Benj’s blog!

(Apologies, this entry doesn’t flow as well as I would have hoped and probably isn’t all that coherent. I just wanted to get something posted to my blog for May! Hopefully I’ll have chance to edit it later.)

If you look around the average suburban street in the U.K. you could be forgiven for thinking that the education system is failing, yet each year one hears in the news that the pass rates for G.C.S.Es and A Levels are up. How can both statements be true? Here are some random thoughts on the issue:
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Recently I was in Nottingham doing a spot of shopping and called in (as usual) to Virgin to spend some time perusing the Jazz CDs. The CD playing was really ’swinging’ and I decided to find out who it was: Tomasz Stanko. He’s a polish trumpeter and releases on ECM.

The CD playing in the shop was Suspended Night — which spent some time recently around the top of the charts on Amazon UK — and features Stanko with a youngish trio: Slawomirem Kurkiewiczem (bass), Michal Miskiewicz (drums) and Marcinem Wasilewski (piano).

As far as I can tell the quartet got together on the Soul of Things (2001) and Suspended Night was their second recording. The musicians work really well together. It’s hard to believe they swing so hard, given that they’ve been playing together for only 3 years!

Check the CDs out!

Another Saturday, another trip to Virgin. This time I found a DVD entitled “Paco de Lucía & Group”, published by TDK mediactive. It’s a recording of a show in Germering from 1996. The quality and the production are fantastic! As for the playing — is there any question? — the octet (yes, there are 8 artists) are in amazing form! Highly recommended!

Why have I posted this to my blog? Well, I’ve been a fan of Paco for quite some time and this was the first time I’ve come across a DVD featuring Paco and his group. The only DVDs featuring Paco I know about are:

• Light and Shade — An Interview with the great man
• Meeting of the Spirits — Paco with John McLaughlin and Larry Coryell
• Flamenco — Film by Carlos Saura

I also picked up some more Charlie Haden, and a Telarc release from Monty Alexander featuring Ernest Ranglin.

Should be an interesting evening!