Hello, I hope all is groovy.
This little email is comin' atcha via Cornwall. It's currently like a bleak winter morning here, grey, windy, raining horizontally and I got woken up by an unhappy cow. I'm here for a 50th birthday party and apparently must play records this evening in a tent. It could well be a terrible night.
Anyway, I was reading yesterday about the recent death of Gunther Schuller, a very interesting jazz man responsible for naming a now relatively lost jazz genre called The Third Stream, which was simply the fine synthesis between jazz and classical music. Today's #50pFriday album involves him and is a rare insight into this joyous sound. So, conducted by Schuller and his Third Stream buddy George Russell are a set of cues by fabulous bands, all wrapped up in a Charles Eames super cool cover. The album is called Modern Jazz Concert and I wrote about it on the Trunk Recs in 2011, and there is even a link to the Eames "do nothing solar machine" features on the sleeve there. Could things possibly get any more mid-century and hip? No. The #50p album can be found here. Remember, click the LP sleeve and you get the MP3 or WAV options.
If you missed me me me sitting in for Jarvis on 6 Music you can hear it again right here. And staying tuned to the radio, there is a documentary this week about the great John Paynter (responsible for many tracks on Classroom Projects and a pioneer of avant-garde music in schools), it is on Radio 4, Thursday 25th August at 11.30, and is called "The School Is Full Of Noises". Ian Mcmillan is our guide and there are contributions by yours truly. Should be an ace bit of radio.
I also got sent this link during the week, to possibly the scariest TV advert for a kids doll ever, Baby Laugh A-Lot. She gets even more odd when the batteries run low. I now want one.
Thanks for listening
Jonny