Adele and Mary Elizabeth Bowden

 

So difficult to choose a favourite Adele video. I really enjoyed the Graham Norton Show performance a couple of years ago when she sang with a superb orchestra and included the Skyfall song premiere.

One of the favourites has to be When we were young live at The Church studios in London

Her singing is wonderful and the vibe is very relaxed and productive in such a beautiful setting. So many great musicians making so much musically from simple ingredients.

Adele’s songs are fine to play alone at the piano because they seem to have been written at the piano rather than, say, with guitar at hand. To sound good you just have to play the notes and let the melody speak for itself.

Here’s a thing, I have many LP records and cd’s, too many, of my heroes from long ago and it is a real struggle to do a worthwhile clearout. I don’t have any physical copies of Adele’s recordings, I have never paid a penny to listen to her gorgeous voice. Well, I have watched it all online so somewhere along the line some wiz tech geek has probably been stealing my data, but I have not consciously paid for any LP or cd.

Maybe it was about time I bought a copy of her songs, so here is the songbook for 25. Even so, I like to play Make you feel my love, for which I only every had lyrics and chords. Speaking technically, there is a lovely descending chromatic scale over six notes with chord inversions to make the smooth moves in the verse. No idea what I’m talking about? Don’t worry, just enjoy the music

 

Adele’s success lies very much in working with top class musicians. Because of my interest in the trumpet I follow Mary Elizabeth Bowden on Facebook. She is an expert trumpet player and teacher, she works as a soloist and as a member of the Seraph Brass Ensemble and teaches at top level schools in the USA and online with the Apex Trumpet Symposium. I admire her especially for the incredible persistence earlier this year during lockdown when she set out to do 100 days of practice videos online. Each day I took inspiration from her honest approach to playing and practising, some days jubilant and others not so. A couple of days ago Mary Elizabeth Bowden  posted a memory from her time in 2016 playing on Adele’s US tour in Philadelphia, Detroit Atlanta and Texas.

There you are, two of my musical heroes that I thought were in different worlds, together on stage making great music. 

Thank you Mary Elizabeth for your inspiration and thank you Adele for 25 and 33, and here’s to more up to 105

I play music by Adele, Elton John, Robbie Williams and many more at my regular Cocktail & Piano sessions at the Urso Hotel & Spa, Madrid @hotelurso 

Follow me on Instagram for updates @piano.tjo

Emily in Paris …. And her dad

 

There is nothing that Phil Collins cannot do. He is like a walking history of British pop music. Founding Genesis, creating endless memorable tunes and clever lyrics. Working as a solo artist, thoughtful songs including Another Day in Paradise and many more, playing successfully in so many styles, drumming and singing his way on and on. The only artist to perform for Live Aid in London and Philadelphia on the same day, thanks to Concorde.

If you are too young to know about all this, google it. If you are old enough to remember all this, be happy to have been able to witness such great moments, even though, like me, it might have been from a distance.

Then there is Emily, well Lily Collins, star of the Netflix series. I loved watching the whole thing and  laughed a lot, in the right places I am sure. Sight seeing around Paris from home, even taking a weekend trip to the countryside to visit a chateau with matching vineyard, the food, the restaurants, the clothes, the Opera, brilliant.

Some people have complained that it is not a realistic picture of Paris. They are welcome to read the World Bank statistical reports if they want realism, but this show is perfect for these crazy times.

Also great to see so many wonderful French actors. I recognise some from Call my Agent, which is also set in Paris and is so good I am looking forward to another series. If you want more views of Paris, but of a more gritty nature, look out for The Eddy, a brilliant series set in a Parisian jazz club. Great actors and superb original jazz music, written for the show.

Hoping to hear and see more of daughter and father soon

I play music by Adele, Elton John, Robbie Williams and many more at my regular Cocktail & Piano sessions at the Urso Hotel & Spa, Madrid @hotelurso 

Follow me on Instagram for updates @piano.tjo

Elton John: Me

Me is Sir Elton John’s autobiography from 2019, as written up by the journalist Alexis Petridis.

I read this shortly after seeing the Rocketman film and it almost seems as if the book was part of the process of preparing the film, and reading the book almost felt like watching the film again, but in print, if you see what I mean.

Happily, the book has a lighter touch and more positive energy that the film, well done Mr Petridis, and the many elements to celebrate in the great Sir Elton’s life are there for all to see, not so much overwhelmed by problems as in the film.

There are fun references to meeting big name artists, or, in the case of Andy Warhol, not meeting him: read the book to find out why.

The meet up with Elvis Presley is told as a bizarre encounter. EJ is enthralled with the legend EP, while EP seems to wonder how he went  so wrong that he is playing to show bars of hundreds of  fans while EJ is filling the Dodgers stadium. In fact they represent a fascinating tableau of the past and future in popular music: EP apparently totally dominated by his manager, surrounded by “his people” and vulnerable to manipulation of his artistic and financial affairs, while EJ wrote and sings his own songs, owns his own record label and took successful control of his financial affairs.

