From the “so much music, not enough time” category…
After interviewing Ronny Jordan for Guitarist magazine last week, I realised that I hadn’t listened to much jazz guitar recently and that I’d got this far in life without hearing Grant Green at all. So I’ve started to remedy that. Cool, funky, bluesy jazz guitar, frequently backed by such luminaries of mid-sixties jazz as Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner and Larry Young.
Similarly, it took me until the late 1990s to get into Nick Drake; this is less surprising, as I’m not normally a singer-songwriter type. Still, the new release ‘Made to Love Magic’ was a nice surprise, combining the meagre 1974 recordings with a few demos from Nick’s university days.
My overall approach to discovering music tends to be quite random. I might pick up new ideas by word of mouth or by seeing a support band at a gig, but more often than not, I’ll follow links from one band to another. While I’ve built up quite a comprehensive awareness of rock-based styles and a reasonable overview of jazz, my knowledge of (for want of a much better term) “classical” music has developed in a very patchy way, mostly huddled around the early 20th century, with a few choice composers added from other periods. So, I decided to remedy this. I’m currently reading a large single-volume history of music and (more importantly) supporting my reading with as much listening as possible.
I’ve just finished the chapter on medieval polyphony, for which the majority of available recordings are of music by Hildegard of Bingen and Perotín. Now, Hildegard is fairly well known, even outside of early music circles, but Perotín is new to me. The album by the Hilliard Ensemble is the best way of hearing this crystalline, serene music. The human voice can be a wonderful thing, y’know.