More third stream music: Saturday Music Club on Monday

The Jazz and Classical Music Society: Music for Brass/
George Russell and Gunther Schuller: Modern Jazz Concert  (aka Brandeis Jazz Festival)

1. JOHN LEWIS - Three Little Feelings
1.1 - Of Hope
1.2 - From the Heart
1.3 - Majesty
2. J.J. JOHNSON - Poem for Brass
2.1 - Sonnet for Brass
2.2 - Ballad for Joe
2.3 - Meter and Metal 
2.4 - Finale
3. GEORGE RUSSELL - All About Rosie
4. CHARLES MINGUS - Revelations (First Movement)
5. JIMMY GIUFFRE - Suspensions
6. GUNTHER SCHULLER - Symphony for Brass and Percussion
6.1 - Andante - Allegro
6.2 - Lento
6.4 - Quasi Cadenza - Allegro
7. GUNTHER SCHULLER - Transformation
8. JIMMY GIUFFRE - Pharaoh
JazzTimes review of this reissue combo


George Russell and the Big Bang Band, 1967

Part 2

The Don Ellis Orchestra: "33 222 1 222"


The Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra: The New Continent


Charles Mingus Band: "Minor Intrusion"


Gil Mellé: Tome VI

Saturday Music Club on Sunday: examples of why my radio show SWEET FREEDOM had a 20th Century "classical" component

Alan Hovanhess: Concerto for Orchestra No.1 "Arevakal" op. 88 (1951) performed by the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra


Lou Harrison: Six Sonatas for Cembalo (1943) performed by Linda Burman-Hall


George Crumb: Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) for flute, cello and piano performed by Camille Lambert-Chan, flute; Philippe Prud'homme, piano; Stephane Tetreault, cello


Amy Beach: Five Improvisations for piano Op. 148; performer uncredited


Edgard Varese: Ionisation performed by Amadinda Percussion Group, Mondo Quartet and students of Franz Liszt Academy of Music Budapest

Krzysztof Penderecki: Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima performed by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra


Anthony Braxton: For Four Orchestras performed by orchestras assembled at Oberlin College

Saturday Music Club: some old favorites

Judy Dyble, polyinstrumentalist and singer, Fairport Convention

Anonymous 4: "Antiphon: O Rubor Sanguinis" (composed by Hildegard von Bingen)

A Christmas song (not yet discovered, not properly credited)

Kate Royal: "Ah, Love but a Day" (composed by Amy Beach)

Amy Beach: Theme and Variations for flute and strings, Op. 80 (Carol Wincenc, flute; Jonathan Swartz and Erica Kiesewetter, violins, Nancy Buck, viola, Jesus Castro-Balbi, cello)

Billie Holiday: "The Sunny Side of the Street"

"Fine and Mellow" (The Sound of Jazz performance, 1957)

Sarah Vaughan: "The Sweetest Sounds"

Aretha Franklin, Robert Flack, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee: An Ellington Medley

Buffy Sainte-Marie: "Cod'ine"

"Piney Wood Hills"

Wanda Jackson: "Hardheaded Woman"

"Tore Down"; "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"
Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Tammy Wynette: "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"

The Springfields: "Little Boat"

"Silver Threads and Golden Needles"

Fairport Convention: "Morning Glory"

"One Sure Thing" (live at the BBC 1968); the album version
Fairport Convention: "Reno, Nevada"; Mimi and Richard Fariña: "Reno, Nevada"

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer: "Goodbye Anne"

"The Buffalo Girls/Puncheon Floor"

Emmylou Harris: "Two More Bottles of Wine"/"Ooh, Las Vegas"


Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch: "Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby"

Sweet Honey in the Rock: "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round" 

"Old Ship of Zion"

October's "Forgotten" Music: Louisville Symphony First Edtiion/VMM Music from Six Continents Records

The Louisville Symphony Orchestra came up with a wonderful win-win idea, particularly for a professional orchestra in a small city in the 1950s...let's commission new works in the "classical" tradition, and release them on our own label, First Edition Records. And certainly every public library with a decent record collection had to have them (as they were an impressive series, well-reviewed and selling reasonably well, in a subscription series to many). That's where I found them, and through them the work of Lou Harrison, Alan Hovanhess, and a raft of others, many relatively unrecorded by others even yet. They, up through the '70s, had uniform white covers, since they felt that what record-store sales they'd get would be furthered more by being part of the series than by the utter novelty of their content, but for the cd reissues and repackages they've spiffed up the covers a bit...in fact, First Edition was rather slow in moving over to cd issues, and I'm not sure to what extent they are taking advantage of MP3 sales, but I'm glad to find at least a somewhat representative selection available on Amazon, for example.





Vienna Modern Masters, headed up by composer Nancy Van de Vate, has been reaching for an intenationalist variation on the First Edition formula since getting going in the 1980s, and their Music from Six Continents series (cruelly snubbing Antarctica, unless of course one faces the fact that Eurasia is one continent) has helped introduce me, at least, to another wide array of composers and impressive performances...I'm particulary prone to return to their Penderecki recordings, and Van de Vate has ensured that she herself is well-represented here...which is fine, as she's not too shabby, herself. (I suspect that it is almost as much a budget as self-promotion measure...she might well be waiving her own royalties, in these tough times.) They were formerly distributed in the US by the fine small label Albany Records, which also distributed the New Albion release of the suite inspired by Rudy Rucker's autobiographical novel All the Visions, Like a Passing River (a partial concert performance of the title song can be heard starting just before the twelth minute of this video), and released on its own ticket at least one opera based on Ray Bradbury's Mexico stories, The Lifework of Juan Diaz...but now seem to be working on their own in US distribution (given the lack of brick and mortar retail outlets, not too surprising...Borders and B&N are probably the biggest surviving record-store chains in the US now). Happily, all the initial VMM discs are still in print, and the latter-day selections I haven't yet picked up look interesting and worth the listen.

For more "forgotten" music, please see Scott Parker's blog.