As reported in Jazzwise and elsewhere today, the great British jazz pianist George Shearing has died at the age of 91.
Shear genius: George Shearing
Blind from birth, London-born Shearing moved to American and lived in New York; he worked with a notable array of jazz luminaries including singers Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan, guitarist Joe Pass and vibraphone legend Gary Burton . Shearing had a deft pianistic style, that moved easily from rich clusters of chords to delicate single-finger melodic playing.
Lullaby of Birdland was perhaps his most famous tune, named after the famous jazz club in New York.
Hold onto your hats, as the traditional annual roof-raising concert by the University Concert and Big Bands storms back to the Gulbenkian Theatre.
Click to enlarge
An action-packed programme includes an invitation to spend A Night On Broadway with a medley of popular showtunes including The Lion King and Wicked, and music by John Williams, Jo Zawinul as well as a tribute to Artie Shaw. Featuring staff and student musicians from the University, and led from the front by magic-fingered reeedsman Ian Swatman, this popular event will also feature two of the University’s Music Scholars, Jo Turner and Ruby Mutlow, as guest singers with the Big Band.
There’ll also be some live musical entertainment from student musicians in the Gulbenkian Foyer before the show to get you in the mood. Prepare to be carried away on a night of swing, funk, cinema soundtracks and big band favourites.
You can follow the adventures of the Concert and Big Bands on their blog, ‘On The Beat;’ further details about the concert on the deparment website here.
A richly intoxicating evening with the innovative Brodsky Quartet beckons, as they bring a flavour of the exotic to the University’s Gulbenkian Theatre. They are teaming up with flautist Diana Baroni to explore music from South America in their concert on Wednesday 23 February.
The Brodsky Quartet
A heady and exciting programme includes Tavener’s Prayer of the Heart, which was written for the Quartet and pop singer Björk, asw well as a feast of traditional music from Peru and Bolivia. Tantalisingly, the Quartet have also said that they’re bringing a tubular bell and a Tibetan bowl: in order to find out how they’ll be using them in the performance, though, you’ll have to come along and see…
Steadfast professionals, their concert this time last year saw them braving fearsome snow and icy conditions to reach the campus: here’s hoping the warmth of their programme will keep adverse weather at bay.
Further details on the department website here: this is one you’ll definitely not want to miss.
In 1917, amidst the latter stages of the horrors of the First World War, with the guns echoing over the disastrous offences in Ypres and Passchendaele, and the introduction of a new weapon by the British called the tank, Satie was writing his Sonatine bureaucratique.
Representing a return to the civilised values of the Classical period (and anticipating Stravinsky’s much-vaunted neo-Classical phase by three years), the piece also confronts those same values head-on and takes them apart. The work is full of forbidden ostinati, passages of needless repetition, and juxtaposed blocks of material in Cubist fashion. All these techniques serve to undermine a Classical sense of order and organic unity, where material is unified through a system of related keys and formal principles.
The piece parades a series of parodies and inversions of well-known Classical ideas, especially melodic material from Clementi’s piano sonata Op 36 no.1.
Yet, as listening to the piece proves, it’s all done with a sound Classical sensibility; texturally, Satie’s evocation of the Classical piano sonata is rooted firmly in the appropriate sound-world. But other rules have been overthrown: there are no formal development or recapitulation sections, the system of related keys has been usurped, and the Classical sense of never repeating an idea in exactly the same way is confounded by blatant, almost defiant, passages of repetition.
Composed in 1917, at a time when the rest of the world had gone mad with wholesale slaughter and mechanised forms of destruction, Satie’s evocation of the Classical period is a reminiscence of, almost a hankering after, an old order where unity and structure prevailed; at the same time, his usurping of its principles reflects the breakdown of society and its values which was going on around him: despite its apparent jocular tone, the shadow of the Western Front is never far away.
A turn to neo-Classicism was on the cards musically for others: Stravinsky’s Pulcinella would not appear until 1920. Debussy’s re-appraisal of Classical principles in the very late set of instrumental sonatas, of which he only lived to complete three of a projected series of six, still had its foot firmly in the Impressionist world. Satie’s neo-Classical sonatina represented a much more deliberate assessment of Classicism’s sound as well as its forms. Of course, he had already taken on Mozart (and won) in his Tyroliene Turque written four years before, parodying Mozart’s famous Rondo alla turca. But his appraisal and ensuing dissection of Classicism is much more involved in the Sonatine bureaucratique; it may be poking fun at Clementi in a similar fashion to his earlier ribbing of Mozart, but this is much more serious. It’s not just about Clementi, it’s about the very essence of Classical values at a time when values seemed to be disappearing everywhere else.
Eat your heart out, neo-Classical Stravinsky: Satie got there first.
Think of all those pop songs that have made an impact on your life. Remember those that reached into your soul and made you confront all those things that laid you low, that opened your heart and played with your tears; or those that brought an infectious smile to your face, and gave extra dazzle to the sunlight.
Think of those songs that have held your hand since you were a child, that have been with you through your life, that have walked with you through the sands. Songs that made you groove, made you want to dance or daydream. Songs that raised money for charity. Songs that people danced to at your eighteenth birthday, or your wedding, or that people always dance to in clubs.
Close your eyes: can you see them arrayed before you ? Can you hear them ?
Good: now listen to the ‘X-Factor’ finalist’s cover version of David Bowie’s Heroes, and tell me if it’s a worthy contribution to pop music.
Think of the visceral power of Bowie’s version, the sheer gut-wrenching passion that screams out through the recording, the anguish and the need that took an array of gated microphones to capture in the studio. And then hear the cover.
Bowie must be shuddering; or counting the royalties…
The Music Department is once again girding itself to participate in this year’s ‘Children in Need’ appeal, in an event which takes place on Thursday 18 November in Eliot Hall at 1.10pm.
This year, we’ll be singing ‘O Fortuna,’ the rousing introduction to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana which is the theme to the X-Factor or, depending on your generation, the music to the ‘Old Spice’ television advert!
With two pianos and percussion, plus a rousing choir, it’ll be an event to remember! You don’t even have to be able to sing – just bring your enthusiasm (and a donation!) to help raise money for a great cause.
Composed in 1917, at a time when the rest of the world had gone mad with wholesale slaughter and mechanised forms of destruction, Satie’s evocation of the Classical period is a reminiscence of, almost a hankering after, an old order where unity and structure prevailed; at the same time, his usurping of its principles reflects the breakdown of society and its values which was going on around him: despite its apparent jocular tone, the shadow of the Western Front is never far away.