A LA CARTE #7- The Oscar Peterson Trio – Night Train (Expanded Edition)

 

We are repurposing the music from a Vinyl's Revenge post of January 26, 2016 as a new montage in our ongoing A la Carte series on For Your Listening Pleasure. The following notes are an update.

This classic jazz piano album Night Train was recorded by The Oscar Peterson Trio almost 60 years ago in Los Angeles on December 15 and 16, 1962. It’s a record that belongs in every collection, whether you’re presently a jazz fan or whether you’ve taken a vow against improvised music, thinking it’s incomprehensible and annoying.

The original album contained just 11 songs, and the re-released digital version adds several more. Verve recordings were always known for their quality of music and the outstanding artwork on their covers. Night Train is one of the most famous jazz albums of all time, and deservedly so.

Today’s re-post expands the original offering with a number of bonus tracks, including some alternate takes of the original material, and a few more hitherto unreleased contemporaneous studio recordings.

Tracks:

Happy-Go-Lucky Local (Aka "Night Train")

Written-By – Duke Ellington

C-Jam Blues

Written-By – Barney Bigard, Duke Ellington

Georgia On My Mind

Written-By – Hoagy Carmichael, Stuart Gorrell

Bags' Groove

Written-By – Milt Jackson

Moten Swing

Written-By – Bennie Moten

Easy Does It

Written-By – Sy Oliver, Trummy Young

Honey Dripper

Written-By – Joe Liggins

Things Ain't What They Used To Be

Written-By – Mercer Ellington, Ted Persons

I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)

Written-By – Duke Ellington, Paul Francis Webster

Band Call

Written-By – Duke Ellington

Hymn To Freedom

Written-By – Oscar Peterson

[VR-13]

Happy-Go-Lucky Local (Aka "Night Train") [Alternative Take]

Written-By – Duke Ellington

Volare

Written-By – Domenico Modugno, Francesci Migliacci*, Mitchell Parish

My Heart Belongs To Daddy

Written-By – Cole Porter

Moten Swing (Rehearsal Take)

Written-By – Bennie Moten

Now's The Time

Written-By – Charlie Parker

This Could Be The Start Of Something

Written-By – Steve Allen

[NEW]

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/The-Oscar-Peterson-Trio-Night-Train/release/2165814 

YouTube Playlist - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5ae6iB5xkhF61vFUWGGD4RGnLgdf1BwR

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/alc-07

Sibelius, Sir Colin Davis, London Symphony Orchestra – Symphonies Nos 5 & 6

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

For our second post featuring the symphonies of Jean Sibelius, I am featuring Cover2Cover a disc I acquired (of all places) at the Virgin store at Heathrow Airport about 15 years ago.

Since the beginning of his recording career, Colin Davis has been a champion of the music of Jean Sibelius, and his highly regarded cycle of the seven symphonies recorded between 1975 and 1979 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra has been a mainstay of many LP and CD collections over the years. This disc, however, is much more recent, part of anther Sibelius cycle from the early 2000’s with the London Symphony on the orchestra’s LSO Live home label.

In my opinion, the performances compare well to the oft-reissued BSO set. Crisp and clear, and helmed by a more mature (and restrained) Davis, these two symphonies get a very valid reading.

Hope you agree!

Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957)
Symphony No 5 In E Flat Major, Op 82
Symphony No 6 In D Minor, Op 104

London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis, condicting
Recorded live 10-11 December 2003 (No 5) and 28-29 September 2002 (No 6) at the Barbican, London

LSO Live – LSO0037
Format: CD
Released: Jun 2004

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/1329...honies-Nos-5-6

YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OL...MshGIfGq7mxmB0

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/01-sibelius-symphony-5-in-e-flat

Ormandy Conducts Sibelius

 

This is my post from this week's Tuesday Blog.

This week's Vinyl's Revenge post is the first of two Tuesday musings featuring the symphonies o Jean Sibelius.

