... Grinnigogs GRIN CD942 Where is Celtarabia, whose lost music is featured on Grinnigogs? I would guess it is more of a marketing concept dreamed up by the peripatetic group of performers and musi cians who make up Grinnigogs and travel throughout Europe. What we have is an interest ing album in which Middle Eastern instrumentation and rhythms are harnessed to folk tunes from Brittany, to create ...

... Scunny place to find music lovers Bill Ashton presents a defence of Scunthorpe and celebrates its inhabitants' enthusiasm for jazz There are two main music venues in Scunthorpe--the Baths Hall and the Plowright Theatre, formerly the Civic, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Interestingly, although thorpe puts on other forms of performance art the locals do not seem all ...

... Book notes have sax appeal You might think that in a pop music scene still dominated by guitars and the various types of keyboards that there would be little place left for those traditional brass and reed instruments, the trumpet, trombone and saxophone, in pop music and jazz. But you would be wrong. There is a personal relationship between musicians and wind instruments that is not found ...

... Big band, big rewards Mick Urry was a surprised man earlier this year when he was presented with an award at the International Dance Teachers Association Congress at Blackpool for the Best Dance Band CD of 1997. It was for In a Dancing Mood, which was released on the Maestro label and produced by Tommy Sanderson. Not bad for somebody celebrating 50 years as a bandleader. laughs Urry. He ...

... Discs bring past to life Spoken word records are not usually the province of this column but an exception must be made for Naxos' excellent four-CD set on The History of the Theatre, (NA 419922). Invaluable for students, but of considerable interest to actors and members of the theatregoing public, particularly as it is narrated by Derek Jacobi at his most mellifluous. It has been written ...

... Musical masters return It is strange to discover that two discs released on LP by the specialist Overtures label 20 years ago now turn up on a new American label dedicated to musical theatre, Bayview. Moreover, both of them could hardly be more English. They celebrate the work of two writers who took the British musical by storm in the fifties, Sandy Wilson and Julian Slade, remembered now ...

... MAY OUI Voted Best British Jazz Singer in 1997, Tina May has taken a few years to reach this eminence, having started off as an actress in France, which gives her CD Jazz Piquant (33 Records 33JAZZ942) both an authentic accent and a sense of drama while still staying true to its jazz credentials. The French have con tributed some of the best pop songs of all time (Que reste t'il, C'est si ...

... SPIRIT OF TANGO Though Maria de Buenos Aires, described as a tango operetta, has never been done as a fully staged piece, one can imagine it being produced with a group of dancers. In the form heard on the Teldec double CD (3984-206322) it is purely a concert tion, but it does nave music by the great Astor Piazzolla, who composed it to a libretto by Horacio Ferrer, dealing with a girl who ...

... Capital songs sung with proud nostalgia By PETER HEPPLE Songs about London do not have quite the romance of those about Paris or even New York. But Conifer's Happy Days compilation (75605 52286 2) does have a great deal of character and variation, representing everything from the music hall era (and even earner, in tne case ot pretty roiiy Perkins of Paddington Green) to the evocative A ...

... Big band brainwave These days--when live music is generally played by groups of three or four and a seven-piece soul band, with two or three horn players is hardly regarded as a sound commercial proposition..it is worth remembering that in the forties and fifties 15 and 16-piece big bands regularly toured the country, playing for dances, concerts and full weeks in variety. Now we have an ...

... The Comedy of Errors Stratford-upon-Avon Lynne Parker's interpretation at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is so inventively acted that an audience could follow the story even if ft did not understand the words. And given the complexity of the plot, this is quite an achievement. It is gloriously funny, with a teasing musical score and some equally teasing effects. The action takes place in an ...

... Wild women's rhythm and blues Wild!!! (Stateside SSL 6033) Some great compilations arc coming out on the Stateside label, this one being devoted to black women vocalists--except, that is, for Peggy Lee, who donates Fever and Why Don't You Do Right--who first came to prominence in the States around the fifties. The only males on these 18 tracks are Nat King t^oie, uuetting with Nellie ...