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15 May
I added this comment the other day to this, a report on the @Mental_Elf web-site (by Kathryn Walsh) called Community treatment orders fail to reduce psychiatric readmissions for people with psychosis :
One of the criteria for the trial is said to be ‘capacity to give consent’.
I wonder whether this is ‘a red herring’, if the seeming legal niceties of ‘putting someone’ (as it is often put) on a Community Treatment Order (CTO) are not actually observed.
From professional experience*, I believe that the legal opinion has been expressed that it is possible under Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended), and without a patient ‘applying for’ it, for him or her to be given section 17 leave to, say, a care home or a non-NHS specialist unit. (I am thinking of someone on s. 3.)
In theory, if hospital authorities needed to, ‘reasonable force’ could be used to oblige him or her to go. Forget how ‘untherapeutic’ that is, because the general regime of psychiatric units (e.g. locked wards, compulsion as to ‘treatment’ under the Act – usually an injection, and the dehumanizing environment and attitudes) can hardly be conceived of as therapeutic – or, when it is not that, it is cajoling, coercing, wheedling and blackmailing to seek (a form of) compliance.
Almost certainly, someone whose consideration for a CTO is ‘triggered’ by the Act (e.g. by application or referral to a First-Tier Tribunal, or at the time of contemplating s. 17 leave) will have been plenty depersonalized and demoralized by all of this already, before one even gets in sniffing distance of a formal meeting ‘to consider’ the Order.
Where the Principle of Least Restraint then (not least if no one cannot work out whether it is the CTO regime or that of s. 17, including the example that I gave above, that amounts to least restraint) ?
Patients who have already been brutalized by a place such as I describe (and will typically lack self-confidence and self-esteem), even if formally given the choice to consent to an Order [I understand that they aren't actually 'Orders', and the question of consent is more honoured 'in the breach', I gather], have no obvious reason to say No, when it means that they can go home.
(I believe that anyone would snatch at going home, whatever they are asked to agree to, because he or she (wrongly, I think, because not informed) assumes that it is that, or staying put.)
No reason obvious to the patients, then. If they were properly and independently advised as to (a) being able to say No, and (b) What, if they did say No, would be the Responsible Clinician’s (RC’s) options then, the position might be different :
If the RC cannot secure agreement from the patient to meet the conditions that are sought and / or the Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) won’t countermand the Order, there is still a position to fall back onto, i.e. s. 17 leave, or even discharge (since there no longer is supervised discharge).
But how many patients oppose a CTO ? How many think – more relevantly, are told – what happens, if they state openly that they will not comply with the conditions, rendering the notion of putting them on an Order ‘dead in the water’ ?
The RC has beds ‘to unblock’, considering a CTO is forced by certain events, but, if the patient is patently saying No, what will the RC do ?
So an Order is effectively dangled, and capacity to consent is really falsified : the patient is not allowed to weigh up whether to agree to the conditions for a CTO in compliance with the test under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (as amended) simply because he or she is almost certainly not given the full information, which, if he or she had, could be understood and applied.
In truth, I think that the real scenario of a CTO coming about is having huge debts, but being marched down to a bank and told that you need a personal loan from that specific bank.
So not told any safeguards, e.g. that :
(a) the bank can advise only on its own products, and there may be other products
(b) even if the borrower won the Lotto that night and could pay back the loan, interest is charged up front;
(c) there are arrangement fees;
(d) the Bank of Mum and Dad is only too willing to help out, etc., etc.
Such a transaction, if challenged, wouldn’t stand up to the Financial Services Authority (FSA). For me, the way that CTOs are ‘secured’ is no better, but there is no adequate FSA, and patients affected are unlikely to have recourse to one, because they just ‘wanted to go home’.
End-notes
* There is a little more about that experience here in relation to mental health advocacy.
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Experience, though noon auctoritee
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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15 May (Posted at Paddington Station) [re-edited 31 October 2021]
So Geoffrey Chaucer had the Wife of Bath say. Chaucer was a poet, but also a civil servant, diplomat, ambassador (Ambassador, you’re spoiling us !), and knew a bit about life, and Boccaccio, French dream-poetry, Latinate Christian (?) philosophy…
His Boke of the Duchess, so magical, mysterious, moving – this persona he developed of a slow-witted dreamer, a little resembling Dante’s of himself in the Commedia, but less knowing, more innocent, and so stumbling across the man whom we suppose to be the inconsolable John of Gaunt (a nearby golf-club is named after John), weeping over the death of Blaunche.
Does Chaucer tells us, in the guise of the Wife of Bath, that we keep making the same ‘mistakes’, falling in love with the same woman, with a dream of a woman, the scent (or ghost) of a woman¹ ? Probably, as he has so much to say that I don’t know why people don’t seem to read him more – how about Brush up your Chaucer – start quoting him now !, and, if I weren’t drawn to that story about the man in black, I’d go to his House of Fame :
We think, in this emotionally, mentally and financially impoverished world, that we know it all, with our smartphones, Internet², and high-frequency trading. I suspect that Chaucer knew more in the fourteenth century, if we just hear what the poet has to say about spin, smear, slander – forget The Prince, for this man really knew what power and repute / reputation are, and how they are won, lost, granted and revoked.
So, in what remains of May, I’m going back to these works, to witness Chaucer - as wordsmith - wrestle with sleep, meet a goddess all in white, overhear the birds pairing up, and, if I’m finally up to it, let him tell me how to use an astrolabe³…
End-notes
¹ Only a surprisingly dirty-minded person (such as one woman with whom I once worked…) would think, nay openly insist, that to be an obscene and crude film-title.
² I knew someone else who aspirated it – is it really, though, the Hindernet (the technological equivalent of Hindemith), full of Blind Alleys, Red Herrings, Love-on-a-Stick ?
³ The former colleague in the first end-note should heed : if you don’t know what an astrolabe is (or aspirating²), don’t make up some coarse idea !
Post-script :
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15 May (Posted at Paddington Station) [re-edited 31 October 2021]
So Geoffrey Chaucer had the Wife of Bath say. Chaucer was a poet, but also a civil servant, diplomat, ambassador (Ambassador, you’re spoiling us !), and knew a bit about life, and Boccaccio, French dream-poetry, Latinate Christian (?) philosophy…
His Boke of the Duchess, so magical, mysterious, moving – this persona he developed of a slow-witted dreamer, a little resembling Dante’s of himself in the Commedia, but less knowing, more innocent, and so stumbling across the man whom we suppose to be the inconsolable John of Gaunt (a nearby golf-club is named after John), weeping over the death of Blaunche.
Does Chaucer tells us, in the guise of the Wife of Bath, that we keep making the same ‘mistakes’, falling in love with the same woman, with a dream of a woman, the scent (or ghost) of a woman¹ ? Probably, as he has so much to say that I don’t know why people don’t seem to read him more – how about Brush up your Chaucer – start quoting him now !, and, if I weren’t drawn to that story about the man in black, I’d go to his House of Fame :
We think, in this emotionally, mentally and financially impoverished world, that we know it all, with our smartphones, Internet², and high-frequency trading. I suspect that Chaucer knew more in the fourteenth century, if we just hear what the poet has to say about spin, smear, slander – forget The Prince, for this man really knew what power and repute / reputation are, and how they are won, lost, granted and revoked.
So, in what remains of May, I’m going back to these works, to witness Chaucer - as wordsmith - wrestle with sleep, meet a goddess all in white, overhear the birds pairing up, and, if I’m finally up to it, let him tell me how to use an astrolabe³…
End-notes
¹ Only a surprisingly dirty-minded person (such as one woman with whom I once worked…) would think, nay openly insist, that to be an obscene and crude film-title.
² I knew someone else who aspirated it – is it really, though, the Hindernet (the technological equivalent of Hindemith), full of Blind Alleys, Red Herrings, Love-on-a-Stick ?
³ The former colleague in the first end-note should heed : if you don’t know what an astrolabe is (or aspirating²), don’t make up some coarse idea !
Post-script :
Chaucer's telling of the story of Chaunticleer ('The Nun's Priest's Tale') has more potential ? !
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 31, 2021
Or, if one has not deliberately misunderstood one about Constance ('The Man of Law's Tale'), there's that concerning Griselde ('The Clerk's Tale')...https://t.co/QyX72QYkS1
2 / 2 https://t.co/SpmzljCnQq
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Sunday, 12 May 2013
Report from Cheltenham Jazz Festival - Was that really two duos ?
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12 May
Don't get me wrong...
If the set had been broadcast, and so you couldn't see Neil Yates on stage and unable to make / find an opening in what Marius Neset was doing, maybe you'd not have noticed his absence from the texture - or assumed that he smoked and had wandered off for a roll-up, etc., etc.
Don't get me wrong also...
What Neset (with or without Dave Stapleton) and fellow Norwegian Daniel Herskedal were doing / playing was just fine, but, for stretches that felt awkward for me, it did make Yates' being there redundant.
