we could get in to serious trouble we reached the slipway above Donnington Bridge, where two daughters and three grandchildren were cheering and waving flags at us. “Rosalind” was hauled out of the River and on to Tom Balm’s trailer, and our voyage was over. There will be another one next year. Despite a few creaks aches and pains none of us wants to wait for another forty- eight years before we do it again.

             

                The good ship 'Rosalind' and her crew at journey's end.

Well, that was in May 2006. The following year we paddled two Canadian Canoes down the River Wye together, on a quest that we named  - unsurprisingly - 'Three men in two boats', and one day I'll tell that story here. For various reasons there has not been a quest since then but we are currently planning one for next year. We are not quite sure what form it will take but it will definitely involve boats and a renewed assault on the European wine and brandy lake. Maybe we'll try to swim across it...

The Afro Sambas

Baden Powell

When I first started working in a record shop in 1964 (see (High) Street life) I soon discovered the joys of specialist record importer’s catalogues. Good record shops stocked ‘in depth’ in those days, and one of my more pleasurable tasks was to scan the pages of the aforementioned catalogues in search of interesting stock. One such catalogue was produced by a company called ‘Selecta Records’ who were, I think, principally the distribution arm of Decca Records, but they had a fine imports selection and among other things distributed the French Barclay label in the UK. As I observed in a recent posting (French Leave), the French do have an appetite for good music generally and this characteristic manifested itself particularly in the Barclay catalogue in the form of a number African and Brazilian recordings.

At this time I had yet to recognise the passion for Brazilian music that was stirring in me, so I was drawn to the name ‘Baden Powell’ out of sheer curiosity and amusement. When ‘Le Monde Musical de Baden Powell’ arrived in the shop it was with no more than vague interest that I put it on the turntable for a listen but I was hooked from the start. This was guitar playing of the highest order and although some of the tracks were a bit ‘syruped up’ with unnecessary strings, others were sublime. I was particularly taken with a tune called ‘Berimbau’. I didn’t know then what a berimbau was and certainly had no idea that I would ultimately own and play one.

Time passed and my enthusiasm for Brazilian music generally and Baden Powell in particular resulted in an ever growing collection of Brazilian recordings, which went positively nuclear after my first visit to Brazil. My face is extremely well known in many Saõ Paulo CD shops and I rarely return from a Brazil trip with less than 30 albums. Ironically though it was on a regular on-line CD trawl that I first came across ‘Baden Powell – Afro Sambas’ (1991) on the French JSL label.  By this time I was fairly familiar with many of Baden Powell’s compositions and was also aware that amongst the numerous people he had collaborated with in his composing career was Vinicius de Moraes, who had co-written ‘Berimbau’ with him.

Vinicius de Moraes

I noticed that, with the exception of the first tack – ‘Abertura’ (Overture) – which was credited to Baden Powell alone, all the other tracks were co-written with Vinicius. I also noticed that one of the titles was ‘Variações Sobre Berimbau’ (Variations on Berimbau), and that a number of the Candomblé gods or ‘Orishas’ were referenced in the other titles (I knew about these from having visited Salvador and through my reading of the works of Jorge Amado). The disc was duly bought and played and I was, of course, hooked.

 All though my linguistic abilities are poor and my French in particular is only marginally better than Del Boy’s, I was able to ascertain from the sleeve notes that this was a re-recording of the Afro Sambas and that the original had been issued in 1966 but had been unobtainable for quite some time. Furthermore, Vinicius de Moraes, who had died in 1980 and was therefore not a participant in the 1991 recording, had performed on the original. This original recording immediately migrated to the top of my ‘must have’ list, where it was to stay for the next twelve years or so.

A few years after this initial purchase I was on yet another trip to Brazil and searching through the racks in Pops Discos (see Voltarol in Brazil 2010, continued) when I came across a second-hand copy of Afro Sambas performed by Paulo Bellinati and Mônica Salmaso and immediately added it to my haul for that particular day. I think that I had it on the CD player within minutes of returning to my son’s apartment and was immediately seduced by the wonderful voice of Ms Salmaso and the superb guitar playing of Paulo Bellinati as they breathed new life into these songs. I was also beginning to realise that they had not actually been composed to go together as a suite (although they worked well enough in that respect), because the order in which the songs were performed was different to that of Baden Powell’s 1991 recording, one title was omitted and the disc included an original guitar composition by Paulo Bellinati – ‘Cordão de Ouro’ (Golden Cord), which had been grafted on to ‘Berimbau. I subsequently learned that Mônica Salmaso was only twenty four when she recorded this – it was in fact her first CD – although Paulo Bellinati was a seasoned performer who had already made a name for himself. If I’m honest, I think I actually prefer this album to Baden Powell’s re-recording.

