Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance posits the existence (in some metaphysical or conceptual sense) of morphic forms which arise when living beings act in the world. In this theory, these forms are strengthened with each repetition of the action, and create a force field (a morphic field) which can be drawn upon by subsequent beings repeating the same act. The theory predicts that doing the same thing should become easier over time, even when the entities doing the acting are different, in different locations or not not even alive at the same time. Morphic resonance, if it exists (whatever that may mean) is a form of action at a distance and action through time. I have been fascinated by this theory since first reading Sheldrake’s book about it 36 years ago.
Archive for the ‘Jazz’ Category
Page 0 of 3
Concert Concat 2024
This post is one in a sequence which lists (mostly) live music I have heard, as best as memory allows. I write to have a record of my musical experiences and these entries are intended as postcards from me to my future self. All comments are personal. Other posts in this collection can be found here. The most recent prior post in this sequence is here.
- Versa Winds Saxophone Quartet at St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London, 13 September 2024. The quartet comprised: Louisa Kataria (soprano sax), Lydia Cochrane (alto sax), Alex Dani (tenor sax) and Annabella Trench (standing in for Ethan Townsend, baritone sax). The program was:
- Pedro Iturralde: Suite Hellénique
- Fernande Decruck: Saxofonia di camera
- Richard Rodney Bennett: Saxophone Quartet.
Some very fine playing to an audience of about 35 people. The playing was very tightly co-ordinated, especially in the interesting rhythms of Bennett’s Saxophone Quartet. The Eastern Mediterranean sounds of the Iturralde work were enchanting.
- Members of the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra in a programme of mostly classical string quartets and clarinet quartets, in Studio 1 of the Old Museum Building, Brisbane, 29 August 2024. The performers were: Nicole van Bruggen (Basset clarinet, a replica of the original Stadler version, with a bulbous bell), Rachael Beesley (violin), Alison Rayner (violin), Stephen King (viola) and Natasha Kraemer (cello), and they played on period instruments, or modern instruments inspired by period instruments.
- Vincenzo Gambaro: Clarinet Quartet #1 in B-flat
- Mozart: String Quartet #4 in C, K.157
- Beethoven: Cavatina from String Quartet #13 in E-flat, Op. 130
- Nicole Murphy: Wavelength
The audience was about 100 strong, in a room with high ceilings and very good acoustics. The composer of the final work, Nicole Murphy, was present for the performance, and her piece, composed only recently, was in three movements (fast, slow, and fast). This piece required the player of the Basset clarinet to stop the hole at the base of the instrument three times – this can only be done by holding the instrument with the knees. The third movement had a syncopated sprung rhythm, which she called a “funky groove”, played as an ostinato by the strings with a clarinet obligato part running over it. The up and down groove was apparently intended to convey the experience of being in a small boat in rough seas. In truth, the funky ostinato would have made an admirable work, in a rhythmic minimalist style, by itself, without the clarinet part. (But then, I almost always prefer watching or hearing just the background in art and music.)
I do find it ironic (or perhaps hypocritical) to make a fuss about playing on period instruments for 18th Century music when the string players use shoulder rests. We were also in a room with electric light, although not air conditioning in the warmth of a Brisbane winter evening.
Transcendent music
Some years ago, I compiled a list of purposes that may motivate composers, performers or listeners of music, under the heading What is music for?
An objective that may motivate many performers is that of reaching a transcendent state, as the Russian-Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg, describes here. His blog post was written after he had performed all five Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Brussels Philharmonic (under Thierry Fischer) across three evenings, in February 2020 (blog entry of 18 February 2020):
The high point for me was No. 4, during which I experienced something which until now I’ve only felt while playing Russian music: a kind of floating, when your brain disengages or splits in two. One (small) part is alert and following the performance, and perhaps directs the musical flow a little bit, the other (much larger) part is completely sunk into the music, experiencing it in a kind of visceral, instinctive way which precludes logical thinking and seems wired directly to your deepest feelings, without any buffers or defenses. After that concerto I was drained, bewildered, exhilarated – a complete mess. But what an unforgettable night.”
Transitions 2015
People who have passed on during 2015, whose life or works have influenced me:
- Yogi Berra (1925-2015), American baseball player
- Ornette Coleman (1930-2015), American jazz musician
- Robert Conquest (1917-2015), British kremlinologist
- Malcolm Fraser (1930-2015), Australian politician
- Jaako Hintikka (1929-2015), Finnish philosopher and logician
- Lisa Jardine (1944-2015), British historian
- Joan Kirner (1938-2015), Australian politician, aka “Mother Russia”
- Kurt Masur (1927-2015), East German conductor
- John Forbes Nash (1928-2015), American mathematician
- Boris Nemtsov (1959-2015), Russian politician
- Oliver Sacks (1933-2015), British-American neurologist and writer
- Gunter Schabowski (1929-2015), East German politician
- Alex Schalck-Golodkowski (1932-2015), East German politician
- Gunther Schuller (1925-2015), American composer and musician (and French horn player on Miles Davis’ 1959 album, Porgy and Bess).
- Brian Stewart (1922-2015), British intelligence agent.
