Kansas Smitty's - Things Happened Here - VINYL LP

On this essential new collection of forward-looking jazz reinterpre- tations, Kansas Smitty's bandleader Giacomo Smith delves deep into the catalogues of celebrated yet often overlooked artists that inspire his work with Kansas Smitty's; Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbeck, even Maurice Ravel. Created for the 'Plunderphonia' series for 7K!, itself a reinterpretation of the acclaimed !K7 DJ-Kicks series, the album owes as much to Giacomo's decade of living and playing in London as it does to the forefathers of jazz that he is paying homage to here. The will be marked with a show for the London Jazz Festival at Earth in Hackney on 20th November.A1 High Society (04 22)A2 New Orleans Bump (06 05) A3 Inner Mist (04 26)A4 Blue River (03 43)A5 Water Dance (05 08)B1 Mamanita (05 13)B2 Jungle Blues (05 14)B3 Ganjam (04 58)B4 Pearls (03 39)

Debut album by up and coming Vancouver singer/songwriter Maya Rae! Maya and her brother, Gabriel, started writing songs together in the summer of 2018. Inspired by classic singers like Carole King and Nina Simone, iconic performers such as The Beatles and JoniMitchell as well as modern-day artists like Ed Sheeran and Adele, Maya felt ready to record an album of original material. That's where veteran roots musician and producer, Steve Dawson came in. On the strength of the demo she sent him, Dawson invited Maya to come to Nashville, saying that he had time to record the very next week. She flew down a few days later and almost immediately found herself at Black Hen Studio, surrounded by some of the hottest young musicians in Nashville with whom Steve had gathered to collaborate with Maya on the new material. With a group that included Kai Welch, (keyboards/trumpet) Jamie Dick (drums), John Estes (bass) as well as The Birds Of Chicago on supporting vocals and Dawson on guitars, Maya dove right into five days of intense recording and 'Can You See Me?' is the result. With only one vocal retake in the whole session, the group recorded live off the floor. In Maya's words, 'Can You See Me?' became a tribute to human cooperation and the merging of artistic visions with all the contributions from the musicians coming together. But, as good as the music supporting Maya is, her voice and songs are always the central focus. Melodically challenging, lyrically compelling and beautifully phrased, Maya's songs reflect on experiences with an insight one would usually expect from a much more seasoned performer. InchAll of the songs are relevant to my own life. The title track, 'Can You See Me?' is about choosing to remove the masks we wear to reveal our true selves.

The thematic material of Arcana (1925-27) for orchestra - the score of which is prefaced by a quotation from the sixteenth-century Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus - is derived from the varied repetition of a handful of motifs including a rising tritone/rising tone figure also used in Intégrales. The première was given at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia on 8th April 1927 conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The title of Octandre (1923) refers to it's scoring for an octet of flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone and double bass ('octandrous' refers to a flower having eight stamens). The only work of Varèse to follow a traditional division of movements, namely Assez lent, Très vif et nerveux, Animé et jubilatoire, it grows out of the material stated by the oboe in the opening bars, with Varèse treating the octet essentially as a timbral pool from which he extracts textures of a quite startling originality.