(Herskedal's solo number on tuba with pedal-invoked multi-tracking was great, but, as I suggest, all too symptomatic of the Brito-Norwegian divide between audience left and right.)
Don't get me wrong finally...
Of course, a quartet doesn't have to be playing on all four cylinders at once, but if a member (or two) of the personnel might as well be down the pub... Maybe Neset thought that the photo from the Cheltenham Jazz Festival web-site gave him licence 'to take charge', as if it were a replication of his own quartet :
Overall, whatever the curatorship of @fionatalkington hoped for and strong sax apart, more like the Cheltenham Double than the Edition Quartet ?
Post-script
On her blog, @maryleamington had this reaction to Neset and the quartet :
But on Saturday night we saw another Marius (last glimpsed in Flight by Dave Stapleton at St George’s Brandon Hill last year), unexpectedly fragile, human, reflective. Just as a Michelangelo sculpture moves us as its strength appears out of simple form (I am thinking of his unfinished Slaves here), so Marius has the same effect on me. The Edition Quartet is a perfect ensemble – Dave Stapleton on piano, Neil Yates on trumpet, Daniel Herskedal on tuba and Marius on saxophones.
Leamington, rightly impressed by Neset in himself, calls the Edition Quartet perfect - however, I thought of the track Secret World from Peter Gabriel's album US (which is where I started) :
Divided in two
Like Adam and Eve
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12 May
All team-players or divided in two ? Edition Quartet #cheltjazzfest
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 4, 2013
Don't get me wrong...
If the set had been broadcast, and so you couldn't see Neil Yates on stage and unable to make / find an opening in what Marius Neset was doing, maybe you'd not have noticed his absence from the texture - or assumed that he smoked and had wandered off for a roll-up, etc., etc.
Enjoyed hearing him in Troyk-estra, and, when he had the chance, Edition Quartet, @dave_stapleton #cheltjazzfest
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 7, 2013
Don't get me wrong also...
What Neset (with or without Dave Stapleton) and fellow Norwegian Daniel Herskedal were doing / playing was just fine, but, for stretches that felt awkward for me, it did make Yates' being there redundant.
(Herskedal's solo number on tuba with pedal-invoked multi-tracking was great, but, as I suggest, all too symptomatic of the Brito-Norwegian divide between audience left and right.)
Playing detective at Edition Quartet : a missing chart, glances exchanged, wandering off stage, playing volumes, postures, #cheltjazzfest
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 4, 2013
Don't get me wrong finally...
Of course, a quartet doesn't have to be playing on all four cylinders at once, but if a member (or two) of the personnel might as well be down the pub... Maybe Neset thought that the photo from the Cheltenham Jazz Festival web-site gave him licence 'to take charge', as if it were a replication of his own quartet :
Overall, whatever the curatorship of @fionatalkington hoped for and strong sax apart, more like the Cheltenham Double than the Edition Quartet ?
Post-script
On her blog, @maryleamington had this reaction to Neset and the quartet :
But on Saturday night we saw another Marius (last glimpsed in Flight by Dave Stapleton at St George’s Brandon Hill last year), unexpectedly fragile, human, reflective. Just as a Michelangelo sculpture moves us as its strength appears out of simple form (I am thinking of his unfinished Slaves here), so Marius has the same effect on me. The Edition Quartet is a perfect ensemble – Dave Stapleton on piano, Neil Yates on trumpet, Daniel Herskedal on tuba and Marius on saxophones.
Leamington, rightly impressed by Neset in himself, calls the Edition Quartet perfect - however, I thought of the track Secret World from Peter Gabriel's album US (which is where I started) :
Divided in two
Like Adam and Eve
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The Agent Apsley on depression
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12 May
To open* :
Since I Tweeted this, I shall say more (to @stephenfry, or - as he may not - anyone who cares to listen) :
What did this refer to ? :
Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation, depression just is, like the weather.
Where I saw it, it wasn't properly punctuated (unlike here), and no source was given (true elsewhere) :
Excuse the poor quality of another's reproduction of his letter, but it seems that he wrote something similar, just at more length, to someone called Crystal seven years ago (10 April 2006**), shown at http://missbeautifullydepressed.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/depression-is-like-the-weather/
But is Fry right, or do such analogies hamper us 'getting to grips with' the negative thinking, patterns of self-depreciation, and modes of cataclysmic reaction, which might make life better, in time ?
If I'm wrong - and Fry's right - then people like Wilhelm Reich with his cloud-busting*** just has no place in a world where a crap day is a crap day, but it will pass... Forget Reich, but, as some will also know, clouds can be seeded - and so, in this respect, we can manipulate when (and so where) rain will fall.
That doesn't destroy Fry's analogy : it's the message, though, of sheer helplessness that he seems to convey in :
In the same way that one has to accept the weather, so one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes.
You'd think that no one (who can afford to) spends the winter in (what they hope will be) warmer climes - or even just (with a car) drives out of the rain (or into it, for that matter).
Staying with this powerlessness of just waiting for things to get better, or just feeling myself going low and allowing it to happen, is not what I spent a dozen or so sessions with a psychologist for, or why I read parts of Paul Gilbert's book Overcoming Depression, about compassion, self-hatred, and the like.
No, I believe that @stephenfry's message is a negative and unhelpful one for anyone and everyone to hear - I have experienced being able to seed (or bust) those clouds, and I want to escape from this meteorological notion of the inevitably of depressions and cold fronts, which is, as far as I am concerned, not 'reality', as Fry claims, but barometric.
End-notes
* Quoting the spirit of Words and Music, one of Beckettt's plays for radio.
** He seems to favour the ever-encroaching US format for dates... He also writes (about the weather) It isn't under one's control as to when the some [sic] comes out, but come out it will. One day.
*** An experience that Kate Bush alludes to in 'Running up that hill' (from the album Hounds of Love), probably drawing on Peter Reich's (Reich's son') book.
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12 May
To open* :
British psychiatric practice is a bit like this : It's as if someone were talking Scots, but saying Gae hame were perceived as psychosis.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 11, 2013
Since I Tweeted this, I shall say more (to @stephenfry, or - as he may not - anyone who cares to listen) :
Sorry, @stephenfry, but this notion that depression is as the weather and - one supposes - we just live with it 'till it changeth' is tosh !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 11, 2013
What did this refer to ? :
Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation, depression just is, like the weather.
Where I saw it, it wasn't properly punctuated (unlike here), and no source was given (true elsewhere) :
Beautifully put by @stephenfry about #depression - please RT if you agree that this is amazing: twitter.com/otrbristol/sta… #mentalhealth
— Off The Record (@otrbristol) May 8, 2013
Excuse the poor quality of another's reproduction of his letter, but it seems that he wrote something similar, just at more length, to someone called Crystal seven years ago (10 April 2006**), shown at http://missbeautifullydepressed.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/depression-is-like-the-weather/
But is Fry right, or do such analogies hamper us 'getting to grips with' the negative thinking, patterns of self-depreciation, and modes of cataclysmic reaction, which might make life better, in time ?
If I'm wrong - and Fry's right - then people like Wilhelm Reich with his cloud-busting*** just has no place in a world where a crap day is a crap day, but it will pass... Forget Reich, but, as some will also know, clouds can be seeded - and so, in this respect, we can manipulate when (and so where) rain will fall.
That doesn't destroy Fry's analogy : it's the message, though, of sheer helplessness that he seems to convey in :
In the same way that one has to accept the weather, so one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes.
You'd think that no one (who can afford to) spends the winter in (what they hope will be) warmer climes - or even just (with a car) drives out of the rain (or into it, for that matter).
Staying with this powerlessness of just waiting for things to get better, or just feeling myself going low and allowing it to happen, is not what I spent a dozen or so sessions with a psychologist for, or why I read parts of Paul Gilbert's book Overcoming Depression, about compassion, self-hatred, and the like.
No, I believe that @stephenfry's message is a negative and unhelpful one for anyone and everyone to hear - I have experienced being able to seed (or bust) those clouds, and I want to escape from this meteorological notion of the inevitably of depressions and cold fronts, which is, as far as I am concerned, not 'reality', as Fry claims, but barometric.
End-notes
* Quoting the spirit of Words and Music, one of Beckettt's plays for radio.
** He seems to favour the ever-encroaching US format for dates... He also writes (about the weather) It isn't under one's control as to when the some [sic] comes out, but come out it will. One day.
*** An experience that Kate Bush alludes to in 'Running up that hill' (from the album Hounds of Love), probably drawing on Peter Reich's (Reich's son') book.
