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| 3rd December 2007 | The plan to record my musical setting of the Thelemic Book of the Law has been given the go ahead by the proper authorities from the Ordo Templis Orientis. This is most gracious of them and I am very much looking forward to getting into the studio now to commit a version of the setting to album. Full details of the recording session and the resulting audio will be posted up here as soon as they are realised. Exciting stuff! | |||
| 2nd December 2007 | I have now made all my albums available to purchase through Paypal. PLEASE NOTE: due to my not being in the UK these days, all these albums are available through DOWNLOAD ONLY. Once purchased, the audio mp3's and accompanying artwork/sleeve-notes will be made available for you to download from this site. Go to my RECORDINGS page for audio clips and further information... Full instructions on how to do this will be emailed to you at this stage. | |||
| 23rd November 2007 | I am planning to record over the 2007-8 holiday period. My friend and fellow improviser Mike Hurley, who narrated now is a ship and Book of the Law at their respective premieres in early 2006, is in the process of sorting out a recording session or two with a view to capturing some four hands/one piano improvisations and hopefully realisations of now is a ship and Book of the Law if drummer Miles Levin and vocalist Alison Symonds are similarly available to record. Watch this space for further information and for audio clips of the results... | |||
| 9th November 2007 | Last night saw the premiere of the opening concert of my eight-concert series, Seven Ages of Jazz for solo piano. The performance took place in Dubai, UAE, at the Dubai Community Theatre & Arts Centre. | |||
| 13th October 2007 | I've revamped the RECORDINGS page so it has more information about each of the albums available. Take a look for yourself and why not dig deep and treat your ears at the same time? | |||
| 18th September 2007 | A little bit of debop in action: Call of the 2nd Aethyr/Absolute Conception is a debop realisation consisting of Aleister Crowley reading from the English translation of his "Call of the Second Aethyr" (on a wax cylinder recording) plus the opening of a piece of mine recorded in Dubai, called "Absolute Conception". I am still working on a musical setting of the Thelemic Gnostic Mass, and Absolute Conception is a taster of the harmonic concept I have for the work, where each melody note can be spontaneously harmonised by a choice of 6 triads. As for the debop realisation, I was gobsmacked when Crowley sang some of the notes from the melody in his recitation to fit with my piece, redirecting the past/future arrow and uniting two centuries in one electrifying debop moment. I swear the placing of the voice against the piano track was purely arbitrary on my part, at least on a conscious level. But then, I suppose it's just coincidence, isn't it? | |||
| 14th September 2007 | Time for another bonus website track: Chennai was recorded on August 14th, two days after our arrival in Dubai, a total of 134 days after my piano fast - except for one hour back in China on June 5th. It uses a scale I was investigating on the day of the recording that is made up of both the lydian and the harmonic major scales, over a tonic-dominant drone bass. | |||
| 30th August 2007 | Over in Mongolia, one of the musicians who expressed interest in being part of the Jazz Mongolia Summer Camp is currently in Ulaanbaatar performing, giving lessons and workshops and generally spreading the jazz word for a couple of weeks. Guitarist Ben McDonnell has been invited by the Giant Steppes of Jazz NGO and is performing in a concert at the State Philharmony Hall this evening. Here's a link to an article in the UB Post about him: Ben McDonnell UB Post article. It's great to see that others are taking up the Jazz Mongolia challenge and running with it. Good luck Ben and enjoy the khuushuur and airag! | |||
| 23rd July 2007 | I've decided to release the instrumental tracks from my 2007 working - for melodica and electronic score - of my musical setting of Liber AL vel Legis, the Thelemite Book of the Law as received by Aleister Crowley in April 1904 e.v. The text of the book will in no way be present on the recorded CD, only the music. I hope at some time in 2008 to be able to get permission to record the work in its entirety for release, and will be working to achieve that end over the coming months. Please check out the audio samples from the 2007 version in Mongolia at: Recordings. | |||
| 12th July 2007 | Special website bonus track recorded in Shanghai: Sad, lost was written and recorded in the same one-hour period. Along with one other composition and two improvisations. A very productive hour back in Shanghai on June 5th! Enjoy. | |||
| 4th July 2007 | The recording of my CD of solo melodica improvisations, Melodica Travels, is going well so far. I've managed to record around three-quarters of an hour of solo melodica tracks on the beach at Al-Azaiba near our apartment in Oman. Melodica Travels will be available through this site at some point in the near future. | |||
| 9th June 2007 | Arrived in Oman yesterday. Muscat is pretty devastated in places, and there were plenty of upturned cars and non-existent roads on our way from the airport, but the area we are staying in has survived pretty much intact. Am hoping to do some melodica recordings down on the beach at some point tomorrow - probably near sunset, since the temperatures are somewhere in the mid 40's. Celsius that is. | |||
