Clive Davis

JUKEBOX - "AS PRAIAS DESERTAS"

It's been carnival week in Rio, as you can see from this stunning slideshow in the Guardian. Now that the revellers have packed away their costumes, here's another restful number by that poised chamber group, Morelenbaum² / Sakamoto. This one is among Tom Jobim's finest, As Praias Desertas (The Empty Beach).

JUKE BOX - ANGELA HEWITT

If you need a distraction from the strange case of alleged classical hoaxer, Joyce Hatto, here's Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt playing  the prelude and fugue in F-sharp minor from Book II of the Well Tempered Clavier:

This NY Times profile notes that Hewitt isn't your average, assembly-line virtuoso:

"Not many people play the 48 from memory in public, and it sets you apart..." Ms. Hewitt, who does not have a publicist, writes her own engaging liner notes. She frequently speaks to the audience during recitals, for which she often wears elegant gowns that, she said, “reflect my playing: not too frilly.” She also regularly updates her lively blog (angelahewitt.com), saying the Internet makes the loneliness of constant travel more bearable.

Ms. Hewitt said she didn’t even mind audience interaction during performances. While Glenn Gould wrote an essay titled "Let’s Ban Applause," Ms. Hewitt said that since the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata (Op. 2, No. 3) ends with huge gestures, "if people don’t clap, I feel I haven’t played it right."

Wouldn't Gould have made a great blogger, though? As for the Hatto affair, it looks as if she was rumbled by the technology, not the reviewers:

Several days ago, another Gramophone critic decided to listen to a Hatto Liszt CD, of the 12 Transcendental Studies. He put the disc into his computer to listen, and something awfully strange happened. His computer's player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszts, but not a Hatto recording. Instead, his display suggested that the disc was one on BIS Records, by the pianist Lászlo Simon. Mystified, our critic checked his Hatto disc against the actual Simon recording, and to his amazement they sounded exactly the same.

How long before it's all turned into a Hollywood film, Judy Dench as Hatto, Steven Seagal as the editor of Gramophone?

MORE: Let's hear it for Nora the cat. Is that an Alban Berg piece she's playing? [Via The Rest Is Noise]

JUKE BOX - MORE CONTE

OK, I've posted one of his songs before, but this live version of Paolo Conte's greatest hit, Via Con Me, has just surfaced on YouTube. Skip the first minute and a half of the introductory chat, then the magic begins. What a terrific band, half-jazz, half-lounge. Chips, chips!

JUKE BOX - LYNNE ARRIALE

There are two contemporary pianists I never get tired of hearing. One is Ahmad Jamal, now in his seventies and still swinging like hell. The other is Lynne Arriale. I first came across her in the mid-1990s, when an acquaintance of mine took me to see her trio at Visiones, the now-defunct club in Greenwich Village. I was converted on the spot. What I most love about her music is that she treats songs as songs: it's no coincidence that she called one of her albums, Melody. You get a hint of what she's all about on this clip, a live extract of her cover of The Beatles' Come Together, with Jay Anderson on bass, the tireless Steve Davis at the drums.

If you prefer something more straight-ahead, try this performance of Seven Steps To Heaven, while her version of Abdullah Ibrahim's Mountain of the Night is as mellow as mellow can be.

JUKE BOX - PABLO CASALS

On holiday in Prades last summer, I paid a visit to Pablo Casals' living room, housed in the local museum-cum-library. (There's also a cast of his hands, which were surprisingly big and fleshy - more like a boxer's, really.) Here's footage of the town's most famous resident playing the Catalan melody Song of the Birds, a piece he often performed as an encore.

Incidentally, Britain's Stephen Isserlis delivers a terrific version in this Newsnight clip.

JUKE BOX - THE FOUR YORKSHIREMEN

"We never had a cup. We used to drink out of a rolled-up newspaper..." One reader was a mite perplexed by my reference to a handful of gravel yesterday. So, to enlighten him, here's the original black-and-white version of the classic sketch about deprived childhoods, as performed on At Last, The 1948 Show. Two Pythons-to-be, John Cleese and Graham Chapman, swap tall stories with Tim Brooke-Taylor and the magnificent Marty Feldman.

JUKE BOX - MIRIAM MAKEBA

One of the South African singer's fans has put together a beautiful montage over the recording of The Click Song. Enjoy.

JUKE BOX - PAOLO CONTE

You can keep Pete Doherty and the rest of them: the coolest musician on the planet is really the gravel-voiced lawyer-turned-singer from Asti. Paolo Conte is huge in France as well as Italy, and he also sells out when he ventures into London. I don't speak Italian, but that doesn't matter much, as even in translation his crpytic lyrics read like out-takes from Baudelaire mixed with a dash of Tom Waits. The music speaks in all languages, though; it's full of droll 20s-era jazz riffs and after-hours blues, performed by a wondrous mini-big band in which almost everyone doubles up on different instruments. One of the last times I saw him, he was playing a week of sell-out shows in one of the Milan's main theatres. The atmosphere was magical, like a family gathering.

I was hoping to find a clip of Via Con Me (Come Away With Me), which reached a big audience after being used on a car commercial. But as there's no sign of it, I'll settle for Sotto le stelle del Jazz (Under the Stars of Jazz)

Under the stars of jazz

An ape-man is walking

Or maybe dancing, who knows...

If you want to hear more, there's a fun version of Azzurro (Blue), and his greatest hits disc is simply indispensable.

JUKE BOX - GLADYS KNIGHT

My favourite Motown diva performs the version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine that almost always gets overlooked nowadays. Although it was, in fact, a hit before Marvin Gaye's. (If you're a Tamla buff, it's worth getting hold of the deluxe version of Standing In The Shadows of Motown just to hear the label's house band playing the backing track.)

JUKE BOX - BEBEL GILBERTO

Another grim, wet day out there. As good an excuse as any to indulge in some Brazilian day-dreaming from Bebel Gilberto, daughter of João Gilberto, the quintessential voice of bossa nova. Bebel made her mark after moving to New York, gigging around until she scored a huge international success with the album, Tanto Tempo. Here's her performance of So Nice, the English version of the Marcos Valle hit, Samba de Verão (also known as Summer Samba). If you want to hear the slightly funkier, electronic side of her work, try Samba de Benção, played over a fan's travel video.