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Saturday, 11 May 2013
Report from Cheltenham Jazz Festival – Troyk-estra and Talk II
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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11 May
That review (on 29 June 2009) (of the opening Troyka album by Martin Longley, which I talked about before) goes like this (with my added numbering in parenthesis - so that I can add facetious comments...) :
A transgressive sound, full of bent notes and shiny contortions
Troyka are yet another young London combo who are inhabiting (1) the increas-ingly (2) vibrant scene that's devoted to the uninhibited collision between jazz, rock, free improvisation and funky jamming. They're beaming off into a completely different direc-tion when compared to the work of keyboardist Kit Downes' previous band, Empirical. Downes has so far (3) been heard as an acoustic pianist, but in this setting (4) he concentrates on the organ, cranked up to its grittiest settings (5).
Troyka's other two members are not so familiar (6) on the jazz scene, but they're certainly empowered to excite (7). Guitarist Chris Montague and drummer Joshua Blackmore add to the forceful jazz-rock judder, with spiny constructions and shifty beats, as Downes jams (8)out on his electro-warbled keys. It's a transgressive sound, full of bent notes and shiny contortions (9), erupting with powerchords (10) and prog rock organ bursts, and even featuring the odd dose of bluesy bottleneck slide guitar.
The opening pair of tracks are so profoundly excessive in their pursuit of leaden riffage (11) that, for a while, subsequent (12) pieces can't help but feel restfully in-active by comparison. Tax Return contorts around an organ susurrus, with guitar that's by turns prickly and overloaded. It's not surprising that New Yorker Wayne Krantz is cited by the band as a heavy influence. The Frenchman Marc Ducret could be another contender as a guitaring forefather. Blackmore's drum patterns are highly detailed, the Troyka combination ending up as being at once avant (13) and visceral. The chunky organ flamboyance can't help but remind the listener of Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge. Even mightier, Clint must surely be dedicated to Mister Eastwood in Dirty Harry guise, with its extremely weighty powerchords (14) and bassy overhang (15).
The itchy time signatures continue (16), but most of the heavy artillery is reserved now until the album's closing tracks. A sinister bass padding dominates Bear, then Cajoch gets into some fidgety clenching (17). Twelve rains organ droplets, with a guitar that arcs up from vibrato-ed pings to the return of that earlier scalding sensation (18). The granite riffing (19) is sustained during Born In The 80s (20), but it's now alternating with a glowing sensitivity (21). With Noonian Song, Montague is getting into Krantz via the arcane tunings of composer Harry Partch, or maybe even the bendy tonalities of Fred Frith's table-top guitars.
The Agent's facetious comments
(1) Can one 'inhabit [... a] scene' ?
(2) Is the word 'increasingly' increasingly used when someone wants to claim some-thing is happening more - without telling you how much ?
(3) Is it obvious that this phrase is meant to mean when Downes was playing with Empirical ?
(4) Isn't 'setting' a word more used to describe a venue (or a venue's features) than a 'combo' ?
(5) Clumsy repetition of 'setting' ?
(6) Does this mean (a) 'less familiar', or (b) 'less familiar than Downes' ?
(7) Authorized to titillate ? Licensed to kill ?
(8) Overused (also in the first paragraph) ?
(9) We may know what a duck-billed platypus is, but what are 'shiny contortions' ?
(10) Whatever they may be - heavy note-clusters ?
(11) Is Leaden Riffage a village in Kent (a twin to Granite Riffing - please see (21), below) ?
(12) Posh way of saying 'later pieces' ?
(13) Posh way of saying 'before' ?
(14) Does repeating the 'word' (please see (10), above) help ?
(15) Huh ? A medical condition ?
(16) Whatever their itchiness may comprise, did I know that they'd started ?
(17) Couldn't they get some ointment for it ?!
(18) Which 'earlier scalding sensation' was that ?
(19) Eh ?!
(20) It may be intentional to confuse verbiage with the names of tracks (e.g. 'A sinis-ter bass padding dominates Bear, then Cajoch gets into some fidgety clenching'), but why does the track listing render this one as 'Born in the 80's' (apostrophe and fewer capitals) ?
(21) Is (a) the way in which the 'granite riffing' alternates glowingly sensitive, or (b) are some sections 'granite riffing' and alternating ones 'a glowing sensitivity'... ?
All in all, that panel in the talk on Music journalism in the 21st century might lead one to believe that a piece published by the BBC wouldn't be open to any such criticism - as I say, are they just protecting their backs, but not seeing the onslaught of those who write appreciations of live or recorded music in a different way from a traditional review ?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
11 May
That review (on 29 June 2009) (of the opening Troyka album by Martin Longley, which I talked about before) goes like this (with my added numbering in parenthesis - so that I can add facetious comments...) :
A transgressive sound, full of bent notes and shiny contortions
Troyka are yet another young London combo who are inhabiting (1) the increas-ingly (2) vibrant scene that's devoted to the uninhibited collision between jazz, rock, free improvisation and funky jamming. They're beaming off into a completely different direc-tion when compared to the work of keyboardist Kit Downes' previous band, Empirical. Downes has so far (3) been heard as an acoustic pianist, but in this setting (4) he concentrates on the organ, cranked up to its grittiest settings (5).
Troyka's other two members are not so familiar (6) on the jazz scene, but they're certainly empowered to excite (7). Guitarist Chris Montague and drummer Joshua Blackmore add to the forceful jazz-rock judder, with spiny constructions and shifty beats, as Downes jams (8)out on his electro-warbled keys. It's a transgressive sound, full of bent notes and shiny contortions (9), erupting with powerchords (10) and prog rock organ bursts, and even featuring the odd dose of bluesy bottleneck slide guitar.
The opening pair of tracks are so profoundly excessive in their pursuit of leaden riffage (11) that, for a while, subsequent (12) pieces can't help but feel restfully in-active by comparison. Tax Return contorts around an organ susurrus, with guitar that's by turns prickly and overloaded. It's not surprising that New Yorker Wayne Krantz is cited by the band as a heavy influence. The Frenchman Marc Ducret could be another contender as a guitaring forefather. Blackmore's drum patterns are highly detailed, the Troyka combination ending up as being at once avant (13) and visceral. The chunky organ flamboyance can't help but remind the listener of Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge. Even mightier, Clint must surely be dedicated to Mister Eastwood in Dirty Harry guise, with its extremely weighty powerchords (14) and bassy overhang (15).
The itchy time signatures continue (16), but most of the heavy artillery is reserved now until the album's closing tracks. A sinister bass padding dominates Bear, then Cajoch gets into some fidgety clenching (17). Twelve rains organ droplets, with a guitar that arcs up from vibrato-ed pings to the return of that earlier scalding sensation (18). The granite riffing (19) is sustained during Born In The 80s (20), but it's now alternating with a glowing sensitivity (21). With Noonian Song, Montague is getting into Krantz via the arcane tunings of composer Harry Partch, or maybe even the bendy tonalities of Fred Frith's table-top guitars.
The Agent's facetious comments
(1) Can one 'inhabit [... a] scene' ?
(2) Is the word 'increasingly' increasingly used when someone wants to claim some-thing is happening more - without telling you how much ?
(3) Is it obvious that this phrase is meant to mean when Downes was playing with Empirical ?
(4) Isn't 'setting' a word more used to describe a venue (or a venue's features) than a 'combo' ?
(5) Clumsy repetition of 'setting' ?
(6) Does this mean (a) 'less familiar', or (b) 'less familiar than Downes' ?
(7) Authorized to titillate ? Licensed to kill ?
(8) Overused (also in the first paragraph) ?
(9) We may know what a duck-billed platypus is, but what are 'shiny contortions' ?
(10) Whatever they may be - heavy note-clusters ?
(11) Is Leaden Riffage a village in Kent (a twin to Granite Riffing - please see (21), below) ?
(12) Posh way of saying 'later pieces' ?
(13) Posh way of saying 'before' ?
(14) Does repeating the 'word' (please see (10), above) help ?
(15) Huh ? A medical condition ?
(16) Whatever their itchiness may comprise, did I know that they'd started ?
(17) Couldn't they get some ointment for it ?!
(18) Which 'earlier scalding sensation' was that ?
(19) Eh ?!
(20) It may be intentional to confuse verbiage with the names of tracks (e.g. 'A sinis-ter bass padding dominates Bear, then Cajoch gets into some fidgety clenching'), but why does the track listing render this one as 'Born in the 80's' (apostrophe and fewer capitals) ?
(21) Is (a) the way in which the 'granite riffing' alternates glowingly sensitive, or (b) are some sections 'granite riffing' and alternating ones 'a glowing sensitivity'... ?
All in all, that panel in the talk on Music journalism in the 21st century might lead one to believe that a piece published by the BBC wouldn't be open to any such criticism - as I say, are they just protecting their backs, but not seeing the onslaught of those who write appreciations of live or recorded music in a different way from a traditional review ?
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Report from Cheltenham Jazz Festival – Troyk-estra and Talk I
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11 May
Work in progress… - beware of a bumpy landing !
I have just read a review of Troyka’s debut album in 2009, which maybe I can import into this blog – it appears on the BBC web-site, and was written by Martin Longley.
