7Sonny Rollins: "The Complete RCA Victor Recordings" (6 CDs) The great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins worked for RCA during 1962-4, a significant period in his evolution. He had just returned to performance after a two-year sabbatical to reassess and recharge - the period when he practised on New York's Williamsburg Bridge - when he made the marvellous The Bridge and What's New, the first two of the seven complete albums and one compilation featured in this set. They remain the finest here, largely because the quartet with guitarist Jim Hall was a particularly flexible group for Rollins at his sardonically inventive best. Two more albums, Our Man In Jazz with the (then) avant garde trumpeter, Don Cherry, and Sonny Meets Hawk, a take-no-prisoners encounter with the tenor patriarch Coleman Hawkins, followed; uneven though they are, they contain some brilliant playing, mostly by Rollins (some carry-over pieces from the Cherry session also found their way on to the compilation 3 For Jazz). The remaining three albums - Now's The Time, The Stan- dard Sonny Rollins and The Alternative Sonny Rollins - saw the saxophonist in a series of trios and quartets with Hall, Thad Jones and Herbie Hancock which marked Rollins's future manner; his would be the dominant voice in any group he played in. There's nothing here to match the collaborative impact of the classic Saxophone Colossus, Way Out West and Village Vanguard albums, but The Bridge and What's New come close.
Ray Comiskey
CLASSICAL
Bartok: Miraculous Mandarin. Budapest Festival Orchestra/Ivan Fischer. (Philips) Two sides of Bartok are represented here, in roughly equal measure. Five works, of Hungarian, Romanian, and Transylvanian origin, chart the output of the painstaking folksong arranger - Bartok once likened a transcription of even the simplest kind to the mounting of a jewel. The remaining work is the pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin, in which the wealthy mandarin, seduced by a prostitute to be robbed and murdered, only succumbs to his wounds when his seducer takes pity on him. The piece's Cologne premiere caused such a scandal in 1926 that the Lord Mayor, Konrad Adenauer, suppressed it after a single performance. Ivan Fischer and his Budapest orchestra have the full measure of its extraordinary sensuality and violence, and offer finely-rounded performances of the tuneful folk pieces, too.
Michael Dervan
Szymanowski: Harnasie; Mandragora. Polish State PO (Katowice)/Karol Stryja. Szymanowski: Songs with orchestra. Polish State PO (Katowice)/Karol Stryja. (Naxos, £4.99 each). The late ballet pantomime Harnasie by the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) was influenced by, and uses, actual quotations from the folk music of the Tatra mountains. It's rougher in cast than Bartok's folk-influenced work and worlds apart from the haloed Szymanowski of the popular Stabat Mater. Most of the orchestral songs - Love Songs of Hafiz, Songs of the Infatu- ated Muezzin, Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess - stem from the composer's affinity with things oriental. The heady exoticism and perfumes of another world are entirely his own (no quotations, this time). Unusual repertoire in useful performances for under a fiver - though, sadly, the songs come without texts.
Michael Dervan
Bach: Orchestral Suites. Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Frans Bruggen. (Philips) Bach's four orchestral suites have proved the most enduring examples of a widely-practised genre. The astonishingly prolific Telemann, it has been estimated, may have come close to completing a thousand of them. But, today, the 18th-century German name we associate with orchestral dance suites preceded by Frenchstyle overtures is that of Bach. Working with London's Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Dutch period instruments conductor Frans Bruggen draws a sort of public/private distinction between the last two suites, which call on trumpets and drums, and the typically sparer scoring of the first two, where his mode of dancing is delectably graceful, airy, and light-footed.
Michael Dervan
Traditional/World Music
Niamh Parsons: "Loosen Up" Niamh Parsons's break with her traditional past is not complete. On this contemporary album, she uses a similar style of accompaniment: Alan Kelly on piano accordion, Mick McAuley on button box, Galvin Ralston on guitar, Gerry O'Connor on banjo, Jimmy Higgins on percussion. Big Bad Wolf takes off in Cajun style, Clohinne Winds alone evokes sense of place, Fran McPhail's version of Tom Waits's Briar and Rose has romance, Loosen Up is a swung reel building up to a familiar but unchallenging trad-pop sound. With lyrics and music mostly by bassist Dee Moore, this is also the debut of a calm, reflective song-writing talent. Melodically, there is a whiff of Springsteen's The River (have the best tunes already been written?). But Parsons balances it all: her impressively perfect voice is both the cement of the album's quality and her bridge to a new horizon.
