LET´S ROLE-PLAY + bits and pieces

One should consider that our storytelling powers need to extend beyond the song. Artists, in particular, need to think about the ways they tell their stories onstage. Banter before or after the performance of a song should enhance an audience’s understanding of the art. This banter can hook new fans and make old fans feel like they are getting a heightened experience. This is why I often advise artists to write a loose script to follow throughout their set. Practice this script in the mirror. A bit of preparation will, ironically, make you seem like a great off-the-cuff storyteller off the cuff. 
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VOICE TO THE BLACKBIRD + bits and pieces

I have mentioned Lennon´s social commentary and xxx reminded us of Lennon´s far more obvious protest call for a Revolution, which I felt at the time was a Dylanesque call for Mankind to rewind to the beginning and to start again. I suppose tht at the time, as nowt but a child, I had vague notions that Paul´s song was a summoning of the spirit, but I interpreted everything on those days as proclamations of love. I took the song as being about a girl who had left her lover, and that lover´s realisation that she had wanted 7 needed her freedom.

FOLK ARE TALKING ! of Manchester Folk Festival and new music charts

The full Manchester Folk Festival line up has already been announced and reproduced on these pages and English Expo Folk are very excited and proud to be delivering the impressive gathering of  folk, roots and acoustic music from the  English folk scene to the EFEx showcase delegates and the good people of the general public of Manchester and beyond, who will be travelling in for the Festival.

IMMORTALITY IN LIMINALITY for Jazz Masters

The NEA Jazz Master fellowship carries with it a $25,000 cash award, as well as a tribute concert that for these artists took place on March 31, 2022 at SFJAZZ in San Francisco.
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THE FIFTY BEST OF JAZZ before the fifty best of jazz

The Dead Sea Scroll of jazz piano. (Literally a scroll; a generation of pianists learned the song from its player-piano roll.) Johnson’s performance of his self-composed rag codified the Harlem “stride” flavor of syncopation, ornamentation, and improvisation. It inspired Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, and Jaki Byard; in the likes of Jason Moran and Christian Sands, its spirit lives on today

JAZZ TURN-OVER 2022

And for us in the audience, those mechanical skills make us more comfortable during their most daring escapades. Because we know that every note choice is intentional and accurate, we can trust that the artistic logic will reveal itself. And when it does—even far beyond the boundary of the familiar and expected—that can be thrilling.
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YANKEE DOODLE WENT TO TOWN

There are reasons I remember and treasure the song, so well, though and those reasons include a black and white (I´m sure) American movie and one of my favourite movies stars, who to add to all this confusion, apparently never actually said on screen the phrased he became indelibly associated with of  ´ýou, you dirty rat´ whilst pointing a gun at someone.
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TRIP WITH TEGUEY around the towns and villages of Lanzarote

With the twenty one males of Teguey all dressed in cream trousers and white shirts, Ruyman in a fabulous green dress and Jose Manuel dressed similarly to the band, it was nevertheless the old fashioned multi-layered swirling skirts of the female dancers that really took the eye. Although I am never likely to be asked to replace Craig on the judge´s panel of Strictly, even I could detect the elegance and the grace these couples brought to what seemed to be traditional celebratory dance.
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YUSAN JAZZ ENSEMBLE &  Avishai Cohen Ensemble

The set by Yusan was a pulsating hour of music that didn´t sound pieced together or ´fused´ in any way. Instead it ebbed and flowed and easily accommodated all the styles and influence these incrfedible musicians have brought to this ensemble.
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ELVIS THE MOVIE IS HERE

Dee had been impressed by the actors and characters of the black female singers in Elvis: The Movie , who were new names to her other than by reading them from her studies of Aretha Franklin. She had fully enjoyed Elvis; The Movie, though, Then, more or less simultaneously, we both said, ´So often, we only know half the story, don´t we´?