If I can, I hope to draw on it to make some comments about the panel discussion (plus Q&A) that took place under the title ‘Music journalism in the 21st century’. It comprised four male contributors, amongst them the jazz critic of The Times (broadcaster Alyn Shipton (@AlynShipton), who also chaired the session), The Financial Times*, and the deputy editor of Jazzwise.
The fourth (who had written for The Birmingham Post) was the only one prominently introduced as blogging (and, yet, who talked fairly little about his blog, other than the freedom that it gave him to write about what he wanted, when not earning a living) :
All wanted to peddle a message of ‘If it was good enough for me…’ and ‘I had to work my way up’, littered with boasts of their writing and editorial skills and like kudos. In a way, of course, the typical defensive speech of those occupying posts that they don’t intend – wish, maybe ? – to vacate : Don’t bother to climb the greasy pole – if you do, I’m the resident bear at the top, so mind your neck !
Therefore predictable, and predictable that they would ‘take a pop at’ those whose blog postings extend beyond, as the case might be, the 375-, 500- or 1,000-word limits to which they have to work, or whose content (they believe = opinion ?) is not a review, but opinion.
It’s as if they (wildly ?) assume that the bloggers couldn’t do what they do – and write a 500-word review to deadline – to save their lives, just because the bloggers choose to do something else, for whatever reason – and, if people read what bloggers right instead, who is to say that they are wrong (except that it might endanger further the position of those paid to pen tight, tidy, and possibly tired traditional accounts of gigs or releases).
So much for the chaff. The grains were the usual ‘tips of the trade’ of Someone I’d once met said… or They asked me if I’d stand in when X was sick, and I’m still there 300 years later, the positive face of the negative slant previously given :
They approached me because they knew me, they only knew me because I do this sort of thing, and I only survive doing this sort of thing because I’m brilliant, which they wisely recognized.
I laugh, but it’s just like Hollywood stars (whether in their own eyes or not) who tell an audience :
I met Tom Hanks two years before, and then we were out of contact, but he rang me out of the blue when I’d just finished in The Cherry Orchard off Broadway and said he wanted me for the part of Scrooge
[Hanks did not happen to mention that he had not got Mel Gibson or Hugh Grant to take the part, or that Hanks’ agent had suggested approaching The Star because (if it genuinely was Hanks’ ‘shout’), at least, of industry-driven Factors a, b and c - more likely, The Star knew all of this, and this is the agreed concoction for the PR world that is ‘celebrity’ interview…]
Continued… (not in this posting, maybe in order not to offend the critics’ tender sensibilities !)
End-notes
* Or was it The Sunday Times ? (I didn’t take notes, and I forget which.)
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11 May
Work in progress… - beware of a bumpy landing !
I have just read a review of Troyka’s debut album in 2009, which maybe I can import into this blog – it appears on the BBC web-site, and was written by Martin Longley.
If I can, I hope to draw on it to make some comments about the panel discussion (plus Q&A) that took place under the title ‘Music journalism in the 21st century’. It comprised four male contributors, amongst them the jazz critic of The Times (broadcaster Alyn Shipton (@AlynShipton), who also chaired the session), The Financial Times*, and the deputy editor of Jazzwise.
The fourth (who had written for The Birmingham Post) was the only one prominently introduced as blogging (and, yet, who talked fairly little about his blog, other than the freedom that it gave him to write about what he wanted, when not earning a living) :
All wanted to peddle a message of ‘If it was good enough for me…’ and ‘I had to work my way up’, littered with boasts of their writing and editorial skills and like kudos. In a way, of course, the typical defensive speech of those occupying posts that they don’t intend – wish, maybe ? – to vacate : Don’t bother to climb the greasy pole – if you do, I’m the resident bear at the top, so mind your neck !
Therefore predictable, and predictable that they would ‘take a pop at’ those whose blog postings extend beyond, as the case might be, the 375-, 500- or 1,000-word limits to which they have to work, or whose content (they believe = opinion ?) is not a review, but opinion.
It’s as if they (wildly ?) assume that the bloggers couldn’t do what they do – and write a 500-word review to deadline – to save their lives, just because the bloggers choose to do something else, for whatever reason – and, if people read what bloggers right instead, who is to say that they are wrong (except that it might endanger further the position of those paid to pen tight, tidy, and possibly tired traditional accounts of gigs or releases).
So much for the chaff. The grains were the usual ‘tips of the trade’ of Someone I’d once met said… or They asked me if I’d stand in when X was sick, and I’m still there 300 years later, the positive face of the negative slant previously given :
They approached me because they knew me, they only knew me because I do this sort of thing, and I only survive doing this sort of thing because I’m brilliant, which they wisely recognized.
I laugh, but it’s just like Hollywood stars (whether in their own eyes or not) who tell an audience :
I met Tom Hanks two years before, and then we were out of contact, but he rang me out of the blue when I’d just finished in The Cherry Orchard off Broadway and said he wanted me for the part of Scrooge
[Hanks did not happen to mention that he had not got Mel Gibson or Hugh Grant to take the part, or that Hanks’ agent had suggested approaching The Star because (if it genuinely was Hanks’ ‘shout’), at least, of industry-driven Factors a, b and c - more likely, The Star knew all of this, and this is the agreed concoction for the PR world that is ‘celebrity’ interview…]
Continued… (not in this posting, maybe in order not to offend the critics’ tender sensibilities !)
End-notes
* Or was it The Sunday Times ? (I didn’t take notes, and I forget which.)
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Friday, 10 May 2013
Mind what's going on ?
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10 May
Not sure what was going on there, as it was the Adebowale report on the Met and mental-health patients...
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10 May
And where is this media launch, @paulfarmermind, and of exactly what... ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 10, 2013
Oh, I see... I was misled by the word 'policing' in that Tweet, @paulfarmermind, which gave me hope that their role was being examined.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 10, 2013
Not sure what was going on there, as it was the Adebowale report on the Met and mental-health patients...
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Thursday, 9 May 2013
Stephen Fry on depression
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10 May
It all started with this Tweet :
It sparked off :
And :
And - am I being quite reasonable ? - then :
Perhaps because I have lately disputed the common claim that mental ill-health isn't like a broken leg, which people can see - in my posting Mental ill-health is exactly like a broken leg !
Any thoughts, anyone ? Stephen Fry has (apparently)...
@theagentapsley Well I was speaking for/patronising myself actually.
Well, after Tony and Control, there's always that get-out, @stephenfry...
More here now...
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10 May
It all started with this Tweet :
Beautifully put by @stephenfry about #depression - please RT if you agree that this is amazing: twitter.com/otrbristol/sta… #mentalhealth
— Off The Record (@otrbristol) May 8, 2013
It sparked off :
@theagentapsley Do you think it’s something that can be spotted by physical signs?
— Off The Record (@otrbristol) May 8, 2013
@theagentapsley Agree with that - there are some tell-tale signs when you look into somebody’s eyes.
— Off The Record (@otrbristol) May 9, 2013
And :
@otrbristol @theagentapsley I think people who have experienced it themselves are much more likely to pick up on signs others would miss..
— Fiona Malpass (@FionaMalpass) May 9, 2013
@theagentapsley @otrbristol I don't think absolutely anyone can learn, but certainly a lot of others could with enough training and practice
— Fiona Malpass (@FionaMalpass) May 9, 2013
And - am I being quite reasonable ? - then :
Maybe I'm perverse, @otrbristol, but I don't want a friend called to do what @stephenfry says is 'kind, noble and good' - I'd feel insulted.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 10, 2013
Why insulted, @otrbristol ? As someone who'd dropped a crutch would, if picking it up weren't just plain decency, not blessed by @stephenfry
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 10, 2013
Perhaps because I have lately disputed the common claim that mental ill-health isn't like a broken leg, which people can see - in my posting Mental ill-health is exactly like a broken leg !
Any thoughts, anyone ? Stephen Fry has (apparently)...
@theagentapsley Well I was speaking for/patronising myself actually.
— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) May 10, 2013
Well, after Tony and Control, there's always that get-out, @stephenfry...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 10, 2013
Sorry, @stephenfry, but this notion that depression is as the weather and - one supposes - we just live with it 'till it changeth' is tosh !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 11, 2013
More here now...
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Report from Cheltenham Jazz Festival - Claire Martin
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9 May
I never tire of Claire Martin's (@CMartinJazz's) gigs : the quality is consistently very high, the energy and love of jazz evident (along with appreciation of her fellow musicians, applause for whose solos she always encourages), and Claire is a very worthy holder of an OBE for services to this music, not least as a regular broadcaster on Radio 3's (@BBCRadio3's) Jazz Line-Up.
I was going to say that Gareth Williams is her unfailing pianist, forgetting for a moment that she did some duo performances with the much-loved and recently departed Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, one of which I caught at Concerts at King's in Cambridge. Gareth was, however, in her quartet, along with another regular, Laurence Cottle (on electric bass), and Mark Skelton (until now, I hadn't managed to find his surname, or identify him via Google®).
