Light aircraft are wonderful things, most especially when one is allowed to open the window whilst flying over a magnificent place, such as Tasmania’s Freycinet Peninsula.
Musically, this post celebrates both an incredible view, and the singular pleasure of being aloft in a small plane, open to the air.
(photo copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 8.13 a.m. on 6 March 2018, looking north, with Wineglass Bay at centre)
Too many people now go there, but Freycinet National Park is still a very special place.
(When this old codger and his beloved first went there, one hand was more than enough to count the number of other walkers we encountered. Four decades later, in 2018, the formerly-wretched access road was sealed, and car/bus parks had been built. On ideal days like this one, by mid-morning all parking spaces would be full, and a human traffic jam would be snaking its way up the now-upgraded and conspicuous track to the vantage point which looks down on Wineglass Bay. Said vantage point is now often chock with inane chatter and selfie-sticks. Blessedly, most selfie-stickers proceed no further)
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Arguably, (some of us would say, “inarguably”) Andrea Keller is Australian jazz’s most consistently rewarding composer.
She is also a very fine pianist, and a remarkable leader of many and varied ensembles.
(not coincidentally, Andrea has been/is also a non-egocentric member of many and varied other ensembles)
Not every gifted musician makes great records.
Andrea Keller does, and each one of hers is distinct, so I do urge you to click here.
This quartet performance was delivered at Montsalvat in June 2012, with saxophonist Ian Whitehurst, trumpeter Eugene Ball and drummer Joe Talia:
The late great John Hartford (1937-2001) was one of a kind.
A father figure of so-called “newgrass”, Hartford was also a great champion of older rural American musics, and of older, “backwoods” musicians, fiddlers most especially.
Some people who have a “big hit” waste years of their lives on usually-futile attempts to have more hits.
Hartford went exactly the other way.
Having authored one of the 20th century’s best-loved songs, Hartford used its royalties to free him to do exactly as he pleased, with zero regard for “commercial potential”
A fine obituary is here.
The relevant big record company was horrified by his 1971 album Aereoplane and decided to devote absolutely no further promotional effort to Hartford.
The album is now regarded as a highly influential, landmark release.
Opening the little plane’s window as we looked down over the Freycinet Peninsula, I fondly remembered that disc’s deliciously eccentric, almost-titlepiece:
Here, Hartford sang and played banjo, Vassar Clements fiddle, Norman Blake guitar and mandolin, Tut Taylor dobro and Randy Scruggs bass.