FRIDAY MUSIC: The Modern Jazz Quartet, by JD

The Modern Jazz Quartet actually released a whole album based on the music of Johann Sebastian. There is one Bach inspired piece I recall which i thought was called The Golden Striker but that is not the one I remember and I cannot find it on YouTube. I would know it the instant I heard it, the melody is still lodged in my brain even after 50+ years. I'm sure I heard it on Steve Race's BBC programme Jazz625 but I may be mistaken. Any way here they are swinging with great style!

"I wouldn't be able to play the drums my way again after four or five years of playing eighteenth-century drawing-room jazz" was drummer Kenny Clarke's reason for leaving the MJQ. I think it was meant as an insult of sorts but it is a good description of the restrained and elegant 'cool jazz' of the Modern Jazz Quartet. They never lost their blues roots and found it easy to adapt those roots to the music of Bach or maybe that should be the other way round; was Bach the first 'blues' musician?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Jazz_Quartet

"Bag's Groove"(Milt Jackson),Modern Jazz Quartet in London

Vendôme

Itzhak Perlman with Modern Jazz Quartet - Summertime

Bluesology

"True Blues" (Milt Jackson),Modern Jazz Quartet in London

Concorde - Modern Jazz Quartet

Modern Jazz Quartet - Golden Striker

Who will guard the Guardian?

… plus Private Eye and The Spectator? I look to publications like those to give me an idea of what’s really going on that’s of any importance; at least, I used to.

But when it comes to the official narrative, objectivity flies out of the window. For example, where Ukraine is concerned, ‘it was the Russians.’

• The Russians invaded Ukraine without provocation. Even Peter Hitchens, who proves otherwise, feels obliged to say repeatedly that the action was foolish and inexcusable; I suppose that is the price for his being allowed to say anything at all.
• It was the Russians who bombed the Nordstream pipeline, against all logic and in the face of new evidence further suggestive of the involvement of the US Navy. As Matt Taibbi relates, that story has undergone a number of mutations, the latest being that the sabotage was carried out by Ukrainians with US foreknowledge - I have visions of Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog.)
• It was the Russians who fired a rocket into Poland - oops, sorry: the American religious Right must look for another chance to trigger WWIII and the Rapture.
• Now it seems the Russians have bombed their own dam in Kherson, which supplies water to Crimea - water blocked by the Ukrainian government in 2014 when the Crimeans sought independence, thereby reducing the peninsula’s agricultural irrigation by 90 per cent.

Putin is mad, is one story; perhaps we’re madder to believe it, but maddest of all must be the Washington war party, playing their children’s game of ‘What’s the time, Mister Russian Wolf?’ Russia has the most nuclear weapons in the world and the Dead Hand system, designed to burn up the world if they lose.

Like King Lear, President Biden could say

I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less; And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

and as in Shakespeare’s play, those on whom he depends threaten the destruction of the State. Could we at least name them, question them? Where is the Fourth Estate when we most need it?

Muzzled. If the little boy who cried out that the Emperor was naked did that today, he would be held incommunicado in a supermax jail.

Better still, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of vicious persecution. The US swiftly abandoned its ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ - possibly fearing it might prove a double-edged sword in the event of a swing to the Right in last November’s midterm elections - but the BBC has pressed on with its Verify program, despite its own history of spreading fake news.

How about the Guardian newspaper (a favourite read in Broadcasting House)? It has formed an unhealthily close working relationship with the intelligence services following the embarrassing revelations of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, as Jimmy Dore explores in his recent YouTube video ‘How The Guardian Newspaper Became A Pro-War Garbage Rag.’

Turning to Private Eye, when the Ukraine business flared up I expected their usual informative and skeptical take on it. Not so, this time: Issue 1570 (April 2022) featured a series of cartoons implying that Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ deliberately targeted theatres, schools, women and children; one had ‘Putin Family Butcher’ stropping a carving knife in the front window of his shop.

Concurrently, Russian news sources (e.g. RT) were blocked from us and Google’s Adsense Team even forbade the expression of contrarian opinions (round-robin email received by this writer, 13 April 2022):

‘This pause includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.’

The Spectator magazine, generally considered educated and liberal-minded, has nevertheless been consistently parti pris on Zelenskyy’s behalf, again not only in its columns but in its imagery - the cover of its 27 May edition had a slanty-eyed Putin goose-stepping on a red carpet while a crafty Zel clad in his trademark squaddy top prepares to pull the rug out from under him. Putin as a despicable, malevolent Asiatic quasi-Nazi… some Russians have taken to describing themselves resentfully as ‘steppen*gg*rs.’

Then there is the subject of Covid and the associated program of prophylactic injections. Claims for vaccine injuries have multiplied to the point where the government compensation scheme has had to detail 80 workers to administer them, yet as The Conservative Woman website has shown a few days ago there was a concerted campaign orchestrated by the Government to censor TCW, which in response has added DF - ‘Defending Freedom’ - to its title (disclosure: I have written for them myself.)

We depend on the news media to see the truth for us; instead, they are guiding us on a dangerous road with the distorted vision of a bleary, cross-eyed drunk. ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ - who will guard those guardians?

Reposted from Substack

FRIDAY MUSIC: Back to Bach

More music from J S Bach, this time for piano. This small selection illustrates, I hope, how his music can be interpreted in so many ways. All of his music reminds me of waves lapping or crashing on the shore one after the other endlessly in perpetual motion.