Perversely, when there is something that I love, I can be a bit D. H. Lawrence and find myself looking and hearing with an unconverted companion's eyes and ears, but there was absolutely nothing to disappoint, and, unlike what I felt about a jazz Clare whose gig I left after the first set, nothing stagey or false in Claire Martin. When she referred to Sir Richard, I could sense that she was welling up, and it was poignant to be reminded that he had died on Christmas Eve, and to learn how strange it felt that the CD of Irving Berlin that they had recorded was just about to come out.
It must be a good few years ago that I was joshing around with Claire and Gareth after they played at Anglia Ruskin University's Mumford Theatre (something about my being the only person with a pen when others, too, wanted a signed CD, and I also wanted to get Gareth to buy the CD of his that I had bought), and I know that how she is on stage is how she is - as some would say, no front.
So this was a lovely set from Claire, and no matter that I knew much of the content as the repertoire from her long list of CDs on the Linn label - not utterly in the same way that I can listen without tiring to Bach's great Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) or the great Handel arias, but it did not hurt to have heard Claire sing 'Love is a necessary evil' or 'Cheek to cheek' (her tribute to Sir Richard) before, or to learn that a song or two was by James Van Heusen*.
With someone who loves the songs that she sings in the way that one knows that Claire does (one feels it tangibly), and who can swing them this way or that as fits the occasion, a gig is a chance to meet old friends, be it the amazing finger-quickness of Gareth or of her other unfailing choices of collaborators, or the songs themselves, which, as she picks them as well, are full of goodness and freshness.
I see that Claire is doing a tour with a quartet of cellos, the Montpellier Quartet from Brighton, and I am just sad that I cannot be back in time to catch that particular date near me...
End-notes
* I recall now that, not for the first time, Claire mentioned the singing of Julie London - must have a look at the content of the link that I've just put there...
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9 May
I never tire of Claire Martin's (@CMartinJazz's) gigs : the quality is consistently very high, the energy and love of jazz evident (along with appreciation of her fellow musicians, applause for whose solos she always encourages), and Claire is a very worthy holder of an OBE for services to this music, not least as a regular broadcaster on Radio 3's (@BBCRadio3's) Jazz Line-Up.
I was going to say that Gareth Williams is her unfailing pianist, forgetting for a moment that she did some duo performances with the much-loved and recently departed Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, one of which I caught at Concerts at King's in Cambridge. Gareth was, however, in her quartet, along with another regular, Laurence Cottle (on electric bass), and Mark Skelton (until now, I hadn't managed to find his surname, or identify him via Google®).
A great set from @clairemartinjazz at #cheltjazzfest - a songful, joyful, heartfelt, playful show all with Messrs Williams, Cottle & Skelton
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 5, 2013
Perversely, when there is something that I love, I can be a bit D. H. Lawrence and find myself looking and hearing with an unconverted companion's eyes and ears, but there was absolutely nothing to disappoint, and, unlike what I felt about a jazz Clare whose gig I left after the first set, nothing stagey or false in Claire Martin. When she referred to Sir Richard, I could sense that she was welling up, and it was poignant to be reminded that he had died on Christmas Eve, and to learn how strange it felt that the CD of Irving Berlin that they had recorded was just about to come out.
It must be a good few years ago that I was joshing around with Claire and Gareth after they played at Anglia Ruskin University's Mumford Theatre (something about my being the only person with a pen when others, too, wanted a signed CD, and I also wanted to get Gareth to buy the CD of his that I had bought), and I know that how she is on stage is how she is - as some would say, no front.
So this was a lovely set from Claire, and no matter that I knew much of the content as the repertoire from her long list of CDs on the Linn label - not utterly in the same way that I can listen without tiring to Bach's great Mass in B Minor (BWV 232) or the great Handel arias, but it did not hurt to have heard Claire sing 'Love is a necessary evil' or 'Cheek to cheek' (her tribute to Sir Richard) before, or to learn that a song or two was by James Van Heusen*.
With someone who loves the songs that she sings in the way that one knows that Claire does (one feels it tangibly), and who can swing them this way or that as fits the occasion, a gig is a chance to meet old friends, be it the amazing finger-quickness of Gareth or of her other unfailing choices of collaborators, or the songs themselves, which, as she picks them as well, are full of goodness and freshness.
I see that Claire is doing a tour with a quartet of cellos, the Montpellier Quartet from Brighton, and I am just sad that I cannot be back in time to catch that particular date near me...
End-notes
* I recall now that, not for the first time, Claire mentioned the singing of Julie London - must have a look at the content of the link that I've just put there...
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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Anything you can do...
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8 May
In some places, like The Barbican, they have those stylized figures that tell you where you need to be - if you are lucky, and manage to decipher the trail of almost Belisha-like beacons that bear them.
In other places, foreign languages, other figures (faces in Café Rouge, as I recall), and sometimes still 'Ladies' and 'Gentlemen'. For no very obvious reason, elsewhere it is the claim that the toilet itself is 'male' or 'female'.
All very well in itself, but this labelling of segregated facilities (plus there are disabled* ones, which tend not to differentiate as to which sex may use them) makes one wonder whether labelling a toy as for boys means very much - after all, we will surely all have experience of desperation at a huge queue having women entering 'the male toilet', and no one is yet baulking at clothes being in sections for 'ladies' fashions' or 'gents' clothing'.
What gain, then, in not telling a three-year-old girl that she should simply ignore societal notions, if she wants to play with something whose marketing targets it at boys ? Will she not already have learnt to face this world of inequality, where the make-up and perfume department of Boots and of department stores makes it abundantly clear that these products are for her sex ? - can a boy justly infer that, although there are now products that are called male perfumes, essentially his choice is limited to a tiny range of 'aftershaves' ?
Some would have us believe that not labelling, say, a bead art set as 'for girls' would not only have the boys who don't already ignore such tosh (and play with what they want) flocking to do likewise, and they would then go on to do the jobs thought of as feminine, and vice versa : Read the debate on the blog of someone claiming to be Sam Candour, and see what you think...
End-notes
* 'Disabled parking', to me, always sounds like somewhere that would be a parking space, but it has been shut off, i.e. the adjective seems to denote the status of the parking itself (versus 'enabled').
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8 May
In some places, like The Barbican, they have those stylized figures that tell you where you need to be - if you are lucky, and manage to decipher the trail of almost Belisha-like beacons that bear them.
In other places, foreign languages, other figures (faces in Café Rouge, as I recall), and sometimes still 'Ladies' and 'Gentlemen'. For no very obvious reason, elsewhere it is the claim that the toilet itself is 'male' or 'female'.
All very well in itself, but this labelling of segregated facilities (plus there are disabled* ones, which tend not to differentiate as to which sex may use them) makes one wonder whether labelling a toy as for boys means very much - after all, we will surely all have experience of desperation at a huge queue having women entering 'the male toilet', and no one is yet baulking at clothes being in sections for 'ladies' fashions' or 'gents' clothing'.
What gain, then, in not telling a three-year-old girl that she should simply ignore societal notions, if she wants to play with something whose marketing targets it at boys ? Will she not already have learnt to face this world of inequality, where the make-up and perfume department of Boots and of department stores makes it abundantly clear that these products are for her sex ? - can a boy justly infer that, although there are now products that are called male perfumes, essentially his choice is limited to a tiny range of 'aftershaves' ?
Some would have us believe that not labelling, say, a bead art set as 'for girls' would not only have the boys who don't already ignore such tosh (and play with what they want) flocking to do likewise, and they would then go on to do the jobs thought of as feminine, and vice versa : Read the debate on the blog of someone claiming to be Sam Candour, and see what you think...
End-notes
* 'Disabled parking', to me, always sounds like somewhere that would be a parking space, but it has been shut off, i.e. the adjective seems to denote the status of the parking itself (versus 'enabled').
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Tuesday, 7 May 2013
A word about legacies, cultural, scientific or otherwise
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7 May (revised, 2 October 2020)
A legacy, for all that people like to use the word when someone famous dies, just means a type of gift – specifically, a gift made on death, i.e. by will, and, unlike a devise (q.v.), typically money (if not an item of personal property).
To that extent, it is right to think of a legacy as a gift that relates to a person’s death, but it would only, say, be a true legacy if Richard Attenborough died, and he had decided to leave millions to fund the future of The Royal Court (a general legacy), or some valuable artwork, which it hangs (or stands) in its foyer (a specific legacy (or specific bequest)).
