Here are some videos

http://delicatessenmusic.com

The original St Ethelburgas was destroyed by the IRA bomb in 1993 – it was rebuilt as a multi-faith centre. It’s really a great venue and this should be a special night. I’ve been playing with Delicatessen for a while now and the gigs are a delight. Lots of music from the Balkan and Mediterranean area with beautiful tunes from Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria and other countries in the region – also with influences from Sephardic, Klezmer and arabic music.

Delicatessen gigs are quite intimate affairs: singer/accordionist Paressa weaves stories of the origin of the songs and charms the audience as does the interplay of the beautiful voices of Paressa, percussionist Duygu, and oud specialist Patricia. The melodies are beautiful and are framed in varying arrangements with the soulful violin of Mutsumi, Paressa’s free wheeling accordion, Patricia’s expressive oud and the pulse provided by Patrick and Duygu on darbucka, riq and various percussion. Jeremy’s guitar is such a harmonic and rhythmic rock and foundation I have a lot of freedom as a bass player.

Pakaw are also playing and are a special band indeed. Delicatessen’s character is partly former as it exists as a band with a majority of female musicians, Pakaw is all women and characterised by the harmonic and melodic possibilities provided by four great voices – Paressa and Duygu (again) with Katerina and Olympia as they range across beautiful songs from Greece, Turkey, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing them play live and rumour is some collaborations between the groups might be in order.

Really hoping to see a few of you there. Entry is £12 for two high quality acts in a beautiful venue. Doors open at 6:45 and the music starts at 7:30.

Links:
Delicatessen website
Pakaw on facebook
Pakaw on Reverbnation
Delicatessen on facebook
Delicatessen on Bandcamp
Delicatessen on twitter
St Ethelburgas

Harriet Tubman – Ascension
Harriet Tubman is a trio of Melvin Gibbs (bass), Brandon Ross(guitar) and JT Lewis (drums) here expanded with DJ Singe and DJ Logic on turntables and electronics and Ron Miles on trumpet. Paying tribute to and featuring the classic phrases of Coltrane’s famous record it uses an approach redolent of Miles Davis’s Agharta and Bitches Brew bands updated with brilliant use of electronics. This funks like a wild thing and explores sonic tensions and colours at the same time. Wild! (iTunes, Amazon etc)

(Let it build, it does)

Gretchen Parlato – Lost and Found
Gretchen Parlato is a most intriguing singer with a beautiful voice. I was gutted when I missed out on her quickly sold out show at the London Jazz Festival. Her latest album is produced by man of the moment Robert Glasper and it’s a wonderful record featuring beautiful originals and unique takes on Blue in Green, Juju and covers of Simply Red and Lauryn Hill/Mary J Blige. Exquisite. (iTunes, Amazon etc)

Terri Lyne Carrington – The Mosaic Project
I can never spell her name but Terri is one of the greatest drummers around today. On this project she has collected a stellar cast of great female musicians. Some of which I was familiar: Esperanza Spalding, Geri Allen, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Nona Hendryx, Gretchen Parlato, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Patrice Rushen and Sheila E. Phew! But it also features also some great musicians I’d not heard of like Helen Sung, Tineke Postma, Ingrid Jensen and Linda Taylor. It’s a special jazz project that manages a musical unity despite the diverse cast. (iTunes, Amazon etc)

Khyam Allami – Resonance/Dissonance
Beayutiful! Allami is a British based oud player of Iraqi origin. He has created a special album here with acres of space and silence, intense mood creation and the most beautiful oud playing. Most tunes are minimal and sparse but there’s a balance throughout the album of more upbeat moods. Allami who currently plays drums in psychedelic rock band Knifeworld has created something special with this record. (iTunes, Amazon etc)

Steve Lawson – 11 Reasons Why 3 is Greater Than Everything
One of my favourite of Steve’s records. Like all Steve’s records it’s music that happens to have been created with a bass guitar, effects and loopers, but first of all, it’s music. This one features plenty of lyrical fretless and ranges between melodic instrumental songs, ambient moods and free jazz. Really worth checking out!
Available on Bandcamp, name your price

John Daversa – Junk Wagon (The Big Band Album)
An amazing big band fusion record with a cast of LA musical heavyweights, this features a storming rhythm section of Jerry Watts Jr and Gene Coye and the musical brilliance of John Daversa – a great cmnposer, orchestrator and soloist.
Available from John’s website

Jill Scott – The Light of the Sun
The Philadelphia poet of soul’s latest is largely improvised freestyle in the studio with the fabulous Adam Blackstone on bass. hat a voice, gets me every time!
(Amazon, iTunes etc)

