It was with sadness but also a great deal of musical admiration and fond memories that we farewelled Niels Rosenhdahl.   There were many people present, musicians, friends and family, and plenty of the performers were on stage through a string of combinations.  Probably most had played with Niels.  Michael and Eric from Straight Up; Leigh, Aron and Sam and The Lethals; a ..read more

I've got into recording over the years and most recently into multitrack mixing and mastering, mainly of gigs at Smiths.  I find it fascinating and even, in some ways, better or more revealing than being in attendance.  Less fun, perhaps, and less personal, but revealing.  So I can solo the bass or sax of other and follow the thinking, the improvs, in detail and with repeats.& ..read more

Prayers and lamentations was the title of the concert by Oriana Chorale with a range of Biblical and other quotes.  The obvious one and ever popular was Thomas Tallis lamentations of Jeremiah from the a capella first half.  Interestingly the two parts of Tallis sandwiched a modern work by Roxanna Panufnik.   It was a little confusing and I thought Tallis was mightily modern ..read more

Australian Haydn Ensemble called the concert Heavenly Sopranos and sure enough most of the program featured a soprano and mezzo pairing.  AHE doesn't often perform with singers (3/28 posts on CJ).   This program featured several works by Johann Adolf Hasse, a renowned opera composer in his time,, Francesco Durante, a teacher of Pergolesi, and the feature, Stabat Mater by ..read more

I've just been listening to a recent find, the LA drum/vocals duo Knower, and in some way I wonder if Robert Schmidli's concert is somewhat of the same stunning effect for another era.  Admittedly a very very different era, but Beethoven was a genius and a stunning appearance on the scene and maybe Bach was all encompassing and inventive and Chopin, too, I guess.  Maybe I'm pushing ..read more

It's amusing that this was the second gig with Chris Latham as MD where we sat in darkness.  The darkness was for the projected images of modern art that we were accompanying.  OK as long as your batteries on your music stand lights were fresh!  (They were).  Batteries for tuners, too, because the basses had to tune down E>Eb for the final tune.  Otherwise, this was ..read more

I was just sitting outside a pub with a beer and I noticed someone with a tiny synth. Fascinating. Identified later as a Roland SC-1. Tiny, with headphones. And a Guinness. Within a few seconds we were chatting, of recordings, of styles, of instruments, of DAWs Ableton and Reaper, of sampling and histories and orchestras and whatever. Fascinating and my one musical encounter these few days ..read more

Whenever I mentioned Stravinsky or Firebird suite to someone they were awed. I was certainly challenged by Firebird, but nothing like its accompaniment, Prokofiev Violin concerto no.2. That was a doozy. All manner of changing counts and tempos and key signatures (6 sharps anyone?) and chromatics and maybe diminisheds. The associated naturals went down well. But NCO is a capable orchestra and ..read more

I joked that the last game I played was Asteroids and it's not far from the truth, but we had a string of PSns in the house over time and probably some X-boxes that my kids played and I even discovered one in the shed riddled with ants some time back. Aaron Chew was doing a concert of music from games. The games were renowned and obviously of some interest to and even influence on Aaron. I ..read more

  Sean gave me a rundown on the workshop that afternoon by Number Junky on jazz rhythms and odd meters.  It fitted perfectly with the band's title, Number Junky, and even with some of the patter on stage.  Kristian spoke of odd times and we shared counts at one stage: what I'd heard as 6-5 he thought of as 11, but it's all the same.  Some of the counts were much more complex ..read more