Giant Donut Discs ® – August 2011
1. 8. 2011 | Categories: Articles,Giant Donut Discs
[by Ken Hunt, London] June Tabor & Oysterband, Lady Maisery, Mike Waterson, Nørn, Bahauddin Dagar, Peter Bellamy, Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman, the Home Service, Aurelia and the Velvet Underground. And lots to do with work, the spirits of Rudyard Kipling, Robert Mitchum, Bob Hoskins and the summer 2011 music festival season.
Love Will Tear Us Apart - June Tabor & Oysterband
The Oysterband - Ray 'Chopper' Cooper (cello, mandolin, bass guitar, harmonium, vocals), Dil Davies (drums, cajón), John Jones (lead vocals, melodeon), Alan Prosser (guitars, kantele, fiddle, vocals), and Ian Telfer (fiddle) - reunites here with June Tabor to splendid effect..
June Tabor and John Jones invest this song of Joy Division's with an enormous dignity and pathos.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Nigel Kennedy's late May 2010 flourish, his Polish Weekend at the Southbank Centre, brought together an array of Polish jazz and musical talent that included Kennedy's Orchestra of Life (playing Bach and Ellington), Robert Majewski, Anna Maria Jopek and Jarek Śmietana. Tucked away in the early Sunday afternoon slot was the Piotr Wyleżoł Quintet. A relatively recent development, aside from the band's pianist-leader, it comprised Krzysztof Dziedzic on kit drums and Adam Kowalewski on double-bass, their fellow countryman Adam Pieroeńczyk on soprano and tenor saxes and the Czech Republic's David Dorůžka on electric guitar.
The concert began over half-an-hour late because Kennedy, who wanted to emcee their appearance, arrived late. His
[by Ken Hunt, London] Patrick Galvin's death on 10 May 2011 in his birth city of Cork received some attention, the way that Ireland's foremost poets and men-of-letters get written up. Born on 15 August 1927, his obituaries raised the response of 'Oh no, that will not do.' Galvin was more than a poet and dramatist in the way he chronicled and portrayed his homeland, its history and its people. He had a parallel life as a singer and writer of Irish songs. His recording career began at Topic - Britain's and the world's oldest independent record label - in the early 1950s. He contributed a number of 78 rpm singles with Al Jeffrey, an early largely unsung hero of the post-war Folk Revival, accompanying him
[by Ken Hunt, London] The outstanding, trail-blazing Hindustani violinist Vishnu Govind Jog, usually known more simply as V.G. Jog, died in Kolkata (Calcutta) on 31 January 2004. He had been born in Bombay (now Mumbai), then in the Bombay Presidency (nowadays Maharashtra) in 1922. He received his early music training from several notables, amongst them, S.C. Athavaic, Ganpat Rao Purohit and Dr. S.N. Ratanjarkar, but where he differed from most of his contemporaries was his espousal and championing of the violin played in Indian tuning. To the north of the subcontinent, the European violin had little status. Professor V.G. Jog was a major force in correcting violinistic misperceptions
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Calder Quartet, Cyril Tawney, Nørn, Sharan Rani, Hedy West, Trembling Bells, Arlo Guthrie with the Thüringer Symphonikern Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, Tine Kindermann and the Home Service. And lots to do with work.
Allegro Moderato from the String Quartet in F - The Calder Quartet
I love music that carries me across bridges. I respect that sort of music like I would respect a figurative guru who imparted something and transported me somewhere else, somewhere beyond, maybe out of my safe place into unknown territory. For me, the string quartet provided and provides the key to western classical music.
Here the Calder Quartet reveals Ravel's string quartet's textures and colours intensely. This opening movement lays out the table.
[by Ken Hunt, Berlin] On 30 December 2003, Tanzania's internationally best-known musician, Hukwe Zawose died at home in Bagamoyo, his musical base for many decades, at the age of 65. Tanzanian music never had much of an international profile outside of ethnography until Hukwe Zawose but when it arrived it arrived in style.
Born in 1938 in Doduma, a rural district in central Tanganyika, as it was then known, he had an active recording career outside his homeland, recording for Real World, the Tokyo-based Seven Seas/King Record Co, Triple Earth (the London-based label that brokered and oversaw his international breakthrough) and WOMAD Select (notably the Mkuki Wa Rocho (A Spear To The Soul) album, 2002)
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Rahul Dev Burman story actually begins eight years before his birth on June 27, 1939, in Calcutta; new chapters continue to be added years after his death in Bombay on January 4, 1994. The Indian film business was revolutionized in 1931 by the arrival of the nation's first talkie, Alam Ara (Light of the World). This groundbreaking film was the first to use music to create an egalitarian lingua franca that united paying audiences in a nation divided by linguistic abundance.
Filmi sangeet - filmi for short, or "film song" - became became India's popular music. Burman was part of that first generation for whom silent films were only historical flickers. He grew up with filmi as the soundtrack to his life
[by Ken Hunt, London] More folk, blues and beyond dreams from Judy Collins, Jyotsna Srikanth, Carol Grimes, Ágnes Herczku, Szilvia Bognár and Ági Szalóki, Eliza Carthy, Kirsty MacColl, A. Kanyakumari, Odetta and Zoe & Idris Rahman. Stranded on the island, sometimes you pine for female company. And then this image of Peter Rowan swept in, not in drag, just showing his vulnerable side.
Pretty Polly - Judy Collins
This is a track from one of the finest folk-rock albums ever produced. It is not just a song. It is nasty narrative from one of the pivotal albums in the annals of folk-rock. Michael Sahl plays organ and Van Dyke Parks electric piano. Stephen Stills and James Burton play electric guitar. Buddy Emmons plays pedal steel and Chris Ethridge electric bass. Sh
[by Ken Hunt, London] When Joep Bor of the Rotterdam Conservatorium first conceived of a project that would take a selection of those "complex and abstract musical entities" known as ragas and present them in an accessible form, he had no idea how many years would flash by. By 1990 Bor was in partnership with the Monmouth, Welsh Border-based Nimbus label. What was little more than a pipe dream in 1984 eventually became The Raga Guide, a 4-CD, 196-page package, the product of a collaboration between traditional Indian musicians, the Rotterdam Conservatorium and Nimbus Records. It was launched at the High Commission of India's Nehru Centre in London in April 2001.
Over that period team coalesced
[by Ken Hunt, London] Cast your mind back to 1971 and the film Caravan. That ever-risqué delight Helen is commanding the screen. A slinky saxophone croons over an electric bass guitar line with vibraphone in underlying support. Within a minute electric piano, trumpet and a splash of drums comes on the way eggs and flour get folded in gently when making a pudding. A spy flick tune emerges and then dissolves away. Helen pleads, "Lover, come to me now." We are listening to Piya Tu Ab To Aaaja ('Lover, Come to Me Now', first line as title) with Asha Bhosle putting the words on Helen's lips - with occasional cries of "Mon-i-kkka!" from the song's composer Rahul Dev 'Pancham' Burman.
