... Detour Ahead--Gill Manly Parrot PARCD 505 Look through the London jazz list ings each week and there is a fair chance that the name of Gill Manly will crop up once or twice. She has been quietly building her reputation through live work for several years and makes an impressive CD debut, armed with the approval of that most accomplished and underrated of American singers Mark Murphy. Like him, ...

... Treature Island HILBRE ISLAND MIDSUMMER Actors' interpretation of the Robert Louis Stevenson yarn is a delight in so many respects. The location and set design are positively inspired. Naturalism is taken to its logical conclusion as the action is played on a real island in the Dee estuary, strong footware and a packed lunches recommended. Sharon Ackerboom is a ripping Jim Hawkins, all ...

... Memory Serves Material (Celluloid ILPS9S93) One of the most interesting New York groups, Material is a loose collaboration, varying in size and line-up, of musicians attempting to blend rock with the avant garde end of jazz. On balance, rock, with its heavy and consistent rhythmic patterns, probably comes out on top but the album could not fail to have much that is of musical merit with ...

... DISC DATA Mike Harding's Komic Kutz (Philips 6625 041) Harding has now earned his place alongside Connolly and Carrott as a folk comedian and some might think he has more warmth than either of the other two. A lot of his material is not intrinsically funny, however, obtaining laughs by recognition of anecdotal circumstances rather than wit. Four sides, all recorded on loca tion, are an over ...

... Stardust Robert Mandell and the Melachrlno Strings and Orchestra (Pressit LC 773) Robert Mandell's courageous attempt to revive the splendour of the Melachrino sound, using the late conductor's own library, has caught on strongly with concert audiences. Midlands-based, the new Melachrino orchestra, under Mandell's colourful guidance, is at least as good as the loved favourites. The ...

... Nashville Album Sydney Devine (Philips 9109 224) Playing the Americans at their own game, Scotland's greatest country singer comes up with a first-class album, aided by veteran producer Don Schroeder. top arranger Bergen White and a flock of Nashville session men including Reggie Young and Bobby Emmons. Dream Dancing Ella Fitzgerald (Pablo 2310 814) This Norman Granz album was released for a ...

... Capturing the feeling of 'All That Jazz' DISC DATA All That Jazz (Casablanca NBLP 7198) For once, a Film soundtrack album that captures almost precisely the feeling of the movie, a combined paean of praise and horror story about the highs, lows and neuroses of Broadway. The musical hero is Ralph Burns, whose initial impact with the 1946 Woody Herman Orchestra has ened out to place him in ...

... Classic Recordings from 1926 (RCA International NI. 89464) If it does not sound too complicated, this is a re-release of a 1972 compilation which is historically interesting and all the better for not being built around one artist or band. In other words, if you switched on the radio in the United States during 1926, this is the sort of would he likely to hear Radio's first-ever ...

... DISC DATA I The Hired Man Original Cast (Poly- dor POLH 18) The musical quality of The Hired Man is made even more evident on the cast album. The great British musical, which is its main selling point, is no misnomer, for Howard Goodall's score is completely individual, even though two of the songs, Men of Stone and So Tell Your Children, have a ly Brechtian sound. But Goodall has ...

... DISC DATA Vintage 1981 Stephane Grappelli (Concord Jazz CJ-189) For sheer consistency no jazz musi cian has ever equalled Stephane Grap pelli, who is certainly playing as well now as at any time in a 50-year career. This album, recorded in San Francisco, finds him playing numbers which, though familiar, have never been associated with him previously, among them l i^an t uet start ea in wnicn ...

... Ballet Rambert OXFORD NEW WHAT STRUCK me most forcibly about the programme by Ballet Ramben at Oxford's New Theatre was the excellence of the dancers, who attacked gamely but gracefully, found their way easily through pyrotechnics, and characterised with a simple directness--always sensed, often understated. The placing of Christopher Bruce's newish Preludes and Seng'\next to Richard Alston's ...

... Post-war musical wave DISC DATA Vocal Gems from Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun and Carousel (World Records SH 393) Pleasant reminders of the first ever wave of post-war American musicals, sung by the artists who brought them to London -- Howard Keel, Betty Jane Watson, Dorothea Macfarland and Walter Donahue (Oklahoma!); Bill Johnson and Dolores Gray (Annie Get Your Gun); and Stephen ...