So that was that, and I now had another two artists whose recordings were on my ‘must have’ list. Time passed and I began to think that I was very unlikely to find that original recording unless one of my Brazilian friends knew someone that owned a copy but didn’t want it…or maybe I would find a Japanese reissue (surprisingly, there is a very big following for Brazilian music in Japan). And then, a couple of months ago, I learned about an extraordinarily eclectic reissue label called ‘él’. There, lurking in their catalogue alongside such unlikely bedfellows as Becker and Fagan, Brigitte Bardot, Segovia, Chet Atkins and Malcolm Arnold were a number of Brazilian artists and – yes! Result! There it was, the original ‘Os Afro Sambas’ from 1966 which has been reissued with a Baden Powell solo guitar album from 1963 – ‘Á Vontade’ (loosely - ‘Chilling Out’) – on one CD. When my copy arrived I couldn’t wait to play it but was a bit trepidatious. Would it live up to my expectations? I needn’t have worried. His recording is an absolute masterpiece and well worth the long wait.

In his sleeve notes for the original album Vinicius says – “When the young and talented producer Roberto Quartin approached us about recording this album, we agreed that it should be made with maximum creative freedom and minimum commercial interest. We were not interested in producing a well crafted record but instead to be spontaneous in conveying the simple message of our sambas’. In truth, the net results - which utilise as many amateur and semi-pro musicians and singers as they do professional ones – occasionally teeter on the verge of chaos, and yet it is sublime chaos. These performances capture the spirit of their subject matter and at times transport one to the same heights as “…the powerful magic of candomblé baiano ( candomblé as practised in Bahia)…” to quote again from Vinicius. Here's a sample track.

All that remains to be said here is that all three of these albums are worth owning, but if you must choose between them then the original is by far the best. It’s up there in my top twenty recordings of all time – but then again, so is Mônica Salmaso and Paulo Bellinati’s version! Go on - get them all.

A poster from the past

Last week I received an email from my old mate, fellow blogger and Blue Two and a Half, Leigh Heggarty. Leigh had, in the course of his guitar tuition activities, acquired this old poster advertising events for January 1985 at the jazz club that I ran for several years at The Load of Hay public house in Uxbridge, Middlesex.  Being the good soul that he is, he had forwarded a copy to me, along with a copy of his latest poster advertising events at the club he now runs at that same venue.

 This of course was where the recent Blue Five reunion took place earlier this year, and where the Jugular Vein had played one of their first gigs in the late 1960’s. One way and another I’ve had connections to this pub for over forty years!

Seeing the poster after all this time brought back a lot of memories about the musicians involved. Some of them I am still in touch with, two of them are no longer with us but the rest are still playing – and playing well. I’ve had a snoop around on the net and found a fair amount of material about them so I thought I’d compile it all here. I was also very fortunate in that many of the gigs were documented in pictures by a young photographer called Chris Warren who was just starting his career. All the black and white images on this posting are his handiwork (and, incidentally, his copyright). I tracked him down on the net after I started writing this piece, having lost touch with him some twenty or more years ago and was pleased to learn that he was still taking photographs for a living. He has a thriving business and an excellent web site with many examples of his work which you can find here.

The late Matt Matthewson was a fine pianist who was born in that most unlikely source of jazz musicians, The Shetland Isles. He was the younger (I think) brother of the more well known Ron Matthewson, who played double bass with Ronnie Scott Quartet for many years. I’m not sure what had happened, but at some point not long before I met him Matt had had an accident which had affected his behaviour some what. As a consequence he was not always the most reliable musician, and had been known not to turn up for a gig - or to turn up but to forget his piano, as happened at my club once. But for all this Matt was still worth booking because he was a great and inventive player who always provided an evening of excellent and thought-provoking music. Sadly I have only been able to find this rather poorly recorded example to illustrate this. I post one here by way of memory jogger to any one out there who has memories of Matt or, better still, recordings or video footage of him.

Matt was accompanied on this occasion by the club’s resident musicians – The Coverdale/McCartney Trio, featuring Martin Hart. 

Guitarist John Coverdale is playing as well as ever and works regularly in the Home Counties. John, like me, started his musical life in the folk clubs before moving into life as a professional musician. Unlike me he went the academic route and went back to study music, eventually attending one of the Dankworth/Laine Wavendon music courses.

