Ori Barel “Monophonic Conspiracy” (Live version), video by Ori Barel
from “Wishes” by Jacqueline Humbert & David Rosenboom, excerpted from a full 1980 performance, now on our YouTube
"I automate whatever can be automated to be freer to focus on those aspects of music that can't be automated. The challenge is to figure out which is which.”
Happiest of Birthdays to Laurie Spiegel - autodidactic musician, programmer, celestial composer - and our muse and namesake.
Born in 1945, she learned to play mandolin, guitar and banjo as a child, mostly by ear. At the age of 20, having taught herself Western notation, she began to write down her compositions. She attended Shimer College through their early entrance program, subsequently studying at Oxford University - having received her BA in Social Sciences, she then stayed on in Oxford whilst commuting to London to study, guitar, theory and composition with John W Duarte.
Her musical career and her academic/programming have often worked in tandem, being balanced over the course of her life - however it was after she moved to New York in 1969 to study composition with Jacob Druckman, Vincent Persichetti and Hall Overton at Juilliard that this part of her life began to take a more formal shape. She completed her MA in Music Composition in 1975 under Druckman along with pursuing research in early American music under H. Wiley Hitchcock.
Her compositional process uses algorithmic logic, working with Buchla and Electronic Music Laboratories and a whole out of early synthesisers and prototype-level music and image generation systems. She has worked on software which has automated part of the compositional and music-making process, but also works for piano, guitar and small orchestra.
(Continued in comments)
Yesterday was Raymond Scott's birthday. Born Harry Warnow in Brooklyn (where his father had a music shop) at five, he became fascinated by the shop's Pianola, eventually learning to keep pace with its mechanical, rhythmic perfection. This was to be the foundation of his musical style.
He ended up attending Julliard (at the time New York’s Institute of Musical Art) and was hired by his brother at CBS and changed his name to Raymond Scott.
In 36 he created the Raymond Scott Quintette, an overnight success due to his 'descriptive jazz' compsitions that infused swing with frequent tempo changes and syncopation.
Many of the Quintette titles were painstakingly crafted for the record-buying public, and later featured in Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, re-recorded by the WB orchestra. Scott has been called "The man who made cartoons swing."
#UnseenInfluences #RaymondScott #LooneyTunes #UnseenHeroes #UnseenHeroes #UnseenWorlds
On Wednesday it was Klaus Schulze's birthday.
A brief history of his extremely prolific and eventful career:
- In 1969 he was drummer with Tangerine Dream on their debut ‘Electronic Meditation’ having met Edgar Froese at the Zodiac Club in West Berlin.
- In 1970 he left Tangerine Dream to form Ash Ra Temple with Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke.
- In 1971 he left Ash Ra Temple and went onto a solo career, releasing his highly influential debut in 1972, the proto-ambient ‘Irrlicht’ with organ and an orchestra processed so heavily it barely can be recognised.
- Since then, Schulze has been incredibly prolific with more than 40 original albums to his name. Some brief highlights include 1976’s ‘Moondawn’ (his first to feature a Moog), 1979’s ‘Dune’ and the 1995 album ‘In Blue’ to name a few. In 1976 he spent some time in the supergroup Go with Stormu Yamashta, Steve Winwood, Michael Shrieve and Al Di Meola.
- He drew comparisons to Brian Eno in terms of his compositional style - more organic than his counterparts, dream-like, reflective and with a lightness of touch which gave a cinematic feel to his work - this segued naturally into composing for film such as ‘Barracuda’ in 78 and Next of Kin in 82. Although new-age music fans appreciate his music, he disconnected himself from the genre.
- He was highly connected to the country of his birth, citing Nietzsche, Trakl and Bach as big influences on his work. His use of the pseudonym Richard Wahnfried is indicative of his interest in Richard Wagner, a clear influence on some albums like the aforementioned Timewind.
- In the 80s he began using digital instruments along with analog synthesisers, his working becoming a little less experimental as he wished to become more accessible to audiences which can be heard on both ‘Dig It’ and ‘Trancefer’. A major highlight of the decade was 'En=Trance' with ‘FM Delight’ - along with the album ‘Midterranean Pads’ marking the star
Happy birthday to Jordi Savall i Bernadet - the Catalan conductor, composer, viol player and key figure in Western Early Music since the 1970s. A historian of early music, his repertoire features everything from medieval, Renaissance and Baroque through to the Classical and Romantic periods; incorporating non-western traditions in his work; including African vernacular music such as in Les Routes De L’Esclavage.
