Right numbers

At our Molly gig, Mark was talking of doing just the right frequency of gigs.  He was playing 6pw, 7pw was pushing it, but he's a pro so this is his job.  I'm no pro and that would be a stretch.  But just back from Antarctica, a week now, and it's been musically busy.  Four gigs in one week.  First up was Molly and that's already written up on CJ.  Then a DJ gig for a disabled home Christmas party for a friend.  How much fun was that?  No stress, relaxing and listening to some fave music.  And people are paid for this?  The task of a muso is much more demanding, not least the years of practice.  Perhaps also more satisfying; certainly more inventive.  The other two gigs were for Red Hill Primary School's end of year get together.  It's a semi-regular gig for us and a great pleasure, especially given my kids' connection with RHPS.  Then a 50th birthday party for a lively woman and friends and family at a local winery.  It's been a busy week just off the ships but all gigs were a real pleasure and featured some hot playing.  Now for a quieter Christmas.

9 into 3 does go

There are 9 current Wesley music scholars and they were to perform at the final Wednesday lunchtime concert for the year but Covid intervened. The revised program had 3 performers!  Not sure it was all from Covid.  Nonetheless, the result was satisfying and really very interesting.  First up was Jess Hill playing a movement of a Haydn trumpet concerto.  That was interesting as a solo trumpet performance and lovely for the classical tone.  Then some inventive stuff from Yona Su playing two contemporary Australian solo viola pieces, strangely similar in technicalities, I thought.  The second was accompanied by a digital drone as a brush with electronica.  Then Ronan Apcar performed perhaps his last gig before he goes to Melbourne and ANAM (congratulations).  Ronan played two of eight etudes from Nikolai Kapustin, hugely busy with jazz chords and extrapolations and fully transcribed but to all intents jazz.  Apparently NK used to import US jazz records into Russia pre-WW2.  Then, interestingly, a take on Brad Mehldau When it rains, partly a reading of a transcription from the Net of the solo components and partly a transcription by Ronan of the strings and other accompaniments.  Fascinating and extravagant for the extensions and substitutions and the like.  So an end to the Wesley lunchtime concerts for this year with a small but effective concert.

Jess Hill (trumpet), Yona Su (viola) and Ronan Apcar (piano) performed at Wesley.

Another hero

Australia has found another hero courtesy of governments closing down climate action.  It's a sad story and a real concern for our Human Rights record.  But  the show must go on, at least until it won't anymore.  And that's not too far off, given floods and fires and incessant new mines.   Deanna 'Violet' Coco is in jail for at least 8 months, perhaps 15, with no bail while she lodges an appeal.  It's scary.  Her action was a big one and notable, closing a lane of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but the subject of her non-violent protest was immeasurably more significant, the end of civilisation, no less.  And it's not as if we are succeeding in our actions on climate.  Just see the graph above and despair.   And now we read a report that an uncle is a NSW pollie and agrees with the decision.   Even family ties don't seem to bring a pause on this issue and this largest of all industries, energy.   We are in peril.  Youth sees it and they will suffer it while power does the little it must.  Read up on this case and despair.  Here are a few references.

Pollie opinion no.1

Pollie opinion no.2

Overview

Comment

Violet's statement

Violet as the Pram Lady

To finish, my climate warning of 2014 remains true.  Here's my summary that I sent to PMs, pollies, editors, etc,  I still think it's a good summary.  To me, the "tipping points" are the killer, but you don't hear so much of them these days.  Maybe they are trying avoid widespread despair? 

All you really need to know about climate change. We're one big civilisation and climate is changing fast given a sudden imbalance of carbon since the industrial revolution. The mechanism of greenhouse gasses has been known to science for 150 years or so and we're at 400ppm and adding another couple each year, and 2 degrees warming (guessed to come at 450ppm) is a rough, perhaps optimistic, estimate of where runaway climate change could happen given various feedback loops (the ubiquitous "tipping points") and it looks to me like we've got Buckley's chance of staying within 2 degrees. With business as usual, IPCC estimates 3-6 degrees rise by 2100. That's just 86 years. Scientists provide the proof of all this for honest readers. To me it looks like game over and sooner than we think. I just hope I'm wrong because nobody wins an argument with physics.