 I caught up with him earlier this year when we had the opportunity of playing together at the same function which saw the partial reunion of the Jugular Vein. Despite appearances, I am in fact playing percussion and not squaring up for a fight with the invisible man...

The late John McCartney played electric bass in this unit and was one of the few players of that instrument that many of the London based jazz fraternity would work with. John was a dazzling player who swung like crazy, was tremendously supportive of other musicians and was a fine soloist in his own right. It is my intention to devote a whole posting to John in the near future.

Drummer Martin Hart completed that trio. He has a very subtle touch and a very musical ear, and always listens intently to the players he is working with. Martin was never one to blow his own trumpet, so to speak, but he had worked with names as diverse as Dudu Pukwana and John Mayall.

I found this clip of him playing at a jazz club in Surrey in 2008. Unfortunately he's impossible to see because of the juxtaposition of the camera and the saxophonist's sheet music, but you can hear him well enough! 

Inigo Kilborn is the musician about whom I know least. He only played the one gig for me and I can’t now recall anything about that evening. I can’t even remember what the instrumentation of his group was, let alone who the musicians were, although judging by the musical company he keeps these days (John Horler, Malcolm Creese and ex Load of Hay regular Max Brittain) they would have been top drawer players. I have found a couple of clips of Inigo but these seem to show him playing Dixieland!

The third Sunday of January 1985 saw the resident trio supporting chromatic harmonica player Harry Pitch. Harry was another regular at the club. He made a good living from session work but jazz is his first love and he is one of the ever growing numbers of improvising musicians whose first choice of instrument is the harmonica. (In fact, the harmonica is in its second phase of ascendancy at the moment – see this posting on the National Harmonica League’s web site – and Harry was part of the tail-end of the first wave so he spans both phases.) Not many people know him for his jazz playing but most people in England are probably familiar with the theme music for ‘The Last of the Summer Wine’. Harry played this for the first twenty five years of the series. He provided harmonica for a number of chart singles over the years, including ‘Groovin’ with Mr Bloe’ and Frank Ifield’s ‘I Remember You’. -  Oh, and he played on the theme music for the cult BBC detective series ‘Shoestring’, which ran between 1979 and 1980. Anyway, Harry is still playing and I found this clip of him with Rhythm and Reeds, a group he has run with accordionist Jack Emblow (another regular at the club) for many years. 

Incidentally, the bass player here is Pete Morgan, and a quick glance at the poster will tell you that he replaced John McCartney in the resident trio for the last gig of that January. In fact Pete was a regular ‘dep’ for John at the club, as was fellow double bassist John Rees Jones. All three were busy session players and shared the honours between them, but it was always John McCartney’s first-call gig.

The guest for that Sunday was John Nixon, whose first instrument was another most unlikely source of jazz – the English Concertina!  (Scroll down this list of recordings to find some examples of his  work.) John also plays alto saxophone and double bass (although since heart problems in the early eighties he abandoned double bass in favour of the acoustic bass guitar, which was much easier to manage. 

These days he sticks mostly to the concertina but is still playing the occasional jazz gig. John had two independent careers – one as an engineer and the other as a musician – but the music was always the most important thing in his life. He was a much-in-demand session musician who has played for the likes of Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, The Kinks(!) and Michel Legrand, as well as providing concertina music (and, where necessary, a dummy concertina for the actor) for more TV and Radio productions than you can shake a sick at. Now retired, he still pushes boundaries and for the last few years has been experimenting with a concertina with built-in MIDI interface. Alas, I could find no footage of John playing jazz, although I do have some in my own archives and hope to upload something in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, here is one of John’s MIDI experiments.

If there is anyone out there who was a Load of Hay regular back then, I would be pleased to hear from you. And if anyone has an old poster, or some photos, audio recordings or video footage I shall be absolutely delighted to hear from you! Just think, all that great music and an entry fee of just £1. No wonder I never got rich. As the old joke goes – “How do you make a jazz musician into a millionaire? Give him two million”

FRENCH LEAVE PART TWO

I’m very fond of the music of a number of French composers and on my recent journeyings in France found myself thinking about how much some of this music seems to reflect the French countryside. Now this may well be purely my imagination at work but the feeling is nevertheless there, in the same way that the music of Delius, for instance, always seems intensely English, even when the work in question is inspired by France or America ( for example, March Caprice, American Rhapsody). Maybe I’m guilty of whatever the musical equivalent of anthropomorphism is, but when all is said and done the music of Debussy, Ravel, and, to a degree, Saint-Saëns and Bizet still conjures up visions of French landscapes for me (with the possible exceptions of 'Carmen', ‘Bolero’ and ‘Danse Macabre’). I’m also enthusiastic about the works of Ibert but these seem much more cosmopolitan to me.