It is fair to say that Eugene Ormandy had the good fortune of performing the music of some great Late Romantic composers he had the pleasure of meeting himself: Bela Bartok, Sergey Rachmaninov, and Jean Sibelius figure especially in his repertoire.

Eugene Ormandy talks about Sibelius:

Meeting Sibelius for the first time, I had the impression of being in the presence of someone almost superhuman. Here was a being I had admired and looked up to all my life — and suddenly I was in his presence. He was a towering man, a towering personality, with a magnificent head and powerful face. His beautiful home was full of records, many of which we had sent him from America throughout the years.

Sibelius’ First Symphony was the “first” for me in another sense — it was the first of the master’s symphonies I ever conducted. This was in 1932, with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra — and we recorded it for RCA Victor in that year. I think perhaps it was the first Sibelius symphony to be recorded outside of Scandinavia. Of course the great Finnish conductor, Sibelius’ friend Kajanus, had broken ground for Sibelius years before, and so had Koussevitzky, Stokowski and Beecham. I have played the First Symphony many times in the intervening thirty years, and it never loses its fascination for me. Recordings have changed a great deal since 1932, and so have interpretations of his works to the end, and he always had admiration for the work of my colleagues Stokowski and Koussevitzky. I will risk immodesty to add that he praised my readings too. His enthusiasm is a source of great pride to me.

The below YouTube link is a compilation of Sibelius symphonies recorded by Ormandy for RCA, one of which featuring the First Symphony I own in my vinyl collection and share on the specific Archive link.

Happy Listening!

Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957)
Symphony No.1 in E Minor, Op.39
Valse Triste, from Kuolema, Op. 44
The Swan of Tuonela, Op. 22 no. 2

Philadelphia Orchestra
Eugene Ormandy, conducting

RCA Red Seal – ARL1-4901
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 1984

Discogs - https://www.discogs.com/release/5222...wan-Of-Tuonela

YouTube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OL...ieV1KBl6xT46K8

Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/symphony...nor-op.-39-iv.

The USAF Heritage of America Band

No. 376 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages is this week's Friday Blog and Podcast. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast376

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Blogger’s Note: As we review our many musical shares from our musical forum activities under our ongoing “222 Day Binge Challenge”, the Friday Blog and Podcast will revisit some themes from past Tuesday Blogs. Today’s montage is part of that exercise. The Tuesday post in question was issued on November 8, 2011. The programme reuses some of the same works and the below commentary is taken almost verbatim from the original post.

This Armed Forces wind band was one of the original Army Air Corps bands, created by order of the Secretary of War on October 1, 1941 and assigned to Barksdale Field, Louisiana. In June 1946, after a short stay at Brooks Field, Texas, the band arrived at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, its current home.

For over half a century, the band has represented the Air Force with musical and military distinction. Members bring music to the mid-Atlantic in live concerts and to the nation in televised events such as The Today show and the DESERT STORM National Victory Parade, as well as presidential inaugural events. The Heritage of America Band has performed ceremonies for U.S presidents and foreign heads of state, including the Queen of England and the President of France. Using today's technology, the band reaches a world wide audience through its website and compact disc recordings.

The band's 45 men and women are assigned to two primary ensembles: the USAF Heritage of America Concert Band and the Blue Aces popular music ensemble. The concert band breaks down into five smaller touring groups: the Heritage Brass Quintet, the Langley Winds woodwind ensemble, Rhythm in Blue jazz ensemble, and are newest dixie style ensemble Heritage Ramblers. Each year, the band's components travel more than 30,000 miles to perform hundreds of concerts for listeners across a six-state region from Pennsylvania to South Carolina.

The programme I assembled, for the most part, uses material I originally downloaded from MP3.COM and the band's old website that provided downloadable tracks. You may find some of these now on YouTube, including their performance of the Keith Gates flute concerto.

I think you will (still) love this music too.