　とんでもないCD - おやっさん的日常

昨日は Mark Radcliffe の The Folk Show で、本日は Bruce MacGregor の Travelling Folk で取り上げられ、それぞれ1曲ずつBBCラジオから流れた、このとんでもないCD。
‘As I Roved Out’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s44v9
‘Lassie Lie Near Me’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s4pg8

Quercus

アーティスト: Tabor,Ballamy,Warren
出版社/メーカー: Ecm Records
発売日: 2013/06/04
メディア: CD
この商品を含むブログ (4件) を見る

http://boycottingtrends.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/cd-review-quercus-taborballamywarren.html
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/june-tabor-iain-ballamy-huw-warren-quercus-1.1363118
これが英国では売れているようです。すごいなぁ。
第75位（現時点）34 days in the top 100
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quercus/dp/B00AWXZ9TC/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1367547177&sr=1-1
両方ともフォークのプログラムでありながら、レーベルからしても、これは正にジャズ。
この3人、一体、何者でしょうか。

June Tabor
An important figure in British music since the 1960s, June Tabor first attracted attention singing unaccompanied traditional songs in the folk clubs (The present disc includes a beautiful solo performance of “Brigg Fair”). Tabor’s distinguished discography has emphasized the primacy of traditional material but she has proven to be a gripping interpreter of songs from many sources. The recipient of a number of prizes, she swept the BBC’s Folk Awards in 2012 winning prizes as folk singer of the year, and album and track of the year prizes for her collaborations with Oysterband on “Ragged Kingdom” (Topic Records). “June Tabor’s repertoire has never been blinkered by a quest for authenticity: she has covered all territories from Weimar ballads via jazz to the most trad of trad English folk. And yet, the sense of scholarship that she brings to her work never lets you forget that you are listening to, perhaps, the greatest interpreter and curator of indigenous British music”, said Chris Jones of BBC Online.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/55bd9053-241d-4ba5-b0b3-f9b792ab1c7d
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16954049

Iain Ballamy
Iain Ballamy’s been a major contributor to aspects of improvised music in Britain for three decades, leading his own quartet at Ronnie Scott’s when just 20. He was a co-founder of Loose Tubes, the innovative large ensemble, in 1984, has had long playing associations with Django Bates and Billy Jenkins and has played with many major figures in international jazz including Hermeto Pascoal, Gil Evans, Dewey Redman, Mike Gibbs and more. In 2001 he was awarded the BBC Radio 3 special award for innovation at the British Jazz Awards. He is well-known to ECM listeners for his work with the experimental group Food of which he is co-leader with Thomas Strønen (albums include “Quiet Inlet” and “Mercurial Balm”). Other current projects include a saxophone and button accordion duo with Stian Carstensen, and the jazz quartet Anorak with Gareth Williams, Steve Watts and Martin France. Ballamy’s invitation to play on June Tabor’s album “At The Wood’s Heart”, as well as collaboration with Huw Warren in a number of contexts, led to the formation of Quercus.
http://www.ballamy.com/

Huw Warren
Welsh-born Huw Warren played cello and organ before attending Goldsmiths College in London where he studied with John Tilbury, the experimental pianist associated with AMM and post-Cage new music. Warren subsequently became involved in both jazz and avant garde scenes and his work since has roved fearlessly through the genres. He co-led the jazz group Perfect Houseplants, produced early music projects with Andrew Manze and the Orlando Consort, toured widely with the Creative Jazz Orchestra, and in recent seasons has collaborated with Maria Pia de Vito, Mark Feldman, Ralph Towner and many others. As a session player he has worked with Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, Eddi Reader and more. Huw Warren has been pianist and musical director for June Tabor since 1988.
http://ecmrecords.com/Background/ECM/2200/2276.php

なるほど、June Tabor はこれまでにもジャズとクロスオーバーするような作品を発表していたんですねぇ（At The Wood's Heart）。
Iain Ballamy は昨年4月に来日してました、知りませんでした。
クェルクス、の意味は以下のとおり、なるほど。

Quercus
‘Quercus’ means ‘oak’ in Latin and the roots of this particular tree dig deep into British folk music, while leaves and branches reach upward to embrace jazz-inspired lyrical improvising.
http://ecmrecords.com/Catalogue/ECM/2200/2276.php

http://player.ecmrecords.com/quercus
http://ecmrecords.com/News/Diary/417_Reviews_of_the_week_12_April_2013.php?cat=&we_start=0&lvredir=733

fRoots Review: JUNE TABOR, IAIN BALLAMY, HUW WARREN Quercus ECM 372 4555
June Tabor’s musical diversions always excite interest if not unanimous approval. Way back in another century she sharply divided opinion with an album of jazz standards, Some Other Time, and, whether pitting her emotive voice alongside Savourna Stevenson’s harp and Danny Thompson’s double bass on Singing The Storm (1996), throwing herself into various excursions with the Creative Jazz Orchestra (notably the 1999 album A Quiet Eye) and engaging in numerous other projects (most triumphantly, of course, in recent times with Oysterband), she’s been consistently uncompromising in her highly individual pursuit of her art.
This liaison with the magnificent contemporary jazz sax player Iain Ballamy and long-time collaborator, pianist Huw Warren is, then, but the latest in a proud track record of stretching and testing herself – and, some might say, her audience too. Light listening it is not and nor should it or is intended to be. Such is the air of sombre majesty and studied technique filling the speakers it’s quite a shock to discover this is a live recording captured from one gig (at the Anvil in Basingstoke) in 2006. Ballamy’s economic sax stalks Tabor’s voice with dogged devotion – the unconventional combination at times blending into a thrillingly macabre double act – while Warren’s cascading piano fills the gaps with evocative dexterity.
According to ECM’s press release it “blurs the boundaries between folk and jazz” which is only half the story, for the brooding soundscapes their arrangements create and the dark majesty of the music they provide draw on chamber music and classical themes but essentially evolve into a genre of one.
Certainly there are folk songs – the album opens with an affecting treatment of Burns’ Lassie Lie Near Me and goes on to include a gorgeous arrangement of As I Roved Out and a stirring, unaccompanied Brigg Fair – but it’s when they stray into more tangled emotional territory that the collaboration really finds its feet. Come Away Death sounds almost satanic as Tabor sings part of Shakespeare’s text from Twelfth Night before Ballamy and Warren take off on their own engrossing instrumental journey into the dark side. The Lads In Their Hundreds, A E Houseman’s World War I poem set to George Butterworth’s music adds to the sense of disquiet and bleakness, thoughtfully followed by an epic Warren piano piece Teares.
It’s not for the fainthearted and even some Tabor fans may find it hard to swallow, but Ballamy and Tabor construct an unusually empathetic relationship between voice and sax – what they leave out is almost as important as what they put in – and Ballamy shrewdly avoids the temptation to noodle and grandstand.
Colin Irwin
http://www.frootsmag.com/content/issue/reviews/