Watching Sir Elton so many times over the years saying and doing the right thing and being such a great personality, I’m thinking of seeing him live and of the Royal Opera House concert fundraiser for the Royal Academy of Music in London, thanking all the right people, remembering the early collaborators, sometimes you think, is he for real?

In the end, it looks like the answer is yes. 

One of the sweetest moments in the book is where he writes about the Lion King film, where he worked with Tim Rice, which is another story, and acknowledging his gratitude that the Lion King introduced him and his music to en entirely new generation, like giving him a new lease of artistic life. While Elvis Presley watched his audience grow smaller and older in Vegas, Sir Elton’s lovely songs for the Lion King like Circle of Life and Can you feel the love tonight are being sung by school choirs around the world.

Loads more to talk about here, but for the moment thank you Sir Elton for the film, the book and most importantly the wonderful music all these years….

I play music by Adele, Elton John, Robbie Williams and many more at my regular Cocktail & Piano sessions at the Urso Hotel & Spa, Madrid @hotelurso 

Follow me on Instagram for updates @piano.tjo

Happy stories: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

 

This photo tells not just one happy story, but numerous happy stories. First because the LP itself is packed with so much great music that stays fresh long after its release in 1973.

Then there are so many happy memories of listening to this music with school friends as a teenager, and loving how the songs resonated with our adolescent angst.

Then there’s the twin story of a class mate, let’s call her M. She was as madly a fan of Elton John as the rest of us and one day in late 1974 she was absent from school. We were never absent, nobody ever stayed home, so this was remarkable. Even more remarkable when word got out that she had taken the day off to go into the city centre to queue for tickets, yes a quaint custom from days past, to queue for tickets for the Elton John Wembley concert planned for June 1975.  She ended up with real tickets for a real stadium show, and this was a big deal for our Liverpool tribe.

Jealous is not the word.

As it turned out, Sir Elton’s headline act was something of a damp squib, as he explains very honestly in his autobiography, no need for details here.

Still, M made the trip to London and had a great time, and we were glad for her.

End of story, no.

A couple of years ago I was given a birthday gift of a beautiful glass figure by my sisters. They said they had seen it in a classy shop of specialist pieces in glass sculptures in the Albert Dock area of Liverpool city centre, and recognised the entrepreneur/owner, and it turned out to be my old friend M. 

So here you have one photo with lots of happy memories.

I don’t know where you are now, M, but I hope you are very happy and that you still enjoy listening as much as I do to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

I play music by Adele, Elton John, Robbie Williams and many more at my regular Cocktail & Piano sessions at the Urso Hotel & Spa, Madrid @hotelurso 

Follow me on Instagram for updates @piano.tjo

New song/old song: I love you baby by Surf Mesa feat Emilee

When is a new song not a new song?

In the car recently I heard a cool new song, very chill beat with a contemporary electronic sound. It was extremely easy to sing along and the melody was memorable. Musically speaking, it’s built on a cycle of fifths, but you don’t need to worry if that worries you, just enjoy the music.

Well, if you enjoy this song, you are enjoying the music, but not all of it. Please be patient. Here’s the 

song

Okay, you have heard it, repeated it, loved it, the rest is history.

It’s history because it’s a massively popular song, with more than 77 million youtube views in the official upload by Surf Mesa - ily.  The ily is really important because you might not remember it after hearing the song, no, joking, the lyric is repeated over and over as the 8 bar phrase is  kind of looped. The singer is Emilee, relaxed and chill.

It’s history too because this song has been around before.

You might like this version by Lauryn Hill from 

1998

Surprise, there’s more to this song than Surf Mesa’s 8 bars. This is a guitar and organ mix with of course superb vocals, and passion and energy in the performance with bah bah backing vocals. As always with Lauryn Hill, it’s thoughtfully planned and expertly, beautifully performed.

But let’s go even further back, to Andy Williams and his superb version in 1968. It was really Frankie Valli who got there a year earlier, but I prefer Andy Williams and his smooth voice, meaning smooth as honey. And just listen to the orchestra building from 1’10” and the next 20 seconds, complete with bass trombone …. wow!!! Some of us started learning the trumpet just to play music like this   

This is Andy Williams showing it’s ok to sound passionate and powerful in performance. 

There’s a fun thing about the change from 68 to 20, I mean 1968 to 2020, via 1998: has our concentration span has shrunk so much we can’t manage more than a single 8 bar phrase looped endlessly?

Are we getting to a moment where we can’t sound as though we are making any effort in falling in love, it’s just got to be chill, cool, easy?

Okay let’s not think too much about it. New song/old song, it’s all lovely music whether it’s trumpets or auto-tune. Enjoy

I play music by Adele, Elton John, Robbie Williams and many more at my regular Cocktail & Piano sessions at the Urso Hotel & Spa, Madrid @hotelurso 

Follow me on Instagram for updates @piano.tjo