Fintan Vallely
Saoco: "IMC" Two of the finest examples of Afro-Cuban music around at the moment are The Afro-Cuban All Stars (on the World Circuit label) and Saoco. The dual mention should say a lot about just how good Saoco is - the All Stars are the cream of Cuban music in splendid form; Saoco is a nine-piece group, essentially Irish, since only three of the band are Cuban, which is joyously in the idiom. Nor is it simply a question of authentic flavour; the richly-textured material, most of which is by the pianist, Danilo Karell, is played with a mixture of crispness, exuberance and rhythmic relaxation that is irresistible. And the band needs no indulgence for its grasp of the local musical dialect; it's a terrific group, period.
Ray Comiskey
Various Artists: "Steel Rails" (Rounder); "Mystery Train" (Rounder) These are actually volumes one and two of Classic Rail- road Songs, which is part of Rounder's The Roots Of Americana series. The music is drawn from the folk, country and bluegrass archives, ranging from the recent Steel Rails (Alison Krauss) to the vintage Jimmie The Kid (Jimmie Rodgers) or from the gruff voice of Johnny Cash (Casey Jones) to the sweet harmonies of the Delmore Brothers and Wayne Raney (Red Ball To Natchez). In addition, both collections contain an erudite track-by-track breakdown by Norm Cohen, author of Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong. These are the kind of educated collections which make a virtue of compilations by exposing a range of artists and styles to a new audience. They are also great fun. My favourite track at the moment is Patsy Cline's Life's Railway To Heaven, closely followed by that modern classic, Guy Clark's Texas 1947.
Joe Breen
Jazz
David O'Rourke: "The Prize" (Nightown) The first CD under the name of this Dublin-born guitarist is a well-thought-out, straight-ahead session that exemplifies the essentials for the genre to work: compatible, quality players, material, both standards and originals, that everyone is familiar with, but not so much that things get too cosy, and a group setting that is mutually satisfying. Backed by an experienced, heavyweight rhythm section in Larry Willis (piano), Bob Cranshaw (bass) and Al Harewood (drums), he plays superbly on this session recorded in New York, with inspirational support from his colleagues and the quartet hitting a euphoric groove on I Hear A Rhapsody, Song For My Parents and the all-too-brief It Could Happen To You. Wonderful.
Ray Comiskey
Bobby Wellins: "Making Light Work" (HEP) Hot on the heels of tenor saxophonist Bobby Wellins's beautiful Billie Holiday tribute on the Jazzizit label comes one of the rarest of all his sessions; a 1983 live quartet date made for a German lighting company's London promotional bash! Despite the bizarre circumstances, the recording is a marvellously tart illustration of what makes Wellins such a great individualist - his ability, whether in short or long solos, to create lines that establish their own, unexpected logic through his distinctive use of space, tonal manipulation and sheer wealth of ideas. His companions, Pete Jacobsen (piano), Kenny Baldock (bass) and Spike Wells (drums), fit him like a glove; the result is brilliant jazz, as ebulliently fresh as if it had just been done today.
Ray Comiskey
Phil Woods: "Celebration!" (Concord) As a soloist, alto saxophonist Phil Woods is no shrinking violet, but though his declamatory style is hardly understated, behind the passion is clarity, form and direction. No surprise, then, that this January 1997 big band date should reflect this great player's characteristics, since he wrote and arranged most of the music and the band is augmented by his regular quintet - Woods, Brian Lynch, Bill Charlap, Steve Gilmore and Bill Goodwin. This is a powerhouse orchestra, with most solos coming from the quintet's front line, ingenious charts, notably a cleverly recast Willow Weep For Me, the witty How's Your Mama?, some especially delicious writing on the Perils Of Poda and, overall, no prisoners taken.
Ray Comiskey
Single Of The Week
Radiohead: "Karma Police" (Parlophone)
Thom Yorke has raised paranoia to a fine art, and Karma Police is a thing of beauty, grace and creeping madness. Its measured pace and delicate arrangements are completely different to the perplexing mood-swings of Paranoid Android, but the radio playlist people still won't know what to do with it.
Kevin Courtney
The News
Nick Cave will be jetting into Co Cork on September 3 rd, where he will join Patti Smith in Liss Ard '97, a three-day celebration of music, poetry and nature. Cave might seem more at home in a dark, Gothic dungeon than in the wide open spaces of West Cork, but he will definitely cast an interesting cloud over the Liss Ard sky. Other artists confirmed for Liss Ard '97 include the Welsh singer-songwriter David Gray, the poet Janet Hamill and the writer and broadcaster Donal Dineen.
Irish boy band invasion alert: OTT have gone into the UK charts at number 11 with their new single, All Out Of Love, joining their immediate rivals Boyzone - currently at number 14 with Picture Of You, from the Mr Bean movie - in the UK Top 20.