His training began at the age of six in the school choir of Igualada, the city of his birth. He graduated from Barcelona's Conservatory of Music where he specialised in early music, working with Ars Musicae de Barcelona under Enric Gispert and then moving to Basel, Switzerland to study with August Wenzinger at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis - going on to succeed Wenzinger in 74 as professor of viola da gamba.
Forming Hespèrion XX with his wife, Montserrat Figueras, Lorenzo Alpert and Hopkinson Smith, the group were renowned for their faithfulness to the history of the music they played.
Through the late 80s he returned to Barcelona to form La Capella Reial de Catalunya, a vocal group devoted to pre-eighteenth-century music and Le Concert des Nations, an Baroque focused orchestra which occasionally dabbled in Classical and Romantic. Since his wife's death in 2011 he performs regularly with his two children, Arianna - a harpist and singer like her mother - and Ferran who plays the theorobo (bass lute) and sings.
#JordiSavall #Viol #EarlyMusic #UnseenHistory #UnseenFigures #UnseenInfluences #UnseenWorlds
Happy Birthday to Jelena Ana Milcetic - aka Helen Merrill - American jazz singer and first generation Bebopper.
Born in 1929 to Croatian parents, she sang in the jazz clubs in the Bronx when she was 14; by 16 she had taken up music full-time. She was asked to sing ‘A Cigarette For Company’ with Earl Hines for her recording debut, released on the D’Oro imprint. Etta James - who was in Hines band - sang on the record also which was then rereleased on Xanadu in 1985.
She was signed by Mercury Records to their EmArcy label in 1952, recording her first LP whilst there with trumpeter Clifford Brown and bassist Oscar Pettiford. The album was produced by Quincy Jones who was twenty-one at the time. The success of the the album led to Mercury signing her for four albums. The follow-up to her self-titled debut was 1956’s Dream of You which was arranged by pianist Gil Evans which laid the foundations for his future work with Miles Davis.
Having recorded a little through the 50s and 60s she spent a lot of her time touring Europe where she found more commercial success than she had in the US. She settled in Italy, recorded an album and performed with Piero Umiliana, Romano Mussolini, Stan Getz and Chet Baker. Ennio Morricone worked with her on an EP ‘Helen Merrill Sings Italian Songs’ on the RCA Italiana label.
She moved to Japan in 1966 after a brief return to the US, staying after touring and marrying Donald J Brydon in April 1967. She developed a dedicated following in Japan and began producing albums for Trio Records along with co-hosting a show on FEN (Armed Forces Radio & Television Service) with Bud Widom in Tokyo
She returned to her home soil in 1972 where she recorded a Bossa nova and Christmas album along with a Rodgers and Hammerstein record. In 1987 she co-produced Billy Eckstine Sings with Benny Carter and 1995’s Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown and Jelena Ana Milcetic a.k.a Helen Merrill which draws on her Croatian heritage and American upbring
Happy Birthday to Bola Sete, the Brazilian jazz guitarist.
Born Djalma de Andrade and hailing from Rio de Janeiro, the name Bola Sete meaning “Seven Ball” was given to him by his bandmates after the game of snooker.
He was a student of the Conservatory of Rio - influences included Django Reinhardt, Barney Kessel, George Van Eps amongst others. He was a great admirer of the big bands touring South America at the time - such as those led by Dizzy Gillespie and Woody Herman.
It was in 1952, playing the clubs and hotels of Italy for 4 years that his career began to start proper - this then segued into a full South America tour which brought him to the attention of a manager of Sheraton Hotels who brought him to the US. The story goes that when Sete was playing the Sheraton in San Francisco Dizzy Gillespie was staying there at the time - hearing him play he brought his pianist, Lalo Schifrin in and discovered they had played together in Argentina. This began the path to success for Sete who then went onto the Monterey Jazz Festival with Gillespie to great adulation.