As it is, with the death of Ray Harryhausen, we are being urged to remember – if we ever knew that he had anything to do with it – his work on Star Wars, for example, but calling that a legacy cannot be even a figurative way of talking about what he did in his life :
1. Self-evidently, Harryhausen made that contribution decades ago,
2. Equally self-evidently, people built on it in the following months and years, and
3. Harryhausen's death did not make a gift of this and all the other things that he did for cinema, but, rather, it is a tribute or a memorial to him for people to be made aware of them
And why else do I question talking about a legacy per se ? Well, unlike a person who is free to refuse to accept a legacy or to give it to someone else, the contribution made by this director is more or less in the past – we can restore his or her films and hold retrospectives to re-evaluate them, but we can even do so when that person is alive (e.g. Tony Garnett at the @BFI), without waiting for death.
That embodies another reason that X’s legacy is the wrong way to think about it. If X leaves a gift, X specifies what the gift is, for it to go to A, and what A receives is – bad will-drafting apart – what X intended. So-called legacies in cultural, scientific, artistic worlds aren’t like that, because A. A. Milne and Tove Jansson did not choose to be remembered for their work for children, and that is more like treasuring some contributions and forgetting others.
In summary, Harryhausen probably did not try to choose what will be remembered, and film buffs urging this or that on us is more like a bossy treasuring, a curatorship of his life and (perceived) achievements, rather than a legacy.
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7 May (revised, 2 October 2020)
A legacy, for all that people like to use the word when someone famous dies, just means a type of gift – specifically, a gift made on death, i.e. by will, and, unlike a devise (q.v.), typically money (if not an item of personal property).
To that extent, it is right to think of a legacy as a gift that relates to a person’s death, but it would only, say, be a true legacy if Richard Attenborough died, and he had decided to leave millions to fund the future of The Royal Court (a general legacy), or some valuable artwork, which it hangs (or stands) in its foyer (a specific legacy (or specific bequest)).
As it is, with the death of Ray Harryhausen, we are being urged to remember – if we ever knew that he had anything to do with it – his work on Star Wars, for example, but calling that a legacy cannot be even a figurative way of talking about what he did in his life :
1. Self-evidently, Harryhausen made that contribution decades ago,
2. Equally self-evidently, people built on it in the following months and years, and
3. Harryhausen's death did not make a gift of this and all the other things that he did for cinema, but, rather, it is a tribute or a memorial to him for people to be made aware of them
And why else do I question talking about a legacy per se ? Well, unlike a person who is free to refuse to accept a legacy or to give it to someone else, the contribution made by this director is more or less in the past – we can restore his or her films and hold retrospectives to re-evaluate them, but we can even do so when that person is alive (e.g. Tony Garnett at the @BFI), without waiting for death.
That embodies another reason that X’s legacy is the wrong way to think about it. If X leaves a gift, X specifies what the gift is, for it to go to A, and what A receives is – bad will-drafting apart – what X intended. So-called legacies in cultural, scientific, artistic worlds aren’t like that, because A. A. Milne and Tove Jansson did not choose to be remembered for their work for children, and that is more like treasuring some contributions and forgetting others.
In summary, Harryhausen probably did not try to choose what will be remembered, and film buffs urging this or that on us is more like a bossy treasuring, a curatorship of his life and (perceived) achievements, rather than a legacy.
Has all that 'excitement' about the proper way to note #Thatcher's passing itself just passed off - as if it had been nothing ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 7, 2013
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Report from Cheltenham Jazz Festival - quintets contrasted
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7 May
Two quintets comprising trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums, those of Dave Douglas (trumpet) and Ravi Coltrane (sax), but there the similarities ended, and not because of the lead instrument.
Douglas had a special guest in the form of singer Heather Masse. Opinion was divided as people left at the end whether she even had ‘a jazz voice’, despite being his ‘favourite singer’.
The note that Masse introduced came after an edgy opener that had been made so by exploiting the queasiness of the semi-tone, followed by another that drew further gravitas from discord between wind and reed. It did not seem a good – because not jazz – note, exposing both her rather ‘straight’ delivery and the rather limited quality of the arrangements (the defects did not seem likely to be unrelated).
From a sentimental setting of Sibelius' hymn Be still (touching because the favourite of Douglas’ mother, whom one imagined recently deceased) things continued in this rather dull vein with a version of ‘Barbara Allen’ of all things.
It became clear that Douglas was 'dishing up' one after another of these not because he thought that people wanted to hear, but because he likes Masse and he could. It was unclear why, because even his trumpet-playing was utterly thrown into relief by that of Ralph Alessi in Coltrane’s quintet.
The dexterity of Alessi’s runs was, of course, effortless, and versatility and sonority were the hallmarks of his playing, not least when matching his instrument to that of Coltrane. By contrast, Coltrane’s sax did not give one a tingle down the spine, but it was assured, fluent and graceful (with Coltrane a little unusually taking the bell not to his right, but bending to accommodate it between his legs).
Coltrane’s other personnel were steady and even, with Luis Perdomo on piano, dazzling and perhaps a bit too expansive with the odd solo. However, despite Drew Gress’ prowess on bass, I had been far more impressed by the virtuosity of Linda Oh in Douglas’ quintet, who genuinely seemed to respond to what he was doing and to his choice of material.
Perhaps I have to be grateful to those things for inspiring what much of the audience also clearly admired in her playing, but I found that following her line was only what made what I was hearing palatable. In Coltrane’s quartet, in comparison, I was really keen to hear what Alessi and he were playing, and his bassist was not my anchor for keeping a hold on the music.
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7 May
Two quintets comprising trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums, those of Dave Douglas (trumpet) and Ravi Coltrane (sax), but there the similarities ended, and not because of the lead instrument.
Douglas had a special guest in the form of singer Heather Masse. Opinion was divided as people left at the end whether she even had ‘a jazz voice’, despite being his ‘favourite singer’.
The note that Masse introduced came after an edgy opener that had been made so by exploiting the queasiness of the semi-tone, followed by another that drew further gravitas from discord between wind and reed. It did not seem a good – because not jazz – note, exposing both her rather ‘straight’ delivery and the rather limited quality of the arrangements (the defects did not seem likely to be unrelated).
From a sentimental setting of Sibelius' hymn Be still (touching because the favourite of Douglas’ mother, whom one imagined recently deceased) things continued in this rather dull vein with a version of ‘Barbara Allen’ of all things.
It became clear that Douglas was 'dishing up' one after another of these not because he thought that people wanted to hear, but because he likes Masse and he could. It was unclear why, because even his trumpet-playing was utterly thrown into relief by that of Ralph Alessi in Coltrane’s quintet.
The dexterity of Alessi’s runs was, of course, effortless, and versatility and sonority were the hallmarks of his playing, not least when matching his instrument to that of Coltrane. By contrast, Coltrane’s sax did not give one a tingle down the spine, but it was assured, fluent and graceful (with Coltrane a little unusually taking the bell not to his right, but bending to accommodate it between his legs).
Coltrane’s other personnel were steady and even, with Luis Perdomo on piano, dazzling and perhaps a bit too expansive with the odd solo. However, despite Drew Gress’ prowess on bass, I had been far more impressed by the virtuosity of Linda Oh in Douglas’ quintet, who genuinely seemed to respond to what he was doing and to his choice of material.
Perhaps I have to be grateful to those things for inspiring what much of the audience also clearly admired in her playing, but I found that following her line was only what made what I was hearing palatable. In Coltrane’s quartet, in comparison, I was really keen to hear what Alessi and he were playing, and his bassist was not my anchor for keeping a hold on the music.
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Saturday, 4 May 2013
Report from Cheltenham Jazz Festival – The Aristocats
A response to seeing The Aristocats (1970) - a few years on...
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4 May
A response to seeing The Aristocats (1970) - a few years on...
It must have been in around 1968* that I was taken by my parents, almost certainly with my sister, to see The Aristocats. I have just watched it again, with no acquaintance in between, in the Cinema Tent at Cheltenham Jazz Festival – and, yes, I had forgotten that jam-session, when the alley-cat musicians, led by Scat Cat, have let themselves into Thomas O’Malley’s pad, and so, despite the jazzy tone to some of the earlier musical numbers, I had begun not to figure why this was being shown at a jazz festival.
As it is, it is a great little film, and, although animation techniques are considerably different now for much of what is produced (so there would not necessarily have been the need to make scenes such as that jam-session at the expense of the budget for such clear and focused images throughout the film), it does not feel dated – and, yes, it was Walt Disney. No doubt it has been restored, but, as this is not a film festival, I am unsure whether I need to look in the festival handout that I picked up for more details.
What was probably lost on me as a boy is that the cats need not be cats and that this is not really a film about cats (or cats and humans) at all…
23 May - Now continued, with some thoughts penned in a station waiting-room earlier
The cats are, of course, cats in the swinging, jazz sense, and there is the fable of the much-loved and attractive Duchess (Eva Gabor's voice) being Lady to Thomas’ Tramp** (Phil Harris' voice), by putting aside her wisdom and prejudice about ‘alley-cats’ after they have played and bantered together, and he has – after his fanciful promises – assumed care for her and her kittens.