Steve Billman trio plus one – Odd Times for an Odd World
Melodic and intense electric jazz with great performances from underrated LA bassist Billman (the best kept secret of LA), Brad Rabuchin on sinuous guitar, Andy Suzuki on soulful saxophone and the masterful Matt Starr on drums. Relaxed, organic, melodic, intense.
Available at CD Baby, Amazon)

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/stevebillman

Fer Isella – #Cosecha
Out of Argentina Fer Isella’s music is experimental, beautiful and very accessible. Ranging from post-Miles jazz interaction to minimal piano ballad, from electronic sounds and folkloric elements to post-rock to atmospheric sung ballads, this is a record deserving a wider audience. Check it out!
Available via Bandcamp

Cuong Vu 4-tet – Leaps of Faith
Contemporary jazz that explores sound and atmosphere as equal relations to harmony, melody and rhythm. Intense moods are created, standards are reinterpreted, sounds are looped, lyrical melodies are voiced. Reference points might be Mark Isham’s music or Miles Davis’ early 70s tone poems but trumpeter Vu has a style of his own. Brilliant record!
Available via http://music.cuongvu.com/ and Bandcamp

Little Dragon – Ritual Union
Swedish electronic band whose eponymous debut album was an instant favourite with me. Their second with it’s 80s influenced sound took longer to grow on me, but did. This, their third is starker and more obviously club/dance influenced. The singer’s voice has a beautiful fragility. I still love their debut more than the others but this is a fine album.
(Available on iTunes, Amazon etc)

Austin Peralta – Endless Planets
A child prodigy whose debut album at 15 featured Ron Carter, this is pianist Peralta’s third record. It will hopefully reach a wide audience not least because it’s the first asoustic jazz release on Ninjatunes and because of Peralta’s brilliant contributions to recent sets by Thundercat, Flying Lotus and the Brainfeeder collective. You get the feeling Peralta will make better records but it’ll do well for now. I love this tune (Algiers)
Available via Amazon/iTunes

The Deep MO – Funk in the Third Quarter
Brit jazz funk-led by the talented bassist/singer Yolanda Charles, it’s refreshingly old fashioned in a classic groove way!
Currently available via Bandcamp

http://thedeepmo.bandcamp.com/

You probably know me well enough by now to know I wouldn’t have stuck to ten! Sometimes it may be seven sometimes twelve…all recommended. This year has been more about discovering music recorded in previous years: much time exploring Keith Jarrett’s and Paul Motian’s back catalogue, discovering Flying Lotus and that whole LA scene and finding records like Lori Williams (great jazz singer)’s debut from 2010 and Zoe Rahman’s music but the records above are all highly recommended.

http://philwbass.com/2010/12/17/favourite-albums-of-2010/
http://philwbass.com/2009/12/31/favourite-records-of-2009/

The band:
Muzmee (violin)
Jeremy Halliwell (guitar)
Patricia de Mayo (oud, bass, percussion, vocals)
Patrick Wendel (percussion)
Paressa Daniilidou (accordion, vocals)
Duygu Camurcuoglu (percussion, vocals)
Phil Wain (bass)