Anyway, enough of these ramblings – here are a few examples of what I’m talking about. You may not agree with me but I’m not trying to lay down any laws here, merely giving a point of view. First off, here’s a favourite piece of mine – Le Tombeaux de Couperin by Maurice Ravel. This was originally written for piano and was orchestrated by the composer in 1920 (although he omitted two of the original piano movements). My first introduction to this work was – somewhat surprisingly - a performance of the prelude by the jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton. He recorded it in 1969 on an album called ‘Country Roads and Other Places’, dueting with himself on piano and vibes. From there I found the original piano work and then subsequently the orchestral version. If I had to choose between them it would be the piano version that would win out but I still retain a great fondness for Burton’s version. By way of a compromise, here is a clip of Vlado Perlemuter playing the prelude. I trawled through a lot of clips before settling on this one. In my opinion many orchestras and pianists take it far too quickly, but Perelmuter has the measure of this work perfectly. Check for yourselves – there are innumerable versions posted so have a listen to some and see what you make of them.

Another Ravel favourite is the string quartet. The pizzicato movement from this has been used as incidental music for several films and television programmes over the years but despite this rough treatment the work still holds up for me. That movement has also been performed on the appropriate members of the mandolin family, in a multi-tracked version by the American mandolinist/guitarist Mike Marshall (this is on a very fine album called Gator Strut). Here, however, the pizzicato movement is played by the American String Quartet.

Now here’s an interesting little test of my feelings viv a vis the French countryside and the music. I found this clip of ‘Carillon’ from Bizet’s L’Arlesienne Suite No 1, which has been set to film of windmills in Sussex. It’s a very pretty juxtaposition but despite this I still feel a distinct mismatch between the two elements.

The first two pieces of Debussy that I ever heard were ‘The Golliwog’s Cakewalk’ and ‘Clair de Lune’. The former on BC Radio’s ‘Children’s Hour' in the very early 1950’s and the latter on an EP bought by my older brother, ‘Alcohol’ sometime around 1956 or 57 (see Classical Guess). Later I was to learn that Charlie Parker was much influenced by the harmonies of Debussy and Ravel and was to become well acquainted with their more sophisticated compositions but I have to confess that these two pieces were what kick-started my interest. Incidentally, for those of you who – like me – blench somewhat at the non-pc title of the cakewalk, here’s a link to some interesting observations. Anyway, here’s a piano roll of Debussy himself performing that work, and one of Mária Kovalszki performing Clair de Lune.

It goes without saying that this is by no means a definitive selection. There is a wealth of material to be discovered if you are not already familiar with these composers, but the clips by and large represent the start of my own interest in them. and my recent French trip made me think about them in a new light so I reckon they’re as good a starting point as any.

FRENCH LEAVE

Well – true to current form I’ve let an even longer amount of time elapse between postings, despite having promised to be back on course. What’s my excuse this time? To quote the late Harold Macmillan – “Events, dear boy, events…” The first of these events was a couple of weeks spent in France. This was planned. What was not planned was that the place where Mrs Voltarol and I were staying was devoid of Wi-Fi connections. As a consequence I was unable to check my emails, let alone update my blog!

The next event to undermine my good intentions was the arrival at Chez Voltarol of my son, daughter-in-law and 18 month old granddaughter from Brazil, for a stay that encompassed my 65^th birthday and its concomitant celebrations (as any right-thinking person would, I spent the first week’s pension money on a family knees-up). Anyway, I’m back on the case again and thought that an assortment of French music would be the way to go with this posting. Well, it was that or ‘Happy Birthday to You’ and I know which I think is the most interesting…

It is a widely held opinion that French popular music is fairly dire, and I’m not about to disavow that – I cannot abide the histrionic bleatings of Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour and the like, nor Johnny Halliday, Francoise Hardy and similar icons (and don’t bother to comment unless you’ve got something interesting to say: mere outrage at the fact that my prejudice is not your prejudice won’t make it on to these pages. If you feel so strongly about it then write your own blog). However, the French do have an appetite for good music generally, and outside of the world of pop have produced many great composers and musicians, as well as giving cultural ‘sanctuary’ to many more. But I don’t propose to try and analyse this subject here, but rather to give my own personal selection of examples.

