John Dankworth

John Dankworth, one of jazz's most eloquent advocates has died and its a sad loss. I never met him, but I admired his energy, skill and undoubted musicianship. In the 1970's Dankworth became a household name, largely due to the amazingly durable partnership with his wife, the singer Cleo Laine, I can recall whispers from the more purist critics that he had "sold out". This was both unfair and unfounded. There was, to be sure an element of the Svengali in his coaching of Ms Laine, but his his ability to reflect and compliment her extraordinary vocal range and dexterity was always, it seemed to me to be in the spirit of the discipline that formed him -bebop.

And as a bebop altoist he was a significant figure - you didn't get to be a founder member of the infamous Club Eleven unless you had the chops for it and he most certainly did. As he steadily worked his way towards creating the big bands his liquid sound and secure technique ensured that his musical ideas were always expressed with confidence and panache. In the early seventies I remember being lucky enough to be invited to the telerecordings of a series called "The big bands at the Dorchester", in those enlightened times when the BBC still had the guts to make such programmes and the John Dankworth Big Band equalled the power of the Buddy Rich Band and easily surpassed it for sheer depth of musical inventiveness. He was able to engage all the top players and they certainly had to work for their fee. One who worked particularly hard that night was the legendary Hank Shaw, generally considered to be the greatest bebop trumpeter of his generation.

So, since John Dankworth seemed to be a happy and fulfilled man and musician, let me end with a Hank Shaw story which doubtless made him very cheerful. Its not apocryphal, but the version that was told to me by another greatly missed star, bassist Lennie Bush, concerns a gig the Dankworth band were playing up north - Manchester, I believe. All the way up from London, the occupants of the band bus were subjected to Hank droning on about his latest discovery - Pelmanism. This aid to developing a good memory had, according to its latest disciple, changed his life - and much for the better. Hank only ran out of steam as they arrived at their destination when he realised - he'd left his trumpet at home.

If this story has been embellished over the years - my apologies. The condolensces of the whole music world, not just the jazz part of it go to Cleo and to her two very talented children, Alec and Jacqui, who will keep the Dankworth name alive for a long time to come.

Streaming the Arts

Last week I attended Midem, the annual beanfeast for anyone involved in the music business. Every January the Palais des Festival in Cannes plays host to a host of record company execs, publishers, promoters, distributors and probably far too many wannabies, who bravely sally forth to the south of France with the illusion that this year it will all happen for them.

I go to Midem under the auspices of the IMZ - The International Music Centre, based in Vienna. This slightly odd institution looks after the interests of producers and broadcasters of music and dance for television - so its fair to say that the membership might all count as wannabies! Certainly the earnest discussions and meetings on the IMZ stand seem to result in very little actual progress in co-productions and sales, although the daily Avant Premiere screenings are a welcome chance to see what people across the world have been up to in this worryingly niche market.

For the last few years, the question of finding the television arts audience and getting productions to them, at a time when conventional terrestrial broadcasters are reducing their arts coverage, has increasingly obsessed us all. (And don't believe the BBC's protestations about the quality and scope of their arts offerings, its more or less chimera). Its quite clear that there is an audience out there and a good way to reach them is via the internet. But there are quite a lot of problems.

There are still plenty of opera and concert relays to be had, if you like that sort of thing. The problem is that, whilst most countries in Europe still have State broadcasters who are required to broadcast a certain number of relays per year, the material is very often either mundane or ludicrous - this year's prize for crassness has to be awarded to Swiss Television, for their "groundbreaking" "La Boheme", filmed live in and around a Zurich tower block, which made my blood curdle.

So lots of investment is being poured into streaming and downloading arts events on the net and there were several very informative seminars about this at Midem. One particularly good session involved the new bosses of Medici - an American owned, pan European group of content producers and the British DVD company, Opus Arte, which is owned by the Royal Opera House.
The Medici man announced that they were streaming and downloading to hundreds of thousands of customers, but admitted that they were some years away from monetising the project and Opus Arte confessed that they weren't quite at the point of finalising a business plan for their yet to be launched download platform.

It was left to the floor to put some perspective on the proceedings. LSO live have been successful in getting their strong brand to its supporters, largely by CD, distributed conventionally as well as on the net. They, like the very impressive San Francisco Symphony Orchestra media operation largely eschew streaming and downloading, preferring to disseminate information and sales oulets via the net. Only the mighty Berlin Phil actually have a live streaming operation, their Virtual Concert Hall and their representative admitted that although in their first year they had over a million clicks on the site, this only translated to twenty thousand actual subscribers - a two percent success rate that seems to be mirrored wherever one looks in the magic world of classical streaming and downloads. Without the sponsorship of Deutche bank they would not be able to service even those twenty thousand people.

In addition, there are crucial elements which are the proverbial elephant in the room: Performers and Union agreements, copyright and publishing problems and - not mentioned very often, the fact that the copper wires that carry so much of the Internet, certainly in Europe are rather more suited to homemade clips on You Tube than high definition state of the art films. The average MP3 download carries a mere thirty percent or so of the actual musical information on a track - what on earth is the point of making beautiful high definition music films when they will end up looking as though they were shot with a handycam? (Always assuming you can download them cleanly in the first place)

Of course I'm being simplistic, the net will work for high quality television eventually, someone will work out how to pay for the content to be produced and get that content to the market in sufficient numbers - and that someone will make a lot of money and a lot of arts and music lovers very happy. Just don't junk your DVD player or your Sky Arts subscription quite yet!