BTW, here's the current CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa:  Oct 2022 = 415.31 ppm  (https://www.co2.earth/).  It's rising ~2ppm pa.  One ray of hope: it was rising ~2.5ppm a few years ago.

Deanna 'Violet' Coco joins Greta Thunberg as an authentic CJ Climate hero.  For her commitment and bravery in the face of political and social intransigence.

PS.  David Ritter says it beautifully.  From The Guardian News Live 7 Dec 2022 15:57AEDT. 

David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the right to peaceful protest is fundamental to democracy, and the laws were “rushed through in a chilling and knee-jerk response to ongoing peaceful protests”:

[They] are the latest in a suite of increasingly draconian measures introduced in Australia, designed to curtail peaceful public dissent.

What these laws fail to acknowledge is that climate activism does not exist in a vacuum. People are feeling compelled to take a stand only because of the fossil fuel industry’s wanton and knowing destruction of our right to a safe climate over the past 50 years.

While tactics and approaches to climate advocacy may differ, and there are legitimate differences of opinion on what forms of advocacy are most effective for winning hearts and minds, the fact remains that the inconvenience caused by the climate crisis – catastrophic floods, fires and storms destroying homes, livelihoods, and entire communities – staggeringly outweighs the inconvenience of one climate protester blocking one lane of traffic for 25 minutes.

What we must remember is that climate change isn’t happening to us, it’s being done to us. It’s being done to us by the executives of the fossil fuel corporations, and they know it. Just as Ms Coco knew that her act of protest would disrupt one lane of traffic, these executives know that their relentless pursuit of profit is disrupting the lives of billions of people and every species of life on our entire planet.

Breaking a drought

Travel has interrupted my playing big time recently.  I've missed some jazz and also three classical concerts.  It's not a complaint because travel is an exciting and mind-expanding experience but it does interrupt playing.  Dave managed to keep up practice on our ship to Antarctica, but he plays guitar and it's an easily portable instrument and he had a smallish travel guitar anyway.  I play double bass so I've had a break of 5 weeks or so.  Add some residual jet lag and I was wary of playing Molly and it is to be just the first of three gigs for the week.  But one thing I notice is that playing a gig after a break can be refreshing and can bring out the best.  It did last night.  Of course, I had some help from James and Mark playing like the clappers and a lively Christmas-partying crowd and a sound that just sat fat and rich and satisfying from the first notes.  My new approach, to set EQ pretty much flat and adjust volume, is working.  Good tone comes mostly from the fingers anyway.  And  I enjoy the two long sets with a decent break.  Now excuse me as I mix my metaphors.  We forgot to order food for the break so we ended up breaking our fast after the gig.  Here's a pic of two satisfied players eating toasties at the end of a decent gig at Molly.  Thanks tons to James and Mark.

James Woodman (piano) led Mark Levers (drums) and Eric Pozza (bass) at Molly.

...but not quite no jazz

We were lucky to have a capable guitarist on board serenading us each evening as he played his travel guitar. David Landon is from Berkeley, California, across the bay from San Francisco. He's played blues rock professionally in Paris and elsewhere, still playing festivals and running a studio (Whip Records) to record such luminaries as Taj Mahal, Tuck and Patti, Lenny Williams and Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows. No slouch. He describes his style these days as more singer songwriter, but I've yet to hear his albums. We heard some seriously satisfying improvs during Happy Hour, played from memory of bluesy pentatonics and a string of melodies, not least Charlie Parker bop. It's the closest I could expect to jazz or the like in Antarctica. A great pleasure and quite unexpected. Thanks, Dave.