My first French heroes were of course Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. (Django was in fact born in Belgium but spent most of his life in France and made most of his famous recordings with ‘The Quintette of the Hot Club of France’, so I think he qualifies.) I still rate Django in particular as one of my all-time favourite musicians, and If ever I’m feeling a bit depressed I have only to put on a Hot Club CD to instantly raise my spirits. There is a quality of joy about his playing that is impossible for me to resist. Many have imitated him since – and some have equalled his technical facility – but none have had the same originality and innovativeness about their playing. This fact was made all the more remarkable by the fact that Django only had the use of two of the fingers on his left hand, as can be seen in this clip –

And here's a great rendition of 'Limehouse Blues' - 





One of my more recent finds has been the accordionist Marc Berthoumieux. I don’t know a lot about him except that he is an exceptionally fine musician, but I first was alerted to his work on a Richard Bona DVD and have since sought out more recordings by him. Indeed, he got his first mention in these pages quite early on, in a posting called ‘Accordion Crimes’ which set out my feelings about the accordion generally. Here are a few examples of his work, including a clip with Richard Bona that I also posted on the aforementioned page.

Of course, the popular concept of typical French music is of Musette accordion, and this a sound that, I suspect, contributes in no small way to the general prejudice against accordions amongst music lovers, but I think that you will agree with me that M. Berthoumiex does not fall into this category, anymore than does Richard Galliano – a French/Italian musician who I also mentioned on that accordion posting. He is another person whose music transcends genre – there are elements of jazz, of South American music, of gypsy music, of klezmer even, all to be found within his playing but never actually defining it, and his latest recording is a venture into the world of J. S. Bach! Here are two examples of his work - one a solo rendition of Astor Piazzolla’s composition, ‘Libertango’ and the other a performance of one of his own compositions – ‘Sanfona’ (a sanfona is a Brazilian accordion) – with Tangaria (two Venezuelans and a Dutchman) and the great Brazilian bandolim (the Brazilian mandolin) player, Hamilton De Holanda.

Another great musician of French/Italian stock was the late Michel Petrucciani an incredibly talented and inventive pianist who suffered from a genetic bone disorder that dramatically restricted his growth. He died at the age of 36 from a pulmonary disorder that was linked to his inherited condition. Petrucciani was influenced by both Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett and yet was very much his own man. He worked with many of Jazz’s finest, including Jim Hall and Wayne Shorter, with whom he made a great album (also available on DVD) called ‘The Power of Three’. Here he is playing with Steve Gadd and Miroslav Vitous in 1998.

And here he plays a tune called ‘September 2^nd’ with Gadd and bassist Anthony Jackson.

My final choice for this first French collection is another pianist, composer and arranger Michel Colombier A study of his website will tell you (a) that he is no longer with us and (b) that he had a huge involvement in the world of French pop music at one time, so this choice would seem somewhat at odds with my earlier comments. However, he recorded one album of his compositions in 1979 – simply called ‘Michel Colombier’ – which is one of my favourite albums of all time. The music defies classification, being an unlikely amalgam of funk and classical components with a jazz overtone. The musicians include Michael Brecker, Larry Carlton, Steve Gadd, Herbie Hancock, Lee Ritenour, Tom Scott, Jaco Pastorius, Peter Erskine, and members of the London Symphony Orchestra – oh, and Airto Moreira, Michael Boddicker, Jerry Knight and Ray Parker Junior! Here are two tracks from this great album.

And that's it until the next post, when I'll cover some of my favourite French classical music - hopefully in a few days time rather than a few weeks!

A bonus at the Barbican

The other weekend I made another foray to London, this time for a concert by the great Brazilian singer/songwriter and founder member of the Tropicalia movement, Caetano Veloso. Mrs Voltarol and I were both looking forward to it. We had in fact heard  about the concert when we were in Brazil back in January, when I had received email notification from the Barbican of this forthcoming event. This had produced a flurry of email exchanges with my daughter in London, who promptly secured four tickets (the fourth being for her husband).

Caetano has been recording since the sixties, and although I first became aware of him in about 1992 I have albums of his that span his whole recording career. Like his contemporary, Gilberto Gil, he is a musician who is not content to rest on his laurels, and is constantly experimenting with new approaches and sounds. His latest two albums are a case in point.