- Ward Swingle (1927-2015), American singer and jazz musician.
Last year’s post is here.
Paris life – brunch
Cafe Les Frangines, 46 Rue Raymond Losserand, Montparnasse 75014 Paris, France. Soundtrack: Dixieland and klezmer – trumpet, clarinet, trombone, piano, accordian, double bass.
A great Norwegian Messiah
Until this month, the best performance of the Messiah I ever heard was in 2011, an event I recorded here. I have now heard its equal.
This latest Messiah was performed on 19 December 2014 by The BBC Singers and the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, in an arrangement by Stian Aareskjold, under David Hill (conductor), with Fflur Wyn (soprano), Robin Blaze (counter-tenor), Samuel Boden (tenor) and Mark Stone (bass), in Temple Church, as part of Temple Winter Festival.
My heart sank when I first saw that the music had been arranged for wind-band, since groups of woodwinds, so often shrill and ineffectual, are not my favourite ensembles. But in fact this version turned out to be a wonderful arrangement and was realized in a thrilling performance. The secret, I think, was that the ensemble included a double bass and cello, some marvelous natural horns and three sackbuts, and, most spectacularly, saxophones. The solo for soprano sax in “O Thou That Tellest” played by Kristin Haagensen was just superb. That solo soared, as so did the saxes on “Surely He Hath Borne our Griefs and with His Stripes we are Healed”. A modern Briton, of course, cannot easily hear baroque music played by saxophones without thinking of Michael Nyman, and, just as with his great music, this was a truly sublime experience. The trombones in “He Trusted in God” were also inspired. Mr Aareskjold should be congratulated on this arrangement, and I hope it is soon recorded.
In addition, the performance rocked, and often literally. I was sitting as close to the orchestra as I could possibly get, and even had the two baroque trumpeters between me and the orchestra for the second half – Stian Aareskjold and Torgeir Haara, who had played angelically from the organ loft in the first half. (They played from iPads controlled by foot pedals.) So I could see the movement of choir and players as they performed, and there was a distinct bounce in some of the numbers, particularly in “His Yoke is Easy”. Perhaps the presence of saxes played by jazz musicians, who (unlike most classical musicians) move in time to their playing, led to this. Mr Aareskjold is the son of a trumpeter and the grandson of a trombone player (the reverse of my own ancestry), and brass players are often crossover musicians. The Church acoustics were, as usual here, superb.
For the “Hallelujah” Chorus, only part of the audience stood. Until this performance, I had never heard of the action of standing being construed as showing support for monarchical systems of government, and, frankly, such an interpretation is ridiculous. One stands for the “Hallelujah” because it is a tradition to do so, even if a tradition started by a Hanoverian monarch. Like Karl Marx, I believe traditions are the collected errors of past generations. But, like Morton Feldman, I’ve realized in adulthood that errors are not necessarily always to be avoided.
The concert is available to listen until mid January 2015, via BBC Radio 3. The Ensemble hails from Halden, a town of just 30,000 people. It was nice that the people sitting near me also came from there, and had brought with them tourist brochures to entice us to visit the town. I took one, of course, as it gave to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.
And on the way out of the Middle Temple, in the offices of law-firm Gibson, Dunne & Crutcher in Temple Avenue, a late-working Friday evening team could be seen around a white board, making at least one observer envious of their camaraderie and collective efforts. How much fun it looked!
Juju
Wayne Shorter’s album Juju was recorded at the Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on 3 August 1964, 50 years ago today. The ensemble comprised Shorter on tenor sax, McCoy Tyner on piano, Reginald Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. The album has six original compositions, all by Shorter; the modern remastered version has two alternative takes. The music is sublime.
Postscript (added 2024-08-03): 60 years ago today. Still sublime.
The Lamberts
From sometime before 1933 right down to the present day, members of my family have had on their walls reproductions of George Lambert’s 1899 Wynne-Prize-winning painting Across the Black Soil Plains, and so this image is part of my cultural heritage. (Image due to AGNSW.)
George Washington Thomas Lambert (1873-1930) was an Australian artist born, after his father had died, in St Petersburg of an American father and English mother. The family emigrated to New South Wales in 1887. In Australia, he is most famous for his painting, Across the Black Soil Plains, now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which was based on his time living at Warren, NSW. During WWI, he was an official Australian war artist.
George’s son, Leonard Constant Lambert (1905-1951) was a jazz-age British composer and conductor, and co-founder of Sadler’s Wells dance company. Constant’s son, Christopher (“Kit”) Sebastian Lambert (1935-1981) was a record producer and manager, and part-creator of rock band, The Who.
Sad that son and grandson both died in their 46th year.
Piano on the Bay
Another colourful outdoor piano, this one by Yunior Marino, spotted at 595 Bay Street at Dundas Street, Toronto. This afternoon some great stride piano was being played on it by an elderly gentleman.
Vale: Graeme Bell
Farewell, Graeme Bell (1914-2012), legendary Australian trad jazz man. His band’s tour of Czechoslovakia in 1947 was still fondly remembered almost four decades later by patrons of JazzKlub Parnas when I first visited Prague in 1984.