Finally I struck upon a way to enjoy live jazz and make good progress with my coursework at the same time. All I needed to do was choose my venue for the SE20 coursework as the Wardrobe. That way I could go along and enjoy a bit of live music, and as long as I paid attention to what was going on at the bars and with the staff and such it would be productive too.

I went along last night to do the first stage of my fieldwork and have pretty much covered all the angles asked for in the coursework spec, even asking a friend questions to form the customer interview. Seeing as I go so often I should be able to check my diagrams quite easily too. Jazz and coursework seem to play very nicely together, I could get used to this!

Last night I was in York to present the first airing of Jazz Blues Fusion for the new academic year in York. It was really great to be back in the presenters chair again and with such a great selection of music along with and superb listener interaction in the form of e-mails to the studio. I was pleased to hear that the jazz and blues society in York has had over 250 members sign up which gives me great hope that the soon to exist Leeds counterpart society can do equally as well.

Special thanks also to my friends in Leeds, many of whom took the effort to tune into the show and listen live

If you missed the show you can download and listen to it direct from lara

I went along to the mine bar in Leeds student union this evening to check out the Monday night jazz evening they host there. Considering how much closer it is to me compared with the wardrobe and it has free entry I was impressed. While it is clear it cannot better some of the more prominant artists that are showcased at some of the bigger clubs in town, its certainly a great place to go to to kick back and enjoy some funky jazz.

A fair few folk from the group came along as well, and while they didn’t stay long they seemed to enjoy it and it was nice to have them there. Thanks to Kat for pointing out the event existed!

Something I noticed quite distinctly last academic year here at the university of Leeds was the lack of a jazz and blues society of any description. I resolved to do something about this but until recently hadn’t managed to set the ball rolling.

Today was an important mile-stone to seriously making good jazz and blues connections a reality on camus though when I met a jazz enthusiast by the name of Andy who had spoken to a number of music based societies in the societies fair and found that a lot of people had been asking about a jazz and or blues society of some description. After having a lengthy discussion about the wonders of jazz exploration with Andy it certainly seems like we should be able to pull something together in the not too distant future.

Combine this with the fact that a friend of Sheena’s also seems to be up for helping to start a jazz and blues society, things are looking up in a big way. A website will be going up this weekend and I’m going to try and get some plans of some description finalised. We will need 20 initial members to get the society off the ground, so once I publish a link to the new website I would appreciate it if you could e-mail it to any of your friends at Leeds who you think might be into jazz so we can get jazz and blues in Leeds off to a flying start!

Anyone who has been keeping up with the technology news of late will have spotted that a legal music download service offering DRM free MP3 files for a flat subscription each month has been launched (BBC article here). Being a Linux user, this is the only kind of download service I could possibly use, so I took it upon myself to investigate their catalogue, music files and their download methods and give some kind of review as to if its a step in the right direction or not.

Firstly I decided that I wouldn’t sign up for the free trial; the website provides open access to browse the catalogue and listen to clips of all the music, so I figured that a glance at the subscription packages would give me enough of an indicator combined with that lot without surrendering my personal details which are required even for a trial.

My general impression of the music on offer was good. I’m a jazz fan myself and I found a wide range of jazz I knew about and a lot more I didn’t, much of it proving interesting to sample, and a fair few tracks making me wish I’d taken out the trial. There were notable holes in the catalogue though, especially for some of the more recent releases and more modern music in general. I’d definitely say it is a great place to discover new music and grab some legal copies of it, but if you are going in search of something specific, you may be disappointed.

Interface wise, the site is easy to use and cross-browser compatable. There isn’t over-use of javascript, and the default colours are easy on the eye. I mention this as browsing through and reading about music is important to me and so if you couldn’t bear to spend more than 5 minutes on the site due to design it would be a problem. Thankfully this isn’t the case and you become immersed in the music on offer, not distracted by bad layout.

The eventual method of downloading tracks (I discovered this by reading the help files, which I might mention here are simple but complete) is by client side software (software you download for the non techies). Initially this concerned me as a Linux user but a Linux client is provided and indeed there are a number of completely open source clients out there which work very nicely and put your mind at ease in the software department. Windows and Mac software is of course available as a matter of course.

From all user accounts downloads are fast and without congestion, although I couldn’t check this for myself. Sample tracks play in MP3 format at 128kbps and are 30 seconds long. There is also an option to download a .m3u playlist of all the sample clips on an album for easy listening in a player of your choice, something that sites like amazon cd shop lacks and is a nice touch. Full tracks are encoded at 192kbps VBR. This should be fine for most music, but some notable exceptions may be mainly vocal performances and classical pieces. I favor at least 256kbps for these types of tracks, but you can’t have it all and with a library of over 1 million tracks, there has to be storage to think of. Still, I do think they should deliberately encode classical tracks at a higher bitrate; when I rip my own classical music at high and lower rates I can tell the difference.

Costs for the service range from 40 songs a month for £8.99 to 90 songs a month for £14.99. As a 10 track album can cost me over £14.99 in a high street record store I consider this exceptionally good value as the files you get are unprotected and you can do everything with them you would be able to do with MP3s obtained by ripping a CD. If you wish to exceed the limit on your account you can either upgrade or for a one off time (or if you are already on the max plan) you can buy extra “burst” credits, the price of which seems to be hidden in the members only account area. I wouldn’t imagine this would be too pricey though. The only slight downside is that track allowences don’t carry over into the next month, which while isn’t a big issue means if you are into getting whole albums you may have to get half the album in one month and the rest in the next just to make sure you don’t lose out on the credits. Not a huge problem, but having half an album for a few days would annoy me - I’d rather wait and get all of it at once, but in this case that causes you to lose out.