Duchess' home-life, the epitome of the idea of self-improvement through music and the other arts, resembles that of a grande dame, wanting her children to acquire taste and poise, and not hiss and scratch, as Berlioz wishes to do with his sister. Of course, it is, on another level, charming fantasy that a kitten can play the piano by bounding back and forth on the keys, but it is there for the contrast between the sedate family sing-song and the raucously lively – and beautifully put-together – jam-session.
Duchess, being the best kind of Duchess, appreciates the musicianship and sees all that is good in Thomas and his friends Scat Cat and the others (and, maybe, we wonder what her past was, and who was father to her kittens for her to suppose so badly of the alley-cats) : this is, after all, not plumbing the depths of Shakespearean characterization, but good fun, but with a bit of a message about not taking Edgar - or any of the others - at face-value.
(In fact, the only ones who can be taken in those terms are Abigail and Amelia, the waddling, unflappable British geese, and, once they have served their purpose of route-marching the party to Paris to rescue their sozzled uncle, they are given no further part.)
The Old Lady is given a portrayal consistent with her remaining in the background, worrying about what has happened, and generally being benign, along with her amiable lawyer-friend (who seems to have the geniality of the goose-uncle to a T). As already mentioned, the care and attention to high-quality imagery is in the jazz scene, whereas she is sketchily drawn, roaming the mansion, so that we are distanced from her grief, and can rest it instead in Roquefort, the mouse, whose quivering voice is so brilliantly done by Sterling Holloway.
The tussle at the end is about Edgar fighting for what he wants, and the animals showing that, by working together, they can overpower and defeat him. A wholesome account of the nature of good and evil, which leaves little room, except at a comic level, to understand Edgar’s desire not to have his life dominated after his mistress’ death by her menagerie – again, this is not Corneille, and, beyond understanding his motivation, we are not invited to enter into such things.
At heart, setting aside the misery and self-destructiveness in the genius of many a twentieth-century jazz musician, the wish to be ‘in’ and play a horn so that people want to listen :
Ev'rybody wants to be a cat,
Because a cat is where it’s at
End-notes
* Actual date 1970.
** Another Disney, from 1955.
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Thursday, 2 May 2013
Who's excited - about what ? ! (Or Predictions about I'm So Excited ! (2013))
Who's excited - about what ? ! (Or Predictions about I'm So Excited ! (2013) (Los amantes pasajeros))
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 May
Who's excited - about what ? ! (Or Predictions about I'm So Excited ! (2013) (Los amantes pasajeros))
To judge by a still that I saw earlier, Pedro has just camped up The High Life even more and made a feature of it (in both senses)...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 2, 2013
If you don't know what The High Life is - whatever the title lyric says - that's not extraordinary...
I like the way that, in his review, Empire's critic, David Hughes, has alluded to the running joke in Woody Allen's much misunderstood Stardust Memories (1980) :
An unshakeable tolerance for high camp and lowbrow humour may be required to fully appreciate Almodóvar's broad, bawdy comedy - even for fans of his early, funny films.
As I read the rest of Hughes' review (a tongue-twister in his office, no doubt), I found myself also reminded of that epsiode of - what else ! - Father Ted...
Is Broken Embraces a meta-film ? : It seems - as well as the film within it - deliberately badly edited : the DVD extras are the best bits !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 2, 2013
Update
As at 9 May, Rotten Tomatoes says that 34% of audiences, and 60% of critics, liked the film*...
End-notes
* For comparison, the equivalent percentages for Broken Embraces (2009) are 74% and 81%.
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Wednesday, 1 May 2013
The Answer to Everything ? (#ATEOpera)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
1 May
On Thursday last week, I went to the British Film Institute (@BFI) with the intention of watching a matinee and redeeming a complimentary ticket (issued because of the out-of-synch screening of Underground) : because of some conference, there was no matinee, and I couldn’t find the ticket, but none of that turned out to matter :
I bought a ticket instead to see Streetwise Opera’s (@streetwiseopera’s) production, with sections on film, at some venue, not necessarily NFT3, where we were all delegates together in some (seemingly) fictional conference, although many a one attempted, in character, to do such things as selling me a tie (I pointed out that I had one in my pocket, and that a T-shirt has no collar anyway) or asking me how I felt about the event.
To camera, when invited to say something inspirational, I came up with ‘Brick is beautiful’. It turns out that it would – if anyone had much been paying attention – have been seen on the screen of NFT3. Generating nonsense to order, as this blog as a whole is likely to evidence, doesn’t entail much…
In a way, I wish that I had bantered more with the Streetwise crew, rather than taking my seat, but, once in my seat, it seemed churlish to make the row rise again (to let me out) and, yet again, for my re-entry – the other end of my row was blocked off by the mixing-desk. (It seemed that no one else decided to join in with the ‘official’ delegates at the front, with their suits, briefcases, ability to sing.)
As a homage to Marcel (although spelt differently), I had chosen a name-badge with the identity of Pierre Duchamps, an Alternative Energy Intern. I hoped that something would hang on this, rather than it from the lanyard, so it was a disappointment that it might as well have said George Osborne, Financial Meddler. (No big deal, but there could have been a draw from those badges known to have been issued, and a game of forfeits...)
Ignoring the name, when one of the cast introduced himself by way of an extended arm from two rows forward, I claimed to be Peter Henderson-Smyth-Henderson-Smyth-Henderson, and he concluded that I sounded ‘quite posh’.
I hoped also that, in the style of I Fagiolini’s The Full Monteverdi my neighbour would turn out to be ‘a mole’. When I heard / saw that show (in Cambridge), one knew that, over a modest meal, one had one or more singers at one’s table, but not who he, she or they were :
A woman challenged me as one, and – fool that I am – I didn’t play my denial for all that it was worth. (Although, of course, it was self evident that a denial couldn’t mean anything, so I wasn’t believed anyway, since, as everyone will testify, I do look like a professional singer.)
No matter, as it merely meant that I could, more or less, relax in my seat without the obvious need for further participation. However, I did fail to reckon on the company song, and, at the best of times (silliness doesn’t help), I cannot co-ordinate words and any actions, not least when those words (and their music) were unknown to me minutes before !
Early during the run-through of this act of corporate worship, I gave up, and, standing inert, took much more satisfaction in seeing the cast sing and mime the whole song en masse (which, in the style of The Twelve Days of Christmas, repeated each one of the Ten Rules of Good Business), much more than coaxing my resistant abilities further could have achieved. (I have no doubt that few have my problems, and most would have taken pleasure in what, for me, was an exercise doomed to fail.)
That’s my hesitation out of the way, a strange (but usual) mix of wanting to be in a role-play, but on my terms. So, on to what this combination of filmed and live experience seemed to say. In doing so, I am influenced, after the event, by having read the programme**, which, I found, pulled together one’s appreciation of the overall narrative intent. (Such, of course, is the way – and world – of opera, whereas I am happy and used to making my own way in that of film).
Not to try to summarize what happened, save that the film interspersed with the live singing and action, the arias from Christopher Lowrey (counter-tenor) and Elizabeth Watts (soprano), interacting on screen with members of Streetwise from all over the country, were exquisite. Indeed, as I Tweeted :
I can confidently (wonder whether I should) state that @streetwiseopera's #ATEOpera had a good take on company manners, @catherinebray...
Can't stop humming (in public, and singing elsewhere) Lascia ch'io pianga after @lizwattssoprano and @streetwiseopera plus Sacconi Quartet !
The filmic aspect was in no way subservient to the role and action of these clips, but portrayed the alienation, isolation and heartfelt humanity at work in a response to the clinicality of company lore, which dictates shaking hands with the client not because one feels that one wants to, but as part of good business.
I have seen the Watts aria several times over (as my attempt to support Streetwise and download from the iTunes platform failed, after posing insurmountable problems), and it stands that repeated watching, because it is composed entirely in the idiom of cinema. I imagine the same to be true of the aria sung by Lowrey, of which my impression was that the wholly musical performance of the Vivaldi was respected in the service of the message that rapacity to invest threatens to overcome what matters, and what we should really value in this life.
Informed by the programme, I apprehend the arch that these and the other filmed sections sought to erect, but I do confess that I was lost in following how the scene from Peter Grimes, which, I now gather, led into a Streetwise commission from Orlando Gough, brought about the degeneration of the dream of Locateco Solutions : throughout, this cinematic work, the execution was brilliant, and the closing scene of rejection, liberation, and immersion in the natural world was evocative and poignant.
It was merely that the step that took us to where the façade began to crumble was not clear. Arguably, though, for those who felt the movement for the Berlin wall to collapse, or for what is shown in the powerful documentary The Miracle of Leipzig (2009) (Wir Sind das Volk) not to happen, the feelings were stronger than an exact notion of why what was tipping had become unstable.
So the filmed episodes I do not seek to fault : David Pisaro (tenor) singing Grimes in the church setting was marvellous, as was how the scene – with Britten’s skilful writing – built to his expulsion, but – rightly or wrongly – I felt that I did understand, at the time, why everything was unravelling. The programme addressed that, and this is – if a concern at all – a minor one, since I had had the time to read ahead, but chose not to.
