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Thursday 14th January was trumpeter Kenny Wheeler’s 80th birthday. John Fordham in the Grauniad offers a review of the Birthday Concert that was held this week at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Image: Juan Carlos Hernandez

It sounds like it was a predictably wonderful evening – with a monster band assembled to pay tribute to this most modest of master musicians: including Dave Holland, Evan Parker, John Taylor, Stan Sulzmann and Norma Winstone… all players with long histories of fruitful collaboration with Wheeler.

To catch some of the atmosphere, try out these recordings of Kenny Wheeler with the Colours Jazz Orchestra, recorded in Verona, Italy in February 2006.

As far as I know, the Verona date has never been released commercially, but you can pick up the superb Nineteen Plus One (recorded with the same orchestra) if you like what you hear.

Happy Birthday K.W.!

(Edit: for those of you who don’t want to download, Yann sent me the link to Kenny Wheeler on Deezer)

Here’s a blog that could be worth following during the year: the Grauniad‘s jazz writer John Fordham has started writing a weekly ‘episode’ that will eventually span “50 Great Moments of Jazz”. Fuel for education, debate and controversy no doubt.

It’s likely that Fordham’s perspective will encompass a ‘British’ view of the music, and I guess he’ll include at least a couple of moments that will relate to the local UK  scene (will we hear from Nat Gonella, Humphrey Lyttleton, Mike Westbrook or Courtney Pine?).  And it’s very possible that Fordham will avoid some of the classicist/progressive debates (Stanley Crouch vs Dave Douglas for example) that have so concerned US jazz cognoscenti since the 1980s.

Anyway, this week he starts with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, (illustrated above) which is probably the only place to start if you want to post a recording each week.  By the end of February I’m guessing we’ll have cruised past King Oliver and Louis Armstrong‘s Chicago recordings, and hopefully have paid tribute to Paul Whiteman and Bix on the way through…

PS. Observant listeners/readers may notice that the version of Livery Stable Blues included in this post is NOT the 1917 ODJB version, but a much more swinging 1945 version by Muggsy Spanier‘s band.

One of the more fascinating features of the Guardian online over the past few months has been the regular contributions of photojournalist John D. McHugh. McHugh is spending 6 months with the US 173rd Airborne in Afghanistan (it’s his third “tour” in Afghanistan – what a way to make a living). McHugh’s work is insightful and moving, and I hope he gains some recognition for it.

Despite being embedded with an American military unit, McHugh’s photos and stories comes across as stark and factual, and are all the more engaging because they effectively communicate some of the grim reality of war for the Afghan people as well as the western soldiers stationed there.

McHugh makes a honest attempt to remain objective, whether he is documenting the days of boredom and minutes of terror for soldiers sitting in a mountain outpost, or the real communication challenges faced by local Afghan citizens and US soldiers.

McHugh’s approach to war journalism is an interesting contrast to the recent coverage by NBC, whose camera team was in-and-out of the country in one week, (they were heading onwards to Baghdad). and whose presence may have contributed to the friendly-fire death of a US soldier.

Photo by Violinsoldier

But perhaps some of the most insightful images of the Afghanistan conflict have been taken by soldiers themselves. Violinsoldier’s images on Flickr are a fascinating mix of beauty and mundanity: photos of his MRE meal-packs sit next to candid snaps of local people taken while on patrol.

Currently the internet provides ready access to a western view on this conflict. Hopefully in the long term (if you believe the debatable supposition that the situation in Afghanistan can be improved), more local voices and images will be seen and heard around the world.

Photo: Nrbelex

A nice column in the Guardian by Instapundit‘s Glenn Reynolds on the complex interplay between the conservative/liberal dichotomy in US politics and the role of religion on both sides of the divide…

“…religiosity – something often associated, especially by Europeans, with American conservatism – is also a staple of the US left. Just look at that icon of US liberalism, Hillary Clinton. The north-eastern style leftism associated with her is sometimes frankly, sometimes implicitly, religious.”