Touring with Gillespie for a time, he then joined the Vince Guaraldi trio. Having gained recognition and success with the trio with performances and recordings, he then formed his own trio with Sebastião Neto and Paulinho da Costa, appearing again at Monterey in 1966 - the recording of which reached no.20 on the Billboard Jazz Chart.
His 1975 album Ocean was released through a friend and admirer, guitarist John Fahey, on his Takoma Record imprint.
#UnseenInfluences #UnseenHeroes #UnseenWorlds
Happy Birthday to Carl Orff, the German composer who pushed boundaries in children's music education with his concepts of Schulwerk.
The video here is titled 1958, MUSIC FOR CHILDREN, It explains (in part) the Carl Orff method of teaching music to children. Filmed at the Mozarteum School of Music with the cooperation of the students of 1958 at Salzburg Austria.
Credit: The National Film Board of Canada
After an almost fatal stint in World War 1, it was in the 20s that began developing elementare Musik - a unification of the arts involving tone, dance, poetry, image and theatrical gesture. It was this that was the precursor to his holistic arts education programme, Schulwerk.
In 1924 he founded the Günther School in Munich with Dorothee Günther which taught music and dance. He was head of department there until his death - and it was here he developed his theories of music education. His method of teaching is somewhat complex, but essentially is based around music becoming a language which all children can speak - and can learn to speak through a state of constant practice in a highly relaxed atmosphere.
His most notable composition, Carmina Burana, reflected his interest in medieval German poetry. The trilogy as a whole is described as the triumph of the human spirit through sexual and holistic balance. The work was based on thirteenth-century poetry found in a manuscript dubbed the Codex latinus monacensis, written by the Goliards - the collection of poetry is where Orff got the name for his most famous piece.
Carl Orff had Sun in Cancer & Moon in Aquarius, so we see a disconnect between Cancerian nurturance & Aquarian aloofness in these key aspects of Self. Otherwise the chart is loaded with water, meaning we could expect sensitivity, empathy, giftedness, a general lack of objectivity. Venus is in its detriment in Virgo, classically seen as a troublesome placement for love.
#UnseenInfluences #UnseenHeroes #UnseenWorlds
""The road from my first colored graph piece in 1962 to my renunciation of composing in 1970 to my resurfacing as a composer in 1972 was a process of trying out an idea and when it was obviously successful - abandoning it. “ - Harold Budd
Today is American avant-garde composer, “ambient” denier and poet Harold Budd’s birthday - he would have been 85.
Born in LA and raised in the Mojave Desert, he rose to prominence in the late 1960s in the emerging minimalist and avant-garde scene of Southern California, becoming better known for his work with figures such as Brian Eno and Robin Guthrie; he was also known for developing the “soft pedal” technique for piano.
Spending a small amount of time in the army was enough to convince him he needed a proper education and he enrolled in Los Angeles Community College to study architecture, quickly switching to composition when his talent was recognised by a teacher - he cited a number of influences from this time including Chet Baker and Pharaoh Sanders. After college he studied at music at the University of Southern California under Ingolf Dahl; his compositions of this period were typified by a style influenced by John Cage and Morton Feldman, along with artist Mark Rothko with whom he exchanged a series of letters. Having completed his degree in 1969 he took up teaching at the California Institute for the Arts - he completed his first piece “The Oak of the Golden Dreams” in 1970 but soon after gave up composition, feeling disenchanted with the avant-garde community’s overtly academic approach to music.
This wasn’t to last long as he began composing again in 1972, creating the suite of four pieces known as “The Pavillion of Dreams” and in 192 his work “Madrigals of the Rose Angel” was sent to Gavin Bryars who passed it to Brian Eno. Eno brought Budd to London to record for his imprint, Obscure Records - and thus Budd’s career began in earnest.
With Eno his projects felt more studio-led: collab
Happy Birthday to computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, visual artist and contemporary classical composer Jaron Lanier.
Although widely credited with being the founder of virtual reality, he is a composer and also collector of rare instruments (of which he owns two thousand).