As before, relax and lose yourself in the music with your glass of Riesling or Schnapps or perhaps a Stein of Bier or even, perish the thought, Liebfraumilch if you feel like it!

Bach Adagio BWV 974

David Fray - Bach (F-Moll)

Bach - Prelude in C Major

Johann Sebastian BACH/MARCELLO: Adagio, BWV 974

Bach Concerto for 4 Pianos. Multipiano/Tel-Aviv Soloists/Barak Tal

FRIDAY MUSIC: Four Maestros, by JD

Yes, four maestros for the price of none - Johann Sebastian Bach, Karl Richter and 'Vater und Sohn' David and Igor Oistrakh!

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One of the most recognisable tunes in the whole of the 'classical' music canon is Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue (BWV 565) I think most people will be familiar with it but without being able to put a name to it. Such is the power of Bach's music. 

It must be more than fifty years since I bought my copy of the Deutsche Grammophon recording by the organist Karl Richter. I cannot find the actual recording on YouTube, it may be hidden somewhere but I did find this version by Richter which has the added advantage of allowing us to see him playing with both hands and both feet and all from memory too; no sign of any sheet music!

There is more information about Richter on the DG website here -https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/artists/karl-richter/press-quotes/karl-richter-complete-recordings-on-archiv-produktion-and-deutsche-grammophon-260757

Karl Richter - Toccata & Fugue In D Minor - BWV 565

After that rousing hurricane force music, something a little quieter and more refined with another from Herr Bach which I also bought more than 50 years ago:

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043

00:00 - I. Vivace

04:14 - II. Largo ma non tanto

11:45 - III. Allegro

David Fyodorovich Oistrakh (1908-1974), Violin I

Igor Davidovich Oistrakh (1931-2021), Violin II

George Malcolm (1917-1997), Harpsichord

Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens (1893-1962), Conductor

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Recorded 19th February 1961, in Brent Town Hall, Wembley, London, Great Britain.

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Relax with your glass of Riesling and enjoy the music!

FRIDAY MUSIC: Mathematical sounds, by JD

I recently came across some videos which used numerical constants to create music. They were created by Michael Blake who decribes himself as a musician and filmmaker. Apart from that tiny piece of information I know nothing about him but his four musical creations are fascinating. His website is here - https://www.youtube.com/@MBlakemusic/about

I have added two further videos which also illustrate the Phi ratio otherwise known as the Golden Section or Golden Mean.

What Pi sounds like.

What Tau Sounds Like

What Phi (the golden ratio) Sounds Like

"The number e is a mathematical constant, approximately equal to 2.71828, which appears in many different settings throughout mathematics. It was discovered by the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli while studying compound interest, where e arises as the limit of (1 + 1/n)n as n approaches infinity.

"The number e is of eminent importance in mathematics, alongside 0, 1, π and i. All five of these numbers play important and recurring roles across mathematics, and are the five constants appearing in one formulation of Euler's identity. Like the constant π, e is irrational: it is not a ratio of integers. Also like π, e is transcendental: it is not a root of any non-zero polynomial with rational coefficients"

What e Sounds Like

Fibonacci sequence in music

1.618 Phi, The Golden Ratio, God Creator of Heaven and Earth

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Rutles, by JD

The Rutles were one of the biggest bands of the 'beat boom' of the 1960s but for some reason the Prefab Four have been written out of the history books. So here is a selection of their groundbreaking and inventive music before it too is buried and lost forever.

And a special bonus from Rutland Weekend Television with one of the Fab Four singing with the remnants of the Prefab Four -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutland_Weekend_Television

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, by JD

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra (PCO) were an avant-pop band led by English guitarist Simon Jeffes. Co-founded with cellist Helen Liebmann, it toured extensively during the 1980s and 1990s. The band's sound is not easily categorized, having elements of exuberant folk music and a minimalist aesthetic occasionally reminiscent of composers such as Philip Glass.

Simon Jeffes died in 1997 and here his son explains the origin of the 'orchestra' and its music -

“My father, Simon Jeffes, was in the south of France in 1972-73, where he got terrible food poisoning from some bad shellfish and spent 3 or 4 days with a terrible fever. During this, he had very vivid waking dream – a nightmare vision of the near future – where everyone lived in big concrete blocks and spent their lives looking into screens. There was a big camera in the corner of everyone’s room, an eye looking down at them. In one room there was a couple making love lovelessly, while in another there was a musician sat at a vast array of equipment but with headphones on so there was no actual music in the room. This was a very disconnected de-humanising world that people had made for themselves…

"However you could reject that and look further afield, and if you went down this dusty road you would eventually find a ramshackle old building with noise and light pouring out into the dark. It’s a place you just fundamentally want to go into, and this is the Penguin Cafe. There are long tables and everyone sits together, and it’s very cheerfully chaotic. In the back there is always a band playing music that you are sure you’ve heard somewhere but you have no idea where – and that is the Penguin Cafe Orchestra – they play this music." - Arthur Jeffes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Cafe_Orchestra

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Prelude and Yodel

SOLARIS Penguin Cafe

Birdwatching in Silent Forest (Penguin Cafe version of Cornelius track)

Penguin Cafe Orchestra Music for a Found Harmonium

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Pythagoras's Trousers

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Beanfields