On ‘Cê’ (2006) and ‘zii e zie’ (2009) he has been working with a trio of much younger rock musicians, who are now known as ‘banda Cê’. They are Pedro Sá - guitar and backing vocals, Ricardo Dias Gomes - electric bass, Rhodes piano and backing vocals, and Marcelo Callado - drums and backing vocals. Theirs is a very spare and rocky sound which instinct says would clash horribly with the comparative delicacy of Caetano’s voice and the subtlety of his compositions and guitar accompaniments, and yet I find the results on disc extremely pleasing. The quality of the production (by Catetano’s son, Moreno Veloso and Pedro Sá) is such that far from clashing, the contrasting elements enhance the songs. 

So far, so good, you might think – the line up for the concert was that of the last two albums and the material was drawn mostly from the most recent of these. The Barbican is a good venue and Caetano is something of a perfectionist as far as sound is concerned, but for me the whole thing just didn’t work. The band was far too loud and to my mind completely destroyed any possibility of achieving the subtlety of balance of the albums. Caetano’s voice was in good form and the musicians never played a bum note but it didn’t gel. The disparities that made for interesting contrasts on disc just made for irritating clashes in the live performance.

I have to admit that most of the audience were happy with the results but they seemed, by and large to be a comparatively young crowd: certainly the manners of many of them left a lot to be desired. For some reason the Barbican staff let in late-comers as and when they arrived, regardless of whether the band was in mid performance or not - and there were a great many late comers. There was a constant stream of them throughout the first 40 minutes or so of the performance. It also seemed perfectly acceptable for members of the audience to get up and go to the bar and back throughout the proceedings, and on one occasion somebody in the row in front of us decided to get up, walk along the row to where her friend sat, and then engage in a loud and spirited conversation with said friend. This of course required her to shout to be heard over the band. She got quite indignant when my daughter requested her, in no uncertain terms, to SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!

We were none of us happy bunnies when we left the Barbican that night. This had been Mrs Voltarol and my third Caetano concert, my daughter’s fourth and her husband’s first, and for us old hands it had been a disappointment. My son-in-law was not too unhappy with the gig but then he was under the impression that he had just seen Gilberto Gil! (He does not quite share the rest of the family’s enthusiasm for Brazilian music).

So what’s all this about a bonus then? Well, the following afternoon we were all back at the Barbican again to see a performance in the foyer by a unit called Future Band. My 10 year old granddaughter is a part of this group and this is the third time we have seen them perform at the Barbican – once on the main stage, once in The Pit and now this time on the free stage. “OK – I get it”, I hear you cry. “Proud grandparent syndrome if ever I saw it”. And, yes I would be lying if I did not admit to a certain amount of pride, but I have never been one to blind myself to the musical truth for the sake of family loyalty - music is far to important to me for that! But this was a very compelling performance by an incredibly talented and exciting group of youngsters. Who are Future Band? Here’s what it says on the programme –

“Future Band is a creative ensemble made up of 25-30 young musicians from across London. The musical identity of the group reflects the personality and creative voice of every band member, as well as taking inspiration from artists such as Danilo Perez and West African musicians such as Kaw Secca and Outhouse Ruhabi. After a hugely successful performance at the Barbican Centre in July 2009, this year we have been working with musicians from Beit Al-Musica school in Israel, exploring jazz and free improvisation with members of London’s Loop Collective and taken part in an internet link-up with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra project Orchkids among others.

Recently they explored the world of the Gamelan with a visit to LSO Discovery at St Lukes and working with guest musician Aris Daryono, the results of which you will see in today’s performance.

Leaders: Natasha Zielazinski and Detta Danford. Guest leader: Aris Daryono”

The 20 minute performance was absolutely riveting. The young musicians showed such total commitment to the music, and despite the fact that the audience included a high percentage of doting parents I detected no ‘showboating’ at all. The important thing was the music and the group – there was a definite sense of gestalt about it which was a joy to hear and behold. All credit then to the Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning Department for having the vision, and to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama people who have brought this about.

Imagine my dismay then to learn afterwards when talking to Natasha and Detta, that there is a strong probability that funding is to withdrawn from this and similar projects. What an incredibly short-sighted act this would be. Future Band is nurturing and encouraging talent that would not normally get such opportunities and it would be a great shame for those young people to loose this encouragement and tuition. But it’ll be a far, far, greater loss for us all if we are deprived of the potential fruits of this hotbed of incredible talent. You haven’t heard the last of this!