He was born in New York City and raised in Melilla, New Mexico. His mother and father were Jewish, his mother was a holocaust survivor from Vienna and his father had escaped the pogroms in Ukraine. He lived in tents with his father for a time before he embarked on a seven-year project to build them a geodesic home. He enrolled in New Mexico State University at the age of 13 and received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study mathematical notation which then led him to computer programming. He attended art school in New York, however returned to New Mexico to work as an assistant to a midwife. The father of a baby he helped him deliver gifted him a car which he would then go on to drive to Santa Cruz where he began work for Atari Labs. It was at Atari he met Thomas Zimmerman with whom he developed (amongst other things) the technology which led to Virtual Reality which was then bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999. He wrote a number of published essays which philosophise about the dangers of technology and of the internet, including ‘Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Right Now’ in 2018.
He has been involved in contemporary classical since the 70s - specifically piano but also many non-western instruments. He has played with Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros and Stanley Jordan to name a few. Recording projects include a techno duet with Sean Lennon and an album of duets with Robert Dick. In 1994 he released
He also writes chamber and orchestral music - 'Symphony for Amelia’ premiered by the Bach Festival Society Orchestra and Choir in 2010. Other compositions have gained praise such as a triple concerto, ‘The Navigator Free
A belated Happy Birthday to legendary jazz singer and pianist Blossom Dearie.
She reportedly received the name Blossom because of "a neighbor who delivered peach blossoms to her house the day she was born", although she once recalled it was her brothers who brought the flowers to the house.
Born in East Durham, New York she moved to Manhattan after high school to pursue a career in music. Before starting out on her solo career she sang in groups such as the Blue Flames and the Blue Reys (Alvino Rey’s band).
Moving to Paris in 1952 she formed the Blue Stars (which later would evolve into The Swingle Singers) which included Christiane Legrand in the lineup alone with Bob Dorough. They had a hit in France with ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ arranged by Michel Legrand.
Returning from France she made 6 American albums as a solo singer and pianist with Verve Records - The Today Show’s Dave Garroway enabled her to reach a bigger audience and in 1962 her Hires Root Beer radio commercial became so popular she released the LP 'Blossom Dearie Sings Rootin’ Songs’. She recorded ‘May I Come In’ in 1964 and then spent a little time in London where she regularly performed at Ronnie Scott’s along with recording and releasing 4 albums with the Fontana Label.
She was often seen as a ‘musician’s musician’ as she learned classical music from the age of 5 - she moved on to jazz and was influenced by a broad range of composers from Count Basie to Benny Goodman. She did not differentiate between voice and piano, saying that didn’t ‘like to do either one separately’.
In 1974, Dearie established her own label, Daffodil Records, which allowed her to have full control of the recording and distribution of her albums. She released 12 albums on Daffodil including 'My New Celebrity Is You' and 'From the Meticulous to the Sublime'.
Shortly after Dearie's passing, pianist Dave Frishberg recalled asking Bill Evans about his use of fourths in chord voicings. "His immedia
Happy Birthday @davidvantieghem - composer, percussionist and sound designer who allowed every day objects to transcend their everyday-ness into instruments of percussive expression.
Born on April 21, 1955, in Washington, D.C. raised in Ridgewood, New Jersey, the first son of artist/educator Joan Ruth Stumpf Van Tieghem and painter/sculptor/designer Richard Francis Van Tieghem, brother of Richard Joseph Van Tieghem. He studied percussion with Justin DiCioccio, of LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in New York City.
As a freelance percussionist he has played with the who’s who of music - Talking Heads, Stevie Nicks, Pink Floyd, Steve Reich, Mike Oldfield, Happy Traum, Debbie Harry, Brian Eno, Arthur Russel, Kathy Acker.. the list goes on.
In 1984, he released his first solo album, 'These Things Happen’ , on the Warner Bros. Records label. In 1981, he released a video work named 'Ear to the Ground'. In 1986, he received a Bessie Award (NY Dance and Performance) for Music. In 1987 He appeared on the critically acclaimed album by Jerry Harrison 'Casual Gods' which spawned the #7 hit on the US Mainstream Charts 'Rev it up'. The song appeared in the hit movie 'Something Wild'. He also collaborated on ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ in 1981 with Eno and Byrne along with ‘Speaking in Tongues’ with Talking Heads and with Laurie Anderson on ‘Strange Angels’, ‘Home of the Brave’ (also with William S. Burroughs and Nile Rodgers), ‘Mister Heartbreak’ and ‘Big Science’.