Delicatessen website

Najma Akhtar- Qareeb/Atish
Jose Chepito Areas (£10)
Backdoor – Backdoor (£10)
Jeff Beck – Wired/
Raoul Bjorkenheim – Krakatau
Hamiett Bluiett – a solo blues concert
James Brown’s Funky People Part 2
Peter Brotzmann – 14 Love Poems
Bartok – Miraculous Mandarin (Solti)/String Qtets 1&2
Hariprasad Chaurasia – Flute Recital
Conjure – Music for the texts of Ishmael Reed (Kip Hanrahan/Steve Swallow/Jamaaladeen Tacuma)
Stanley Clarke – Journey to Love/Schooldays/
John Coltrane – Crescent/Ole/Duke Ellington & John Coltrane/Plays the Blues/Ascension
Steve Coleman – Sine Die
Willie Colon – El Baquine de Angelitos Negros
Commodores – Machine Gun
Miles Davis – Miles in the Sky/Heard Round the World (Berlin/Tokyo)
Doneda – Lazro – General Gramafon (Laurence Cottle
Richard Davis – Philosophy of the Spiritual (Chick Corea)
Eric Dolphy – Outward Bound
Duke Ellington – Nutcracker Suite/Back to Back (Duke and Johnny Hodges)/At Newport
Funkadelic – Uncle Jam Wants You
Gong – Espresso II/Gazeuse/Shamal/Radio Gnome Invisible
Kip Hanrahan – Days and Nights of Blue Luck Inverted (Jack Bruce/Carmen Lundy/Steve Swallow)
Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland/Rainbow Bridge/Are You Experienced/ Axis Bold as Love/The Cry of LOve
Chaka Khan – What Cha Gonna Do For Me?
BB King – The Best Of
Last Exit – Last Exit (£5)
Living Color – Vivid/Times Up/
Ryo Kawasaki Group with Dave Leibman – Nature’s Revenge
John McLaughlin – Electric Guitarist/Live at the RFH 1989
Lockwoods – Lockwoods (£5) Bunny Brunel on fretless
Ramon Morris – Sweet Sister Funk (£10)
Pat Metheny – Bright Size Life (featuring Jaco)
Joni Mitchell – Mingus
Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane – Monk/Trane (double)
David Murray – Ming’s Samba/The Hill/Spirituals/Ming
Oliver Nelson – Blues and the Abstract Truth (£5)
Ohio Players – Angel (£2)
Orquestra Reve – La Explosion Del Momento! (classic Son Cubano)
Outside – Almost In (Cleveland Watkiss/Matt Cooper/Byron Wallen
Persuasion A – Two steps to easier breathing
Power Tools (Melvin Gibbs/Bill Frisell/Ronald Shannon Jackson) £8
Flora Purim – Everynight (featuring Jaco Pastorius) £2
Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Mothers Milk
Return to Forever – No Mystery
Max Roach and Clifford Brown – The Best of Max Roach and Clifford Brown in Concert/At Basin Street
Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan – Ask Rufus
The Ruts – The Crack/Grin & Bear It
Erik Satie – Piano Music (Peter Lawson)
John Scofield – Blue Matter
Sonny Sharrock – Guitar/Seize the Rainbow
Wayne Shorter – Speak No Evil
Slave – Slave (£10)/The Concept/Stone Jam (£10)/
Steel Pulse – Handsworth Revolution
Jamaaladeen Tacuma – Jukebox (Byard Lancaster/Ronnie Drayton)
McCoy Tyner – The Real McCoy/Looking Out/
Michael Urbaniak – Serenade for the City (Marcus Miller/Kenny Kirkland)
Van Halen – Van Halen
Various Artists – Classic Funk 3 (Mastercuts)/The Rebirth of the Cool Too/
Miroslav Vitous – Mountain in the Clouds (McLaughlin/Joe Henderson/Hancok/DeJohnette/Chambers
Weather Report – Sporting Life/Black Market/Heavy Weather/Night Passage/
Lenny White – Venusian Summer £10
Cassandra Wilson – Jump World/She Who Weeps/Blue Skies/
World Saxophone Quartet – Plays Duke Ellington/Dances and Ballads/Rhythm and Blues
Stevie Wonder – Innervisions

12inches
Raw Stylus – Pushin Against the Flow (white vinyl) £10
Leo’s Sunship – Give Me the Sunshine £5
Calvin Brooks/Hari Paris – My Favourite Things £2
Lalomie Washburn – Try My Love £2
Martine Girault – Revival (Ltd Collectors Edition) £2
http://soul-vendor.blogspot.com/2009/02/martine-girault-revival-1992.html

Andrew Hill – Point of Departure

The Mediterranean/Balkan/Rebetiko band I play with has released a 30 minute CD. You can download it or stream it from the link above if you’re interested. You can name your own price, we’ll use the money to finance copyright clearance and further recordings.

The stream is lower quality audio than the download but will give you the idea. It’s a great music project: 5 women, 3 men; musicians from Greece, Turkey, France, Japan and the UK etc. Many of the songs are from 1930s Greek rebetiko music. You hear an accordion, vocals, acoustic guitar, violins, oud, bass and percussion – even tablas on one track.

Oyfn Veg is a Yiddish poem by Itzik Manger we set to music – it tells the story of a mother who won’t let her son grow up

To Hassapaki, I Garsona (the waitress) and To Pasoumi (the slippers) are from 1930s Greek underground music (rebetiko).

To Kokkino Foustani (the red dress) is a Greek song written in the 1960s.

Sousta (clasp) is an live uptempo rebetiko medley with a slower introduction (recorded before I joined Patricia plays bass on this.

Verka is a traditional 9/8 Gypsy dance tune from Serbia.

As the band noob I play only on tracks 3-5.

The band play regularly at London and the shows are always engaging

http://delicatessenmusic.com

I’m really enjoying gigging with acoustic melodicists Delicatessen with a rush of gigs as we warm up to
summer…and bookings already coming in for the autumn.

Delicatessen have a line=up of up to eight people: accordion/vocals, violin, violin/vocals, percussion, percussion/vocals, oud/vocals/percussion, guitar and bass. We play songs from Greece and Turkey and the Balkan regions.

