John Surman 65

I had some serious plans to celebrate John Surman´s 65th birthday with a blog post 30 August, but I have to admit I forgot all about it. To straighten things up, I hereby post a video with Surman and Albert Mangelsdorff who celebrates his birthday number 81 today (according to Wikipedia). So, we´re having a party anyway!

AllAboutJazz published a great piece on John Surman 31 August. He talks about his music, how traveling is hard on the instruments and Norwegian taxes! Yes, he´s living in Norway, and I would not have minded to see him on stage here from time to time.

ÉnÉnÉn

You might want to know about the Norwegian trio ÉnÉnÉn (meaning something like OneOneOne). The first time I heard about them was yesterday, so you won´t be far behind there. By luck I ended up at a very good concert in the Bergen shop Robot just minutes before Michael Francis Duch (bass), Tor Haugerud (drums) and Eirik Hegdal (sax/clarinet,) started playing. Google these guys and bands like Zanussi Five, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra and Lemur will pop up. This music is not easy to classify, but there are elements of both jazz and contemporary classical, and free impro and so on. Hell, I´ll call it jazz.
They haven´t recorded any material yet as ÉnÉnÉn, but now you´ll be in a position to tell your friends that of course you have heard about this band, when the album finally arrives. Of course!

Ivor Cutler and David Shrigley

nialldebuitlear has made some videos to Ivor Cutler songs, based on drawings by David Shrigley. See Shrigley´s own videos on YouTube too!

Ivor Cutler died in 2006, but he´s still on Twitter!

Walking on a wire

Are you one of the people who have not bought Richard Thompson´s records? Really? Now you have the chance to get a collection on 4 CDs called "Walking on a wire 1968 - 2009" (Shout! Factory 2009). In this package you also get a 60 page booklet written by Thompson biographer Patrick Humphries.
If you have got all this stuff already, don´t forget "RT. The life and music of Richard Thompson" (Free Reed Records).

Crazy In Love

I have blogged a live version Antony and the Johnsons´ cover of Beyonce´s "Crazy in love" before, but let´s see the official video by Joie Iacono too.

John Zorn

I seldom play an album as many times as I have played John Zorn´s
"O´o" (Tzadik 2009) the first days after the purchase. This album, named after and extinct Hawaiian bird, flies with the help of Cyro Baptista (perc), Joey Baron (dr), Trevor Dunn (b), Marc Ribot (g), Jamie Saft (p, org) and Kenny Wollesen (vibes). "Miller´s Crake" swings so nicely, "Po ´o´uli" takes me to a bird forest , "Laughing Owl" makes me smile, "Little Bittern" rocks along with some great guitar playing and the organ on "Zapata Rail" is awesome. What a nice late summer and autumn soundtrack.

Read more about the hard working (no television!) John Zorn at JazzTimes. I like his attitude towards different kinds of music! "It’s not a matter of having a short attention span, it’s a matter of living in today’s world and being a curious, creative, open-minded, intelligent individual who appreciates greatness for its own sake without putting it into any kind of academic or cultural box".

See and hear John Zorn, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed in a video recorded 13 August 2009.

Jackie Oates

The Bergen folk music club Columbi Egg opened their autumn season yesterday, with visitors from England. Singer and violin player Jackie Oates brought along James Dumbleton (g), Sille Illves (bowed harp ?) and Laurel Swift (b) . They performed some self penned material, but mostly English folk music of the sad kind ("I love sad songs"). The sad songs got even better by using what we learned was a shruti box (a mini harmonium). They did a fantastic version of "The Lark in the Morning" (I know that one only from Steeleye Span) where Dumbleton even sang overtones. Oh yes, and Jackie Oates has a great voice! Listen at Myspace, and wait for their new album, out one of these days.