David Landon visited Antarctica on the Ocean Nova.

http://davidlandon.com

https://www.whiprecords.com/

No jazz clubs in Antarctica

 

Sun sets sometime

Now this post is unexpected.  This is Ushuaia.  Dig the location: Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, Argentina.  The surrounding mountains with slips of snow are spectacular.  It's great weather and the locals are out in t-shirts (not all!) even if the wind chill factor is serious around every corner.  The tourists have scarves and hoods.  But there's a Hard Rock Cafe and it's Saturday.  One section of the main street is blocked off and there's a seriously decent PA set up.  First up, we happen on the local drum band, La Famiglia del Tambor.  They are having a great time, rollicking with drums of all sizes, tight as, led by a conductor, sharp and smiling with the best.  Loud.  But loud it is for the Municipal Band, too.  Now this is no ordinary Municipal Band.  First up, I thought Big Band given bari, tenor, several altos, sop saxes and a few clarinets, then I see four brass, trumpets and troms.  Then surrounding them the rock rhythm section, piano, bass, guitar, drums, percussion, two singing.  They start up with great grooves, reggae gets a look in, but it's mainly shades of latin, alive, loud, with decent singing.  I ask the name and I'm told "the Municipal Band".  It doesn't do them justice.  People are dancing in the street.  Behind me, more painted symbols for Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.  Down the road, a large meeting hall with pics of Perons.  I'm somewhat confused by these stories, the Perons being variously lefty and populist and perhaps other.  But there's plenty of time for all this: the sun doesn't set until 10.30pm at -55deg. This is Argentine Terra del Fuego, within a stone's throw of Chile and it's a surprising place. 

PS.  It turns we are celebrating the 138th anniversary of the founding of Ushuaia (12 Oct 1884).

Local is international

One thing I had to see was tango in BA and Mono, our bass mate, was playing just that the next day.  This was a performance venue rather than a Milonga dance-cum-school so we had a band, dancers and singers: a veritable story-telling, all singing, all dancing show.  The club was Cátulo Tango.  We were told it's a traditional venue, frequented by locals.  A decent space, plenty of set tables with red tablecloths matched by red uniforms of staff.  A big raised stage in the centre as well as a curtained band stage nearby.  We all arrived at 7pm for seats and to start the pics and eating, then show at 8 running on to 10, then again that community mingling after.  Plenty of talk which we didn't get, of course, some jokes, introductions to composers and themes.  And always that intense, intimate music.  The band was violin, guitar, bandoneon, bass with solos and moving features.  The guitar sounding sharp and acoustic like classical; the violin all phrases and rhythmically places notes and tones and squeaks and slides and taps, like the bass, rich in effects to spell the accents.  Sometimes playing as feature, sometimes backing dancers or singers.  We didn't catch the lyrics, of course, but you could feel the overt passion, as clearly also the dancers.  We think of love and sex and the themes of tango and they are there, but there are also amusements and playfulness, as in two women dancing with one man, or the simple joy of dancing of two women together or the overt sexual rivalry of two men at one time.  We'd been told this was a classy night.  The dancers (three women, two men) included three internationals, one a world champion form Holland, no less.  And again the interactions with audience to announce birthdays and to welcome a famed tango composer.  And ultimately, an end with Piazzola Libertango and all manner of community pics and chatter for the next half hour or so.   For this is something I enjoyed immensely, how everyone would congregate after, chatting, laughing, meeting, selfy-ing.  Like at our jazz the night before.  So a fascinating and unique and relevant local experience that nonetheless expressed a very international style, tango, known by many, not least the jazz scene.  But the real thing was different from the jazz interpretation that I know; more intense, more immediate, deeply sensual.  A wonderful find.  Thanks to Mono for the invitation to this one.

The tango performance was at band was at Cátulo Tango in Buenos Aires.  The band comprised Estebon Morgado (guitar), Quique Condomi (violin), Augustin Gil (bandoneon) and Mono  Hurtado (bass).  The singers were Leandro Ponte and Rosana Fontan (vocals).  The dancers were Maricel Giacomini, Katherine Laytón, Guillermina van der Linden, C Jose Carlos and Romero Vedia (Carlinho).