The Streetwise singers in NFT3, interacting with the projection, gave an overall feeling that conveyed how important the voice, music, the human spirit is. All in all, a stunning experience, and a tribute to all in any way involved with it !
Post-script
After this Tweet (and following the link) :
StreetwiseOpera @StreetwiseOpera 21m
Lovely review of #ATEOpera in @spectator http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/opera/8900001/the-point-of-life/
I commented this:
Everything that this reviewer writes about @StreetwiseOpera's The Answer to Everything is spot on : it was timely, its parody of the corporate world (and its tics) was telling and amusing, and the music was of a very high quality, not least that passage from Grimes.
And if any Minister for Culture couldn't understand or relate to it, maybe that person's in the wrong job... !
I have now followed a link to a review in The Guardian, as Tweeted by @StreetwiseOpera... The reviewer found the event dramatically 'confusing', which mirrors what I attribute (above) to not having read the synopsis.
End-notes
* I tried to explain that I was there on the strength of knowing that Elizabeth Watts (@LizWattsSoprano) was involved, whose single with Streetwise I knew (from Splatter) had just been released.
My neighour thought that I said ‘Watson’, and, her not knowing EW, it didn’t seem to help that I said that she is a soprano. I ended up mumbling something about she was probably one of many, as I was, sadly, suddenly not sure, in the guise of being a delegate, how sopranos could fit in a corporate structure…
** It had two front covers (a style of presentation that I gather to be called tête-bêche).
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
1 May
On Thursday last week, I went to the British Film Institute (@BFI) with the intention of watching a matinee and redeeming a complimentary ticket (issued because of the out-of-synch screening of Underground) : because of some conference, there was no matinee, and I couldn’t find the ticket, but none of that turned out to matter :
I bought a ticket instead to see Streetwise Opera’s (@streetwiseopera’s) production, with sections on film, at some venue, not necessarily NFT3, where we were all delegates together in some (seemingly) fictional conference, although many a one attempted, in character, to do such things as selling me a tie (I pointed out that I had one in my pocket, and that a T-shirt has no collar anyway) or asking me how I felt about the event.
To camera, when invited to say something inspirational, I came up with ‘Brick is beautiful’. It turns out that it would – if anyone had much been paying attention – have been seen on the screen of NFT3. Generating nonsense to order, as this blog as a whole is likely to evidence, doesn’t entail much…
In a way, I wish that I had bantered more with the Streetwise crew, rather than taking my seat, but, once in my seat, it seemed churlish to make the row rise again (to let me out) and, yet again, for my re-entry – the other end of my row was blocked off by the mixing-desk. (It seemed that no one else decided to join in with the ‘official’ delegates at the front, with their suits, briefcases, ability to sing.)
As a homage to Marcel (although spelt differently), I had chosen a name-badge with the identity of Pierre Duchamps, an Alternative Energy Intern. I hoped that something would hang on this, rather than it from the lanyard, so it was a disappointment that it might as well have said George Osborne, Financial Meddler. (No big deal, but there could have been a draw from those badges known to have been issued, and a game of forfeits...)
Ignoring the name, when one of the cast introduced himself by way of an extended arm from two rows forward, I claimed to be Peter Henderson-Smyth-Henderson-Smyth-Henderson, and he concluded that I sounded ‘quite posh’.
I hoped also that, in the style of I Fagiolini’s The Full Monteverdi my neighbour would turn out to be ‘a mole’. When I heard / saw that show (in Cambridge), one knew that, over a modest meal, one had one or more singers at one’s table, but not who he, she or they were :
A woman challenged me as one, and – fool that I am – I didn’t play my denial for all that it was worth. (Although, of course, it was self evident that a denial couldn’t mean anything, so I wasn’t believed anyway, since, as everyone will testify, I do look like a professional singer.)
No matter, as it merely meant that I could, more or less, relax in my seat without the obvious need for further participation. However, I did fail to reckon on the company song, and, at the best of times (silliness doesn’t help), I cannot co-ordinate words and any actions, not least when those words (and their music) were unknown to me minutes before !
Early during the run-through of this act of corporate worship, I gave up, and, standing inert, took much more satisfaction in seeing the cast sing and mime the whole song en masse (which, in the style of The Twelve Days of Christmas, repeated each one of the Ten Rules of Good Business), much more than coaxing my resistant abilities further could have achieved. (I have no doubt that few have my problems, and most would have taken pleasure in what, for me, was an exercise doomed to fail.)
I can confidently (wonder whether I should) state that @streetwiseopera's #ATEOpera had a good take on company manners, @catherinebray...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2013
That’s my hesitation out of the way, a strange (but usual) mix of wanting to be in a role-play, but on my terms. So, on to what this combination of filmed and live experience seemed to say. In doing so, I am influenced, after the event, by having read the programme**, which, I found, pulled together one’s appreciation of the overall narrative intent. (Such, of course, is the way – and world – of opera, whereas I am happy and used to making my own way in that of film).
Not to try to summarize what happened, save that the film interspersed with the live singing and action, the arias from Christopher Lowrey (counter-tenor) and Elizabeth Watts (soprano), interacting on screen with members of Streetwise from all over the country, were exquisite. Indeed, as I Tweeted :
I can confidently (wonder whether I should) state that @streetwiseopera's #ATEOpera had a good take on company manners, @catherinebray...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2013
Can't stop humming (in public, and singing elsewhere) Lascia ch'io pianga after @lizwattssoprano and @streetwiseopera plus Sacconi Quartet !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 28, 2013
The filmic aspect was in no way subservient to the role and action of these clips, but portrayed the alienation, isolation and heartfelt humanity at work in a response to the clinicality of company lore, which dictates shaking hands with the client not because one feels that one wants to, but as part of good business.
I have seen the Watts aria several times over (as my attempt to support Streetwise and download from the iTunes platform failed, after posing insurmountable problems), and it stands that repeated watching, because it is composed entirely in the idiom of cinema. I imagine the same to be true of the aria sung by Lowrey, of which my impression was that the wholly musical performance of the Vivaldi was respected in the service of the message that rapacity to invest threatens to overcome what matters, and what we should really value in this life.
I can confidently (wonder whether I should) state that @streetwiseopera's #ATEOpera had a good take on company manners, @catherinebray...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2013
Informed by the programme, I apprehend the arch that these and the other filmed sections sought to erect, but I do confess that I was lost in following how the scene from Peter Grimes, which, I now gather, led into a Streetwise commission from Orlando Gough, brought about the degeneration of the dream of Locateco Solutions : throughout, this cinematic work, the execution was brilliant, and the closing scene of rejection, liberation, and immersion in the natural world was evocative and poignant.
It was merely that the step that took us to where the façade began to crumble was not clear. Arguably, though, for those who felt the movement for the Berlin wall to collapse, or for what is shown in the powerful documentary The Miracle of Leipzig (2009) (Wir Sind das Volk) not to happen, the feelings were stronger than an exact notion of why what was tipping had become unstable.
So the filmed episodes I do not seek to fault : David Pisaro (tenor) singing Grimes in the church setting was marvellous, as was how the scene – with Britten’s skilful writing – built to his expulsion, but – rightly or wrongly – I felt that I did understand, at the time, why everything was unravelling. The programme addressed that, and this is – if a concern at all – a minor one, since I had had the time to read ahead, but chose not to.
The Streetwise singers in NFT3, interacting with the projection, gave an overall feeling that conveyed how important the voice, music, the human spirit is. All in all, a stunning experience, and a tribute to all in any way involved with it !
Post-script
After this Tweet (and following the link) :
StreetwiseOpera @StreetwiseOpera 21m
Lovely review of #ATEOpera in @spectator http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/opera/8900001/the-point-of-life/
I commented this:
Everything that this reviewer writes about @StreetwiseOpera's The Answer to Everything is spot on : it was timely, its parody of the corporate world (and its tics) was telling and amusing, and the music was of a very high quality, not least that passage from Grimes.
And if any Minister for Culture couldn't understand or relate to it, maybe that person's in the wrong job... !
I have now followed a link to a review in The Guardian, as Tweeted by @StreetwiseOpera... The reviewer found the event dramatically 'confusing', which mirrors what I attribute (above) to not having read the synopsis.
End-notes
* I tried to explain that I was there on the strength of knowing that Elizabeth Watts (@LizWattsSoprano) was involved, whose single with Streetwise I knew (from Splatter) had just been released.
My neighour thought that I said ‘Watson’, and, her not knowing EW, it didn’t seem to help that I said that she is a soprano. I ended up mumbling something about she was probably one of many, as I was, sadly, suddenly not sure, in the guise of being a delegate, how sopranos could fit in a corporate structure…
** It had two front covers (a style of presentation that I gather to be called tête-bêche).
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