Recent Posts
The passing of another master
It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Jimmy Giuffre. He died on April 24th, 2 days before his 87th birthday.
Jimmy was one of the great individualists of the clarinet, always inventing and thinking outside the norm. His later, free playing unfortunately took him out of the mainstream jazz world but he […]
Good old showmanship
I’ve just read an interesting article in the New York Times today on Juan Diego Flórez’ performance at the Metropolitan Opera House on Monday. He performed a solo encore after a standing ovation - something not heard there since 1994. In fact, solo encores were common in the 19th century but as the opera grew […]
Continue reading...Test
This is just a test post to check some behind the scenes fiddling I’ve been doing.
While I’m here though I have to mention Dave Frishberg’s great site. Go to his Written Word section and have a look around. There are some lovely stories here, I particularly love the Ben Webster and Kenny Davern ones! […]
Flickr test
Messing around with Flickr feeds and plugins. This one seems to work ok. I was on holiday last week up in Bahia. Mum came over with my Aunt as well, and spent 7 days sunning ourselves and playing with my daughter. What a great way to spend your holidays. Except for the small mishap when […]
Continue reading...Mouthpieces and set-ups - Intro
Although I joked a bit in the last post, the subject of mouthpieces and set-ups has always created heated conversations between reed players. So I thought I would expand a bit on this subject and enter the debate. There are those who are never happy with what they have, always on the look out for […]
Continue reading...Mouthpieces
Mechanics talk about engine rebuilds, golfers talk about handicaps and other things, trombone players talk about slide sprays, singers talk about …. well, who knows, but saxophone and clarinet players talk about reeds and mouthpieces. You go anywhere on the web and you will find smart-arses telling you that the set up you have is […]
Continue reading...Chris Potter and playing live
I finally got around to reading the February issue of Downbeat, which included a very interesting interview with Chris Potter. I’d like to link it for you to read but I haven’t found an online copy yet. I’ll keep looking and post it if and when I find it.Anyway, I’ve been following Chris Potter’s music […]
Continue reading...Hello!
Welcome to my new blog. If you have arrived hoping to find a website - sorry. It’s broken and fell apart when I started to mess around with it (see About - Please read). Anyway, a new one will be up and running as soon as I find someone to do it for me. (Again, […]
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