i have been trying to find ten interesting versions of "my favourite things", starting with the obvious ... did i say ten ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33o32C0ogVM

pomplamoose ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvYZMqQffQE

john coltrane ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNmpIA_bLcE

joey alexander ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pzIlq7jZzw

sarah vaughan ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dusavln6Cjw

j rabbit ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BqRoCwkH0M

dave brubeck ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43T0HdVNOD8

mary j blige ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VCMl-620to

stephen hough !!! ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pih_W62LOVc

bjork ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F9jjjKShQ4

kagyuma ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7j9eiXkY2I

youn sun nah ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3q6L8ONqCI

danilla ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiQqaPzri0c

jade williams ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0_-lAuTZao

akihiro tanaka ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFPBT7iV6rQ

al jarreau and kathleen battle ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQwzaNOyXQE

the lennon sisters ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-reAa2ushQ

bill evans ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_PUZkJ79BE

motis chamorro big band ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt9QGvQqMnU

avila ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDtMj6aQZ7g

anna mansonn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ItBdW_Tt5Q

youn sun nah creaky jackals remix ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ItBdW_Tt5Q

betty carter ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDtE1PhaC34

brad mehldau ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiXs0nJZNYg

grant green ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eShJiIRxm0

levi barcourt ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJZar4PyFYg

supremes - dj iLLume re-mix ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HloqNRffEiY





unknown ... maybe dan hardin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d372MMi0Dg

lloyd conley ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPst3ZvCIE

christine moore and bev lewis ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFuI7KtjECU







unknown ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7mx9K3g7Tk

two violins and lebedeva's jazz trio ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7mx9K3g7Tk

strictly ... sophie ellis bexter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_UM6zGOcNs

yum-kyoung ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MI2gWTVLGQ

john stoddart ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_UesC0q-0o

bobby macferrin ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Th4KleuBo

peter sprague ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0pyxsMAROY

tristram hillier, in no particular order, following clare simmonds' find ...

zaha hadid moves on ...

Two days after Zaha Hadid’s untimely death, I’d been trying and failing to remember many details of an extended interview about her life that she recently gave on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.  Not much had lodged in my memory except for the impression of a passionate and determined woman with an exceptionally strong and capacious mind. 

Then last night, in dreamland, I found myself in the unlit Chapter House at Wells Cathedral, with a party of old friends, all exactly as I remembered them even though some are long since vanished; and although we’d never met, I wasn’t surprised to see Zaha Hadid among the group, now settled on a long bench that somehow reminded me of that pile of stone goddesses looted from the Parthenon and displayed in the British Museum.

They were being entertained by a group of standing minstrels, maybe troubadours, colourfully dressed.  They seemed to be a combination of Roxy Music c. 1972 and Piero della Francesca’s angelic musicians present at the Nativity, painted c. 1475.

I don’t remember what the band were playing in this dream but I do remember their heavenly glitz, especially the various lutes and citherns and a Bo Diddly square guitar, and every single instrument being enveloped in thin blue and gold Pentecostal flames.

compare and contrast ... went to see "botticelli re-imagined" at the V&A today ... and was somewhat perversely reminded of reginald marsh, and william blake

... reginald marsh ...



















... and william blake, too !

3BT, 25th March 2016

In the wee small hours, the funfair on Clapham Common stands in darkness, a broken silhouette against the trees and the city’s orange night sky … except for one small ride, a childrens’ roundabout at the edge of the compound, where an engineer is working alone and is just switching on the pastel coloured lights, pale blue, pale pink, pale lilac, pale green … “girly gorgeous”, like corals and anemones in a sea of shadows.

Coming up the stairs from a basement lunch at the back of Itsu in Piccadilly, I glance along the shiny floor towards the wide windows and the sunlit street.  For a second the world seems black and white.  And for a second the silhouetted girl between me and the door might be a lovely lovely girl I knew thirty years ago.

In the Wellcome Foundation’s  States Of Mind exhibition they have a line of framed drawings by the Spaniard, Santiago Ramon y Cajal.  These are on scraps of paper and card, painstakingly rendered in pen and ink to depict forms and structures for which there were no previous conventions or stereotypes to build on, and which demanded a kind or truthfulness, sensitivity and delicacy,  that only the most dedicated artists achieve.