Always learning

I chose a jazz club close to our hotel but then we moved.  The new club had a tribute to Bessie Smith, apt for Megan, but in the end wasn't open that night.  Maybe for the best: the club was only weekend hotel.  So we ended at my first choice.  Again a tribute, this time to Gato Barbieri, the Argentinian tenorist.  I had known of GB during his softer era of soul and smooth jazz in the '70s so the tribute gig and reading of his early days with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Carla Bley and the likes was an eye-opener.  Not free jazz, but calls to it.  There was melody here, but floating segments, strong dynamics and well shared solo passages and outlandish power throughout.  Pablo played alto and soprano saxes, all extended arpeggios and full range and insistent and intense.  Pianist Pepe read rich charts and improvised aptly against them, telling the story of the tune with authenticity beyond just running chords.  Drummer Carto played often for colour or for melodic effect.  His solo entry for one piece was a dream, all sharp, diverse with rim shots and tonal drum colours interspersed with delirious fills.   But I was watching Mono mostly: he was bass.  There was (French) bowing that clearly said tango and busy, rhythmic, burbling playing that intrigued me, not so much from left hand, although that was well formed and accurate, but from a unique right hand pizz action, sometimes the extended two fingers but balling into a fist for three finger pizz, all rhythmic dissection and colouration.  No idea of action or strings.  Stunning stuff.  I've never seen the like and a wonder, especially in this context.  Again excuse the bass-centrality, but we all know it's inevitable (!)  And I should mention the bar, Prez Jazz Club, pretty central, in a basement, nicely decked out and some snacks and grog on tap, and obviously a real community of jazz lovers.  Complete with CDs on an old stereo to settle after the gig.  This will be my jazz outing for BA and I seriously lucked out.

Pablo Ledesma (saxos), Pepe Angelillo (piano), Mono Hurtado (contrabajo) and Carto Brandán (batería) played a tribute to Gato Barbieri at Prez Jazz Club in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Day 1

Visiting any new city is a haze until you get a little knowledge under your sleeves. Buenos Aires is like any other in this. But it's also very big and looking like it's seen better times. BA's metropolitan population is 16m, a full third of the population of Argentina, and inflation is running at 100% pa. Yes, it's seen better times. As comfy tourists, we are in a richer and safer area, so we see galleries and glitzy restaurants and we've taken tours and seen gloriously classy bars with the well-dressed lounging. But there's still a pall. We are warned about walking after restaurants close (midnight) and about some poorer areas, but they are tourist taps in the day. So the mecca of La Boca with Maradona's stadium, Boca Jnr. La Boca is the obvious home for bandoneon, too, that button accordion that's the heart of the tango. I caught Miguel Angel Yofre playing Carlos Gardel / Alfredo La Pera songs on a hundred year old instrument, all ravaged buttons but pretty and sounding a charm.  And this is a religious country. We are told 80% claim Christianity (66% Catholic; 15% no religion) and the Pope is from here even if it doesn't particularly look it, but there are churches and one caught my eye, all Spanish styled, florid, baroque with relics. We also hear of the Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo who protest children and grandchildren lost during military dictatorship, and see bullet holes on walls from Peron's days and drive on to avoid being trapped by a Union march for better wages to deal with inflation. On the other hand, my search for Jazz clubs reveals plenty and for Tango shows and also Milongas (tango schools-cum-clubs) reveal more and a waitress lauds the musical community and we meet fans outside the Hyatt awaiting Ricky Martin (!) And there are lots of dachshunds to meet (admiring someone's dog is our sure-fire way to meet the locals). Oh, and the time difference is a stunner (14 hours). Just passing through, really, but thus is Day 1.

In Buenos Aires in passage. Miguel Angel Yofre (bandoneon) played for visitors in La Boca.