He has also worked in theatre to great acclaim, In 1996, he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Best Sound Design (for The Grey Zone), and was awarded an Obie for Sustained Excellence of Music. In 1998, 'How I Learned to Drive' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the play completed a run in 1999 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, starring Molly Ringwald, with the original director and design team. Van Tieghem was also nominated for a 1998 Drama Desk Awa
Happy Birthday composer, performer and computer music pioneer Barton McLean who turns 83 today.
Born in Poughkeepsie in 1938 he went onto graduate from SUNY and the Eastman School of Music where he was a student of Henry Cowell. Whilst teaching at SUNY (1960-66) and he also began performing double bass in jazz groups and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic Orchestra. He went onto direct the Electronic Music Centre at the University of Texas at Austin from 1969-76. He married Priscilla Taylor, also a composer, in 1967 and in 1974 they began touring as The McLean Mix, a mixture of electronic and acoustic music, which became a full time occupation by 1983.
He composed many electronic pieces of renown over the years - he is known for developing the concept of the audience interacting intricately with instruments and live electronics. His music is often based upon the sounds of the natural world which he pairs with electronic and recording technology.
His signature piece Rainforest Images was a prime example of all of this - fusing immersive audience participation with field recordings of the rainforest and music technology, it was staged and performed extensively around the world from 1989 - 2013.
Another well known piece of his, 'Dimensions II’ written in 1974, was championed by David Burge who went on to perform it extensively for many years - 'Dimensions III and IV’ was premiered by Albert Regni in concert at the University of Texas at Austin in 1979. ‘The Electronic Sinfonia’ which uses a 16-tone octave scale won an award at the International Bourges, France Electro-acoustic Music Festival in June 1983.
#BartonMcLean #UnseenInfluences #HAPPYDAYS #AvantGarde #Leftfield
Happy Birthday to 80s J-pop sensation, new-wave eccentric and avant garde chameleon Jun Togawa who turns 60 today.
Hailing from Tokyo, her career in music began in the early 80s, initially garnering attention as a guest singer for the Halmens but then going on to build a loyal following as a solo artist along with being the lead singer of Guernica from 1982 - 1989 and the more commercially aligned the Yapoos.
She became known for her distinctive vocal range, girlish one minute and the next moment a disturbed wail - a range which was replicated in her on-stage image which alternated between a whole spectrum of bizarre characters: 1930s wartime crooner, school girl, warrior, queen of insects, etc.
She has collaborated most notably with Haruomi Hosono who wrote and produced some of her earlier work,
She is a key commentator on gender in popular music - 'Tamahime-sama’ (translated as ‘Princess Ball’ - her 1984 singer/songwriter debut) tells the story of a character who devolves into an insect over her struggles with emerging adolescence. Her art continued to challenge societal perceptions and gender expectations throughout her career; addressing taboo subjects and dispelling the idea of women’s general character conforming to any idyll constructed, in the main, by a patriarchal society.
At times she adopted a Trojan horse approach to getting her message across, releasing ‘Suki Suki Daisuki’, modelling herself on pop icons, appearing on national TV, etc. In this instance, the comparisons between her and Bjork seem apt.
Her 2001 album 20th Jun Togawa was picked by Jim O’Rourke as his album of the year. She released new collaboration albums on her 35th anniversary of her career in 2016 with Vampillia and Hijokaidan.
#JunTogawa #UnseenInfluences #Jpop #80s #SukSukiDaisuki #HaruomiHosono
Today is Composer, Multi-instrumentalist and Spaghetti Western Whistler Alessandro Alessandroni’s birthday. He would have been 96.
Born in Rome in 1925, he was a childhood friend of Ennio Morricone who he went onto collaborate with regularly on various scores and soundtracks. He composed more than 40 film scores and a huge archive of library music. It was Westerns he was best known for, however, specifically his whistle which was a mainstay of Morricone/Sergio Leone films such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in the West.
Although Westerns and the Morricone connection were a big ticket for him, Alessandroni made waves with his vocal group I Cantori Moderni which, with their scat-like style, would become synonymous with the ‘Italian Sound’ of the 60’s and 70’s.
