★Dusk Fire
Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy
Conjoining music, poetry with visual art was a logical step in the climate of the time and the early 70’s saw a variety of gigs by Lady June,writer, painter and eccentric, who in her travels around the Mediterranean had met Soft Machine’s Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen in the burgeoning hippy scene of Mallorca. 1974 saw the first performances of her ‘Uppers and Downers’ show in Amsterdam. The poems from this would form the basis of ‘Linguistic Leprosy’ and eventually be published by Virgin Books i…
Edge of Time
Voted top singer in Melody Maker’s 1971 Jazz Poll, Norma subsequently recorded this, her first album, to be released the following year on Decca’s Argo label. Although she began her career in 1965 singing jazz standards, her exploration of the use of voice took Norma to experimentalism and the evolvement of a wordless approach to improvisation that she was to make distinctively her own.Featuring the cream of modern British jazz talent including Kenny Wheeler, Paul Rutherford, Frank Ricotti, …
On The Radio : BBC Sessions 1971
This debut release of The New Jazz Orchestra BBC broadcasts from 1971 measure a year of change for the band’s musical director, Neil Ardley. The first session captures the full majesty of the NJO at the height of its powers in a ‘Jazz Club’ session from February with a 20-performer line-up pre-recorded at London’s Camden Theatre. Humphrey Lyttelton helms proceedings; musicians include Ardley, Harry Beckett, Ian Carr, Henry Lowther, Derek Wadsworth, Mike Gibbs, Don Rendell, Barbara Thompson, Dick…
Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe
Reissued for the first time, The New Jazz Orchestra’s 1968 release ‘Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe’ features key players in modern British jazz including Henry Lowther, Ian Carr, Michael Gibbs, Derek Wadsworth, Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Frank Ricotti, Jack Bruce and Jon Hiseman, under the directorship of Neil Ardley. ‘Nardis’ features solos by Ian Carr on flugelhorn, George Smith on tuba and – rarely heard – Jack Bruce on acoustic bass. Complementing this is what might be…
A symphony of amaranths
Scored for a large jazz orchestra, this highly-collectable 1971-recorded album also contains two vocal settings by Ardley, remembered also for his ground-breaking work leading the New Jazz Orchestra, these being the earliest example of his vocal music. The first is a setting of Edward Lear’s famous nonsense poem “The Dong with a Luminous Nose”, wonderfully and uniquely told by Ivor Cutler backed by an unusual chamber orchestra containing keyboards, vibraphone, harp, violin and cello that prov…
Kaleidoscope Of Rainbows
Dusk Fire Records has afforded music lovers fresh opportunity to peer into one of the genre’s most ground-breaking works in the late Neil Ardley’s ‘Kaleidoscope of Rainbows’: re-mastered from the original tapes, with a 16-page booklet featuring previously unreleased sessions and publicity photography and notes by Ardley and an appreciation of his work by Barbara Thompson. This seminal 1976 release, produced by Paul Buckmaster and engineered by Martin Levan at Morgan Studios, London, feature…