On Wednesday 22nd June we will be playing the Regents Place Summer Festival. This will be a free public performance beginning at 1pm.
Regents Place is near Euston and Warren Street.
http://www.regentsplace.com/summer-festival.aspx Our performance will follow one by the Maria Fidelis School Choir.

Friday 1st July will see us return to Jamboree, a fabulous and unique venue in Limehouse. Don’t let the location put you off: this is a stunning venue only 15-20 minutes from central London by DLR. Doors
will open at 8pm and entry is £5. Cable Street Studios, 566 Cable
Street, London E1W 3HB http://jamboreevenue.co.uk/archives/402

The weekend is all Delicatessen magic as, the very next day (July 2nd),
we play The World Party in the Park,in Eastrop Park, Basingstoke. Free entry 12-6pm…Not sure when we’re on yet, details to follow. The line-up also includes Keith Waite‘s Macusi Players who are well worth
seeing. http://www.worldpartyinthepark.org.uk/WhatsOn.html

Sunday 3rd July, that same weekend, brings a Delicatessen performance at the inaugural Cally Festival. The event will be held on Caledonian Road just North of Kings Cross and will feature a range of pop-up stalls, music and the arts, food and sports activities in a true community street festival. The event is due to run from 12 till 6m – we’re due on the main stage at 1:25pm.
http://thecallyfestival.com/thecallyfestival/about

On Sunday 10 July Delicatessen play at Hackney Forge, 243a Victoria Park Rd, London E9 7HD. 18:30 – 21:00. We are return to the beautiful space just by Victoria Park. Last year in July we had a very, very good time there on a warm summer’s evening. Come and join us for this one..
we may well be ringing in the Delis’ summer break (however long or
short these summer breaks ever are…) after this one.
http://www.hackneyforge.com/

In other news we have expanded our web presence: now, in addition to at
our main website, http://delicatessenmusic.com/ and our Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/deli.music , we’re also on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/delicatessen1

OK, I have a queue of music to listen to right now and tons of work on. I’m learning tunes for Delicatessen, I have the new Hiromi album queued up; I haven’t checked out the new The Fierce and the Dead record and I’m fascinated by Terri Lyne Carrington’s Mosaic project. So, this record by one of my favourite musicians, Steve Lawson, has sat awaiting listening for a while.

But now I’ve listened and I love it! The sound is lush, the playing is luscious and the first impression is that it goes deeper into several areas of musical Steveness. I love Grace and Gratitude and Behind Every Word’s song based flights of fancy; this record gets deep into the improvised melodies, the lyrical fretless expressionism and the mood creation, the ambient, even the free jazz!

OK, I listened first without reading the track titles of the extensive notes Steve provides so first impressions could be noted. These were types straight onto digital post-its while listening and have not been put into sentences or even English! The fact that later tracks have more notes merely reflects that I had more time while listening to type rather then more to say!

1 One Year Afloat: wistful – 1st chords deceptive as it hints at a more straightforward style than the track eventually heads down – beautiful melody
2 Travelling North: contemplative chordal style – gtr influenced – great distorto solo – fabulousity
3 Small Marvels: fretless melodic wonder gets space-age, great effects
4 This Merican Life: spacious…ambience – ultimate slow build – textures and clipped beats entering halfway – where range of voices enter – sometimes Tornguitarlike – sometimes trumpetlike – always bass, gorgeous melodic fretless finally lyrical as epilogue
5 Take Your Time, Choose Your Route, Pick Your Tunes: carpet of more trad multitrack bass with fretless solo – lovely – great track – headnoddingness – great sounds
6 I Will Fix it Tonight by Dining on Artichokes -sparse intro – experisounds – freestyle fretless melodic fragments, varied voices – more freeform improv ratther than single narrative,
7 I Could Get Used to This: more conventional, uplifting chord sequence – more fretless soliloquising – distroted/processed voice enters serves to emphasise beauty of background lines as much as anything
8 Moon Landing on What: atmosphere, electronics, soundscape, ambient, fun
9 The Time it Takes: passionate melodising
10 Minor Miracles: 1/8 note rhythm, strong chord sequence, wistful tune – great use of repitition -as Prince once said – there’s joy in repition – led me to sing along (to my wife’s disapproval) understated but strong with delicious refelctive ending – like protracted echoes
11 Nothing Can Prepare: beautiful, intense melodic playing over wistful soundsacpe

OK< interesting to see what the second listen will bring!

I’ve improved a lot of things since then, notably intonation! But the experience that summer certainly set me on the way to becoming a better musician!