Mostly music

I was teaching bass today and brought a few great bass recordings to the class to play for the students. Among them was Dave Holland’s solo ...

Just saw this great quote from Wayne, regarding creativity: 'What I'm doing is pounding at the door of creativity. That takes curios...

(See the 'A Question of Status' post for the context of this one) Accidentally stumbled across this quote (in a blog by somebody els...

This is actually an older essay - I did it several years ago, but I think it's still a relevant question - at least for me! What is Jazz...

OK, this is going to get controversial. I was watching a wonderful classical pianist named Valentina Litsisa on Youtube the other day. She w...

Just thinking about this thing where older musicians take their foot off the creative pedal when entering their sixties, and citing Wayne as...

Recently been listening a lot again to Gyorgy Ligeti’s Piano Études – wow! I know them for over ten years now but they still evoke the wow r...

The English critic and composer Constant Lambert, writing in his book on music ”Music Ho” in 1934, devoted an entire chapter to what he call...

I was putting a copy of ‘Creative Rhythmic Concepts for Jazz Improvisation’, the book I’ve written on various rhythmic techniques, into an e...

Flicking through the TV here in an idle moment I stumble across Ronan Keating singing (or possibly miming) the Cyndy Lauper song ‘Time After...

I’ve been watching some Youtube footage of Wayne Shorter’s current and great quartet. I saw this group playing in Dublin about four years ag...

Hi Everyone, Though 'everyone' may be a bit optimistic........ Anyway, this blog will mostly be about music - and improvised music a...