Iain Cameron's Diary
"Click here to access the Fruitful Album" - Click here to visit Music for the Highveld Project


The Highveld Project

Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries

2002-06-01 - 6:30 p.m.

Just as well I had a bit of a cruise yesterday - today has been quite energetic - ironing, shopping, cooking tidying up, planning for tomorrow's socialising. I have cooked some Mediterranean style mushrooms in a garlic and tomato sauce, some chicken and lemon with a variety of orange, yellow and green vegetables, plus some curry for James and I to eat today - and also started the pudding strategy. Why a strategy? well the basic idea is fruit - as it is, or as a fruit salad or as a dressing to some meringue bases which someone else is bringing with a Creme Fraiche bed. A lot of beer, juice and water plus a couple of boxes of South African wine.

I have also been making CDs in the hope that tomorrow is a sales opportunity. Annie Dixon - the curate - rang and I made sure that she highlights at a suitable point the way that people ccan practically support Lynne and Grace is by buying one of the CDs which will mean that over 90% of the funds they provide go straight to the front-line.

Peter Chatterton will bring his video and I hope Grace and Lynne feel up to answering a few questions. Cleveland Williams also left a message with James to say he would come which is great. He is a baritone and counter tenor from the Bahamas although he has also studied in Rome and it was his idea to use music to raise money for this cause. When I saw how succesful he was - and how much fun his recital was - I decided that I had to be able to get something together. Cleveland is also a brilliant cook - way in advance of my improvisatory style.

Anyway I really want to get Cleveland talking on video - I hope Lynne and Grace will have the energy for this as well.

Annie sings - Pete and I got her to sing a specially adapted version of The Weight recently - a song she hadnt heard before. I will have to play her the Cassandra Wilson version tomorrow. I have been falling more and more in love with that CD during the course of the day.

I have just been listening to the first of a four part Radio 3 series about Mike and Kate Westbrook. I have a 1967 Mike Westbrook Band album from the classic 60s jazz scene which launched John MacLaughlan and Dave holland plus many others. The programme skipped that entirely - its thesis is that the Westbrooks developed a new form of European music theatre starting around 1977.

Kate especially comes out of 60s artschool background embracing a knowldge of art movements Dada, conceptual, performance but Mike was also keen to start from Ellington but push out into unknown territory. Somebody used the term "masterpiece" about their 150 minute work Cortege.

One theme that came up was the way Westbrook was able to build his band using the best musicians from the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. Steve Pheasant was in one of the first incarnations of this outfit. Guy Barker (ex NYJO) spoke about how demanding it was to take a solo in Cortege - how as he watched people coming back from the soloing position during performances they would be sweating and shaking.

I had come to the conclusion that the Westbrooks were never going to get recognition in this country - that the enterprise was too progressive and too European for that. But on Tuesday evening there is a first broadcast on an R3 commission. Maybe I should try to record that direct to CD.

There is a limited genre which most contemporary UK jazz bigband writing falls into. The Westbrooks can't be praised too highly for breaking out of that. The other writer who gets closest to waht they do is Carla Bley I think - she draws from the same cultural sources I think although maybe she doesnt go as far in dramatising the band itself.

Jake and I were thinking of going out into the landscape - it was great on the hill at 9.00 am this morning - but it was really too hot. We walked down to the shops instead so I could get so CD labels and some film. Robert wants some stills of Lynne. I also picked up a remaindered guide to Prague - looks extremely promising.

Postscript Fell asleep on the sofa and dragged myself upstairs around 4am and got under the covers on with the radio on. Some suitable ambient muisc - maybe Kiss FM Chillout. Up came a Judy Tzuke song treated within that genre. The original was on the album "Welcome To the Cruise" too long ago. Not sure about the lyric sentiments but the melody line is really a piece of work and fitted the current treatment well - I think it is HeadCandy who have put this together. The masterstroke was when they slipped the melody into "Rainy Days and Sundays" - utterly wonderful. Removed any lingering qualms I might have about getting stuck into "We've Only Just Begun".

PPS Tried to follow the HC thread - some readers will know where this leads. It transpires this is a name for a dark hours period on Jazz FM - a station which can vary to average to consistently engaging depending on the hour of the day. The HC links led me to Thursday Afternoon - an Eno album which I got at an independent record shop in Devon run by Mary and Roger. Mary went to school with Srarah who is married to Geoffery - the bass player in HORN. We used to drop by on the way back from the Scillies and try to boost the business. I hadn't realise that Howard Budd was involved in Thursday Afternoon - or that it was regarded as an ultimate point in ambient music - reviewers compare it with Cage's 4 mins 33 secs. I think Eno's writing has influenced me more than his music - esp A Year with Swollen Apendices. Both Paul and I thought something like "damn we are not letting him get away with this single handed".

Just getting there - the Jazz FM programme is Hed Kandi which also seems to be a label offshoot - selling its wares off the JFM site.

previous - next