Remembering Jeffrey Tate

In my first year at Cambridge there was a small group of friends, all fellow members of Christ's College, who met together most evenings and many afternoons for endless conversation. What we all had in common was a great appreciation of classical music, theatre and of wit. Jeffrey was a powerhouse of all these. His physical affliction ruled out most roles in drama, but his direction/production of Measure For Measure for the ADC (or Mummers? or Marlowe Society?) left an indelible impression on me.

In those days, despite never having had any piano lessons, I was trying to teach myself to play Bach.The second piece I learned was Var.13 of the Goldberg Variations. It took me two years. I used to practice it in a little back room at Christ's One day Jeffrey popped in to see what I was doing.

"Do you play?" I asked.
"A little," said he.
"Please show me how this should go"

Whereupon he sat down and played it so well that I asked him to start from the beginning, and marveled as he sightread the entire Goldberg Variations, his performance being as good as any I had heard. I knew he loved music and was in the college choir, but he was studying medicine, so it was quite a surprise. But in fact, after doing his medical internship, he got a position as a repetiteur for Georg Solti at Covent Garden, and went on to become principal conductor at Covent Garden, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic.and others.

I lost touch with him when I left England for India and, eventually, Japan, but he got in touch when he came to Tokyo for some concerts with the pianist Mitsuko Uchida, and my wife and daughter and I attended the concert and spent the rest of the day with the two of them; he was as fun to talk with as ever,and we were able to catch up a bit on what had become of all the members of our little clique.

Although people with his condition normally have a short life expectancy, this didn't seem to apply to Jeffrey. You may have noticed that conductors generally live to a very advanced age, often doing their best work in their final decades. I don't for a moment doubt that allowing music to flow continually through your mind and body is the closest thing to the Elixir Of Youth available And also, as Jeffrey said,

""There is in the last resort no limit to my physical energy if I know what I'm doing and want to do it."

Dub Rhapsody-DJ Chris Mix

Here's a recording of a DJ set I played some time ago, in which all the tracks are at least somewhat dubby.

DUB RHAPSODY

DJ Chris@ Spring Equinox Party at Anagra, Tokyo

Since I had no car transport available, I was unable to take my usual pile of CD cases, so for the first time I loaded DJ software onto a laptop, quickly figured out the basics, and took it and an external HDD to the venue. However, since the audio card has only one output, I was unable to pre-listen to tracks, so all crossfades were done on the basis of memory and graphic display. Therefore, some of the transitions are less than optimal, though none are actual "trainwrecks". But I am really happy with the selections I found myself making on the fly, and with the overall arc and development; Despite its lack of precise beat- and key-matching on the crossfades, I think it may be the best set I've ever done. It ranges from ambient to fairly intensely rhythmic downtempo and back to ambient, with ethnic and classical samples mixed in with some of the tracks...

MELATONIC - Mix by DJChris

The middle portion of this mix is quite high-intensity, and it mellows out for the final quarter... MELATONIC

Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within [Full Film]

The voice of a neighbour, heard almost every day...

What kind of creature is this?

ISLAND HOPPING - A DJChris Mix

xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>So-titled because of the scattering of ethnic-flavoured pieces throughout,  but it's not as purely ethnochill a mix as the title might suggest, ranging from ambient to moderately full-on.

EXCURSIONS IN AMBIENCE

Here's a mix made some time ago of favourite tracks from the CD series "Excursions In Ambience". It has a distinctly ethnic flavour, but not exclusively...

GYRE & GIMBLE MIX

This is a mix I made of music suitable for all your gyreing and gimbling needs. 

"`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe."

Jabberwocky
-Lewis Carroll-

Planet Love Mix - DJChris

Here's a short (15") DJ mix from some years ago with a bit of a Gaian message amid some trancey old school tracks.

Click on the DivShare logo if you want to download...

HAKUSANRISE

DJ Chris dawn set at Rainbow2000's Hakusan party back in the late 20th century.

I have been told many times that this was one of my more inspiring sets, so I think it's a good thing to offer for Xmas listening. Lots of simultaneous playing of 2 or more tracks... I'd place it in a genre I'd call Energetic Chillout..

DJChris Classical Concert Mix

One of the most interesting DJ gigs I have had was when I was invited to perform with the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert hall in Tokyo. Three DJs were asked to perform live, mixing whatever they chose together with the orchestra. I cannot remember the names of the other two DJs at the moment, but the three classical pieces chosen were a Satie "Gymnopedie", Ravel's "Pavanne Pur Une Enfante Defunte" and, in my case, the prelude to Wagner's opera "Parsifal".  I'll post that track later.

I was asked to do a DJ mix during the intermission,  which lasted for about 50 minutes.  I chose pieces of electronica which I thought might appeal to people who appreciated classical music, namely works of interestingly complex polyphony or harmony.  I also mixed in quite a few samples and extended pieces from the classical repertoire. The resultant mix includes pieces by Gurdjieff, Alquimia, The Irresistible Force, Future Sound of London, Monteverdi, Richard Strauss, Pete Namlook and Beethoven,among others.

Among the more successful blends, in my opinion, were the Monteverdi soprano duet "Venite, venite" over a rolling piece whose name I have forgotten, and the final mix of Namlook's "Silence" with the slow movement of Beethoven's last string quartet.  The Schwarzkopf sample from Strauss' "Morgen" works pretty well too, I think.

See how you like it. I recommend a fairly high volume, as some of the pieces project a vast soundscape.....

Best of Autotune The News - 3 Mixes

Hang Drum Shpongled

This is the kind of performance for which the term "sui generis" is reserved...

Manu Delago performs with seemingly endless rhythmic inventiveness on the Hang drum with Shpongle at a concert in London's Roundhouse .

AYAHUASCA DREAM

Of the various recordings of tribal trance sets I have played, this one most approximates what I would play if I were DJing at one of the eclipse parties. If you didn't attend one, play this nice and loud and imagine.... It begins with a call to the tribes, who gather and dance themselves into a state of full-on trance which climaxes, grooves for a while, floats through space and then returns to the tribal grounds. At least that's what I was imagining.

DJChris @ Golden Week Gathering

Here's a short streaming DJ mix taken from what I played at the EarthlingZ Golden Week Gathering. Coming just after the Indian live performance, it has many ethnic female vocal samples.