Doing the drum rounds

I'd played with Hugh Magri-Bull but it was only at a jam session and a jam session is just a few tunes on different gear and nothing like a decent gig over three hours.  This was a Tilt outing at the Dickson Taphouse and it's a great place to up the energy for essentially jazz musicians.  Most of the DT bands are blues or rock so the background is noisier and the audience is involved.  At least the audience that's close in and there are spots throughout for eating, listening, sunning and more.  We had some recurrent listeners from pervious gigs and some musos and dancers to please and even a few staff of Better Music.  Otherwise, a little quiet given Enlighten Festival but much enjoyed.  Hugh was our latest invitee in the drum stool and a worthy player, inventive in solos and responsive in ensemble.  A great night even if I forget a pic until too late.  And many thanks to Hugh.

Tilt performed at Dickson Taphouse comprising James Woodman (piano), Hugh Magri-Bull (drums) and Eric Pozza (bass).

Somewhere around baroque

I'd talked of baroque music, but this is really earlier, I guess, still baroque but early?  It's certainly not Bach.  Perhaps I think baroque given the gut violin strings and plucked string tones of the harpsichord.  This was John Ma and Marie Searles playing duo.  Marie with several solo tunes, one imitating birds and another guitars and castanets.  Apparently.  It's intriguing and challenging even if not particularly identifiable in these days of samples that really do copy and manipulate sounds.  Otherwise, John and Marie together played another imitation or representation of Turkish music, and a standard style of Adagio and Courante, and a dedication to a composer's fellow musician, La Sabbatina dedicated to Roberto Sabbatini, and a perhaps an even stranger one to our ears, Diverse bizzarie sopra la vecchia sarabanda or pur ciannona.  These were interesting and various oddities...  The composers were all around 1650-1770 and with some pretty obscure names.  Henry Eccles was obvious enough, but otherwise be Blaineville, Pogletti, Forquerau and Matteis.  But as always from John and Marie, much joy, much playful, bouncy, capable playing and even much education in composers and the times.  You couldn't want for more.

John Ma (violin) and Marie Searles (harpsichord) presented and performed at Wesley.

This is CJBlog post no. 2,950