| 7th June 2007 | Marooned in Dubai at the moment on our way to Muscat, Oman. Cyclone GONU managed to get in our way, devastating much of Oman in its wake. We'll know more later today hopefully, and I'll update the site accordingly. | |||
| 27th May 2007 | Ni hao! We have been in Beijing for the last 3 days, enjoying the chance to relax and get ourselves used to the lights, sounds and smells of this amazing city since a year in Mongolia. We're off to Shanghai by train on the 30th, with a plan to check out the jazz scene there. | |||
| 23rd May 2007 | Last day in Mongolia, and we have spent it packing...and repacking! It's amazing how much stuff you accumulate over a year. We have decided to spend some time touristing in and around China before flying to Oman, the UAE and then home, so tomorrow we'll be taking Train Number 24 from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing. Goodbye Mongolia! Hello China! | |||
| 4th April 2007 | Kindly recorded by our friends Richard and Stani (check out their website www.velomad.com all about their 10 year-plus journey around the world on bicycles), this is a website exclusive live solo piano recording from the now defunct U-Bop Jazz night at Mealody Restaurant: God Bless The Child. A little distorted in places, but then again it adds to the sense of the remoteness of Mongolia. Also today I've removed all the old Real Audio Tracks from the site. Too many people are unable to play them or don't want to download the spyware-ridden Real Player software! They will eventually be replaced by mp3's so please bear with me in the meantime, there are a lot to replace. | |||
| 24th March 2007 | Have been giving a couple of Jazz Improvisation workshops at the Music & Dance College and the University of Culture & Arts in Ulaanbaatar. It has been well attended (especially the one at the UCA - the room was kept filling up throughout the workshop, too). Just basic stuff - a little history, a brief explanation about modes, and a few tunes, plus a feature spot for Purevsukh. | |||
| 28th February 2007 |
The Government have recently passed laws in the UK to try and suppress live music. Pubs which could previously offer work to solo musicians or duos now have to pay for a special licence and can only have 12 of these per year. Even school Xmas concerts need to be licensed. The unlicensed provision of even one musician is a potential criminal offence (although some places are exempt, including places of public religious worship, royal palaces and moving vehicles). Max penalty: £20,000 fine and six months in prison (for the proprietor and the musicians). The rationale is to prevent noise, crime and disorder, to ensure public safety, and the protection of children from harm. But broadcast entertainment, including sport and music, is exempt - no matter where, and no matter how powerfully amplified. For the first time, private performances raising money for charity will need a licence. School performances open to friends and family will need a licence - they count as public performances.
If you want to add your name to the petition (currently more than 27,000 people have joined the list), please click on the following link (it takes less than a minute)... http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/licensing/ If this law is implemented, it will be disastrous for music and musicians in the UK, and will threaten to return Britain to being "the land without music" that it was internationally considered to be after Cromwell's infamous ban on music. If you choose to sign the petition, please tell your friends so we can stop this despicably destructive act from coming into being. |
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| 17th February 2007 | The Wire are going to make some of the improvisations I've recorded whilst being over here available for download on their website, which is great news and will go alongside the "Global Ear from..." article in March's edition. | |||
| 10th February 2007 | I've written an article for The Wire magazine, which will appear in the March 2007 edition. Order your copy from WH Smith's now! That's an order. A Global Ear from Ulaanbaatar is about my experiences playing Jazz in Mongolia. I hope to write about my experiences with the Shamans soon, too, after more contact with the ASCWA. | |||
| 17th January 2007 | More sad news to report, this time from the world of music. Alice Coltrane died January 12th and Michael Brecker on the 13th. Alice was 69 and Michael was 57. I had the privelige to witness a Michael Brecker workshop whilst I was at Birmingham Conservatoire in 1995; I have always loved Alice Coltrane's music and spirit, and I believe her work with John Coltrane forms one the most important parts of his legacy. Musicians live on through their recordings and those vibrations never cease to influence all whose ears are open. | |||
| 16th January 2007 | Robert Anton Wilson, whoses writings were (and still are) extremely influential on my musical philosophy, especially when I was writing for the Church of Logick band, "...defied medical experts and left his body" (in other words died) on January 11th, a very auspicious date given his Thelemic leanings. All Hail Eris! And I recommend his writing whole-heartedly for anyone who hasn't yet seen the fnords. | |||
| 14th January 2007 | All About Jazz: Mongolia has a nice article written by Mark Sabbatini about his experiences in Ulaanbaatar last year, trying to listen to some Jazz music. He interviewed myself and some of the others associated with Jazz over here recently and it's good to see the story published on the web. Take a look and have a read when you've got a few spare minutes. | |||