Although his mainstream work raised his profile, his impact on the world of avant-garde and experimental music was significant. Considered by many to be one of the leading figures of the Italian library movement, his album “Butterfly” specifically; his work ranging from ambient to noisy pre-industrial to psychedelic rock and experimental, atmospheric jazz.
Along with collaborators like Morricone and Umiliani, he worked with Francesco De Mash on the well-lauded score to 1969’s Lesbos, along with egoist Macchi, Sandro Brugnolini and Oronzo e Fillipi pulling together the psychedelic, colourful Braen Machine project.
#UnseenInfluences #UnseenWorlds #EnnioMorricone #AlessandroAlessandroni #Westerns #Alternative #Experimental #Avantgarde #Soundtracks #TheItalianSound
"Avalon's my hometown, always on my mind/ Pretty mamas in Avalon, want me there all the time.”
�Happy Birthday to Mississippi John Hurt, the Bluesman who helped lay the foundations for American Folk Music.
�An inspiration to many - his music has been covered by Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Jerry Garcia, Dave van Ronk to name a few - his story is a fairly lowkey affair but with a raucously upbeat ending. Born in Teoc and raised in Avalon, Mississippi he taught himself guitar aged 9. He worked as a farmhand and sharecropper in the 1920s, however played regularly for friends and family at barn dances - something which his fast-paced, syncopated music was well suited to.
He originally recorded with Okeh Records in the late 1920s with producer Tommy Rockwell in both New York and Memphis; whilst recording ‘Monday Morning Blues’ he recalled seeing many of the Blues greats - Lonnie Johnson, Bessie Smith - describing the experience as:
“... a great big hall with only the three of us in it: me, the man [Rockwell], and the engineer. It was really something. I sat on a chair, and they pushed the microphone right up to my mouth and told me that I couldn't move after they had found the right position. I had to keep my head absolutely still. Oh, I was nervous, and my neck was sore for days after.”
His recordings weren’t commercially successful and Okeh went under during the Great Depression - however, Hurt’s renditions of “Frankie” and “Spike Driver Blues” were included in The Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952 which resulted in musicologist Dick Spottswood and Tom Hoskins to locate him in Avalon (from the lyrics at cited at the beginning of this post) at the age of 72 - somewhat frail and fearing he’d been hunted down by the FBI.��Having proven he was the real deal, he was encouraged to move to Washington D.C and perform for a bigger audience - he went onto play Newport Folk Festival at a time when a folk revival was happening enabling him to
“He told me to follow my instincts, and my dream”.
Today in 1937, Barney Wilen was born.
Wilen was a prodigious tenor/soprano saxophone player and composer who toured and recorded with the greats - most notably Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie amongst others. Although associated with these giants of the terroir and was a big ticket in the 50s - and had a resurgence of interest in the 80s, his name nowadays often gets lost in the post. Not today, however.
Bernard-Jean “Barney” Wilen was born in Nice to a French mother and American father he lived in the US during the War, returning to France in 1946 he studied the alto saxophone and moved to Paris aged 16 where he played with veterans of jazz - Henri Renaud, Bobby Jaspar and Jimmy Gourley.
He developed quickly and made a name for himself playing at jazz clubs around Paris aged 17 at which point he gave an interview in Jazz Hot magazine describing his influences as ‘Lester, Lester and Lester’.
He would go onto to play with a whole host over musicians over the coming 6 years, but the real moment of ascension would come when he played on Louis Malle’s ‘Life To The Scaffold’ film with Miles Davis along with ‘Liaisons Dangereuses’ with Thelonious Monk. He played Cannes Jazz Festival with Stan Getz. All before he was 24.
He moved to free jazz in the 60s, his album ‘Zodiac’ along with ‘Moshi’. The latter was documenting the music of the Pygmies - something which was described as “music with few precedents or followers, spanning from extraterrestrial dissonance to earthbound, street-legal funk”.
He spent the 70s in Africa, and was reborn as a relevant jazz artist due to an illustration in a comic book A Suivre - titled et la note bleu. Through some quite plucky strategic playing under the illustrators apartment and enormous national coverage from the press - France rediscovered its jazz prodigy and this led to a large amount of reissues and recordings in the