Overall I think eMusic marks the beginning of something I have always said is the future of music online; a subscription based service with generous track number limits, DRM free music and reasonable prices making significant savings on CDs. We’re not there yet, but this venture certainly makes the first step on the road.

If you want to check out eMusic, you can do so at your leisure by visiting their catalogue

Well the gap in the blog is over because I’m back in Leeds after visiting Rotterdam for the North Sea Jazz festival. I’m currently in the process of getting the pictures of the trip and reviews for all the acts and the festival as a whole sorted so I won’t say a huge amount in this post about it all other than that it was the most amazing musical experience ever and I’ve heard and seen some of the best in world jazz and I’m positively raving about it and will be for some time

It would seem I took the weather back to the UK with me from Rotterdam as the sun is just as strong and hot here as it was over there. Still its nice to be out in the warmth, although my tendency to burn easily is slightly hampering in these conditions to say the least.

I arrived back in Leeds to find my stuff in the same mess in which I had left it. No surprise of course but it did leave me with rather a lot to do when everything else was factored in. I have my stuff to sort, North Sea to review, a couple of projects to complete, a few sites to upgrade and a load of goods people have purchsed from me to send off in the post. Add to that the heat that makes working upstairs at my computer impossible in the afternoon where the sun streams through my south facing window and turns my room into a sauna, its all rather challenging. Still I have massive amounts of time to do everything so its no big deal.

In true student spirit I’m meeting some friends tonight in our favorite (air conditioned) haunt for a few drinks, and if that wasn’t enough I’ve booked tickets to go and see Michelle in Jersey this August which is really exciting; I’m told its a wonderful place and if the weather holds its going to be just perfect.

With the musical feast of the jazz festival behind us, Monday, as well as being the day we flew home, was a day for exploring the non-musical areas of the city of Rotterdam, of which there are many.

Rotterdam is the largest port in europe and one doesn’t have to travel far to find evidence to support this. Huge marinas and harbours streaching as far as the eye can see on one side of the city, not to mention rivers and channels with banks on which you can sit and watch the huge container ships steam past. it was amazing to see the diversity of the city’s industry and innovation balance. On the one hand you have the means to transport vast quantities of goods and on the other an search and innovation capital no doubt producing some of the great ideas that go into the very products inside the containers.

The shipping links don’t just stop at the modern day vessles though. All along the banks of the harbours are pieces of evidence that do more than hint at Rotterdams sailing roots in the golden days of barges and other cargo vessles. A martime museum provided an ample insight into Rotterdams sailing past, not to mention a real traditional ship that you could walk around and inspect at close quarters. It was certainly a very worthwhile addition to the trip.

Away from the hustle and bustle of Rotterdam’s busy port are a collection of shops and restaurants not disimilar to those found in many other European cities and they provide ample relaxation for a jazz enthusiast who is all jazzed out. The relaxed atmosphere of the various bars is really nice, and with outisde seating provided us with a great place to recap on our feelings on the festival.

All in all, even without the festival, Rotterdam is a great place to visit and an enjoyable weekend break is sure to await all those who choose to pay it a visit.

Latin jazz wasn’t originally on our list of must see things at the festival but we are certainly glad we ended up seeing the huge star of Brazillian music, Maria Rita. The atomosphere was perfect and soon chased away the sounds of the previous act that was still strong in my ears as we settled down in what must have been one of the largest seated arenas at the festival.

The band came on stage first and set the scene with some cool sounding latin rhythms and then Maria Rita was welcomed to the stage. The first thing that struck me about Maria was the way she carried herself in front of the crowd; she truely respected her audience and the music she was about to perform. Introducing herself she mentioned how she hadn’t ever performed at an event of this size and that she was thrilled to see so many there.

It was at this stage I realised that this was probably going to be one of the best acts I had seen and I wasn’t wrong. Maria’s voice carried really well and instantly had you listening intently with foot tapping being the least amount of movement observed in the room. Starting with some more generic pieces to warm the crowd Maria soon moved up to some much more adventurous pieces making full use of the band to superb effect.

Two thirds of the way through her set, after a particularly spectacular track which captured the imaginations of eveyone present and really reinforced the definition of latin jazz music she became the only artist I saw at the festival to recieve a standing ovation which lasted for a good 5 minutes. Clearly overwhelmed Maria got the crowd to remain standing and dance to some further superb pieces of music, two of which feature on her new album soon to be released.

From her performance at the festival it isn’t hard to see why Maria Rita has become an icon in the Brazillian music scene. Missing out on listening to her music is just not an option.

Tommorrow morning in the small hours I’m flying out to Rotterdam to take in the best bits of the North Sea Jazz festival 2006. I’ve decided that I’m going to blog the whole event, but retrospectively when I get back so I have a chance to enjoy all the events to the full while I’m there. I’ve got my digital camera sorted so I’ll have photos of all the events too. Comments from jazz fans will be more than welcome, and if any other readers are going to the festival then reviews of events I have been to or otherwise will be more than welcome, just send them to me and I’ll publish them.

I’m off to see some reportedly superb funk tonight, 70s style. A group called Capri are playing at the wardrobe jazz club and as with most gigs there it looks set to be a good night. The doors to the club open at 9pm if anyone fancies joining me. Its been a while since I’ve been to some really good live jazz, blues or funk and so I’m really looking forward to it. Not that I haven’t got something coming up that will eclipse all music previously seen live (the North Sea Jazz festival) but it will still be good to hear some live funky stuff; I may even drink enough to get on the dance floor, then again, that usually happens anyway with anything live and remotely jazzy. It’s going to be great