Our meeting on 1st April was led by Graham and was a wonderful mixture of genre and styles, carefully thought out with lots of background information and was very enjoyable.
The first selection was a piece called “Focus II” written by Thijs Van Leer who was the keyboard and flute player in the Dutch rock band Focus. This version was performed by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra who were joined by Thijs Van Leer on flute. The music was arranged by Laurence Cottie and the orchestra was conducted by Levine Andrade.
Graham gave us an interesting back story to the next couple of selections:
‘As the story goes Frank Zappa and his drummer/percussionist Terry Bozzio were in a Los Angeles recording studio in 1976 and overheard several session musicians expressing their dread of being presented with a page of music so difficult, so covered with notes, that the paper would almost appear black. Frank found this hilarious and decided to compose his own “Black Page”.
Originally, he wrote “The Black Page” as a drum solo for Terry. It was fully notated and dauntingly difficult, but Terry kept it on his music stand for weeks, practised it daily and ultimately mastered it. Frank then decided to add a melody that conformed to the rhythm patterns of the drum solo which became known as The Black Page No.1.’
So we listened to the original “Black Page Drum Solo” performed by Terry, which after about 2 minutes, segues into “The Black Page No.1” where we heard the melody Frank wrote. This version was recorded live in late 1976, and was released on his “Live In New York” album. The second percussionist, playing the melody on marimba, that we heard towards the end of the piece, was Ruth Underwood. Over 40 years later, in 2017, Ruth rearranged “The Black Page No.1” for solo piano and so we then heard a recording of her performing it.
The next piece of music was composed by Jon Lord, the keyboard player from the rock band Deep Purple. It is the title track from his 1975 album “Sarabande”. It was performed by a 5-piece rock band, including Jon on keyboards, along with the Philharmonic Hungarica Orchestral conducted by Eberhard Schoener. By contrast, the next piece was “Venus, The Bringer of Peace” form Gustav Holst’s Planet Suite. This version was performed by The Halle Orchestra conducted by James Loughran and was recorded at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester in July 1975.
There were more contrasts in the following selection. First, an Irving Berlin song – “Cheek to Cheek”, this version performed by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band and from their 1976 album “The Penthouse Tapes”. Then, the first movement of Keith Emmerson’s Piano Concerto No.1, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Mayer with Keith Emmerson on piano. For the next piece of music, we visited India. Graham originally heard this tune as an instrumental on an album by Jeff Beck, but he was curious about the original so searched for it on the internet. The song is called “Nadia” and we listened to the original version written and performed by Nitin Sawhney. A short piece was next, a solo guitar piece by Pat Metheny called “Goin’ Ahead” from his album “80/81”. To finish the first part of the session we had some opera , the well-known aria, “Un Bel Di” from Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly. The soprano in this recording was Angela Gheorghiu with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducted by Sir Edward Downes.
The second part of the meeting was shorter but filled again with an eclectic selection of music. It started with a well-known and popular jazz piece, ‘Take Five’, performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet and written by their alto sax player, Paul Desmond. Next, we heard ‘With This Love’, a choir piece composed by Peter Gabriel from his soundtrack to the Martin Scorsese film, ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’. The choirboy was Julian Wilkins. This was followed by a guitar piece called ‘Thistledown’, written and performed by Bill Bruford. Some swing music was next, with Robbie Williams performing the Rodgers and Hart song, ‘Have you met Miss Jones?’ Our session brought to a lovely end as we listened to Sibelius’ wonderful ‘Finlandia’, played by the Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maurice Handford.
Graham had put a lot of time into choosing his selection and it was much appreciated by the members of the group.