Going out with Magill July 1978

This month's Music and Film.

AS CHARLES DICKENS said at the moment of writing, I am listening to a concert broadcast live from NBC in the St. Regis Hotel on 5th November, 1938, before I was born and I hope and pray that the concert presented by the Dublin Jazz Society (or two of its members) will be as successful and the announceements as short and succinct as to allow the musicians involvved to display their talents to the full as did Alistair Cooke on that particular night.

This semi-impromptu sesssion which will be recorded by R TE for future broadcastting will feature the most proomising and prominent trommbonist in Europe at present, Roy Williams. Williams has served time with the well known British jazz bands of Terry Lightfoot, Alex Walsh (who toured here last year on the Satchmo show with Humphrey Lyttleton at the Olympia) and Roy, who has just joined Humph's band and will be guest of honour, is to be interviewed with selections of his music just before the Saturday news bulletin on RTE radio which should help to pack the Shelbourne on that night, Saturday, 15th July at 8.30 pm.

Accompanying Roy perrsonally for his solo numbers will be the Tony Drennan Trio - Jimmy McKay bass and the incomparable John Wadham on drums. Professor Drennan from the College of Music has already distinguishhed himself backing the great tenorist Bud Freeman, trummpeter Ruby Braff, cornetist Wild Bill Davison and Roy himself six years ago (or so).

Hopes are high that Proofessor Peter O'Brien, currenttly the musical director of the Abbey Theatre, will play a duet with Tony - on two pianos! This could stretch from anything from Wagner to Waller!

We will, I am told, have the added talents of the ubiquitous Rock Fox of Foxxrock with some of his friends and an all-in ensemble for the last set to include Brian Hopper and Victor Prouse, trumpeter and trombonist respectively from my five year stint at Killiney on Sunnday mornings.

An interesting feature of the Shelbourne broadcast is that Jazz Odyssey trumpettman Joe McIntyre used to trim Roy Williams' hair when they were with the Terry Lightfoot band on tour! Words fail me. Wigs on the Green?

On to what's happening elsewhere.

To go through the week starting on Mondays. I'll just list them for you.

Mondays: A 16 piece Big Band playing Glenn Miller, Count Basie and Duke Ellinggton at the South County at 8.30.

Tuesdays: At Dunnelles DunnLaoghaire Shopping Centre) main stream jazz by the John Donegan sextet - well worth a visit. 8.30 pm. If you are further out of town the Monnday Big Band becomes the Tuesday Big Band at the St. Lawrence Hotel in Howth from 8.30 pm.

Wednesdays: A new one here - one of the first Dixieland bands to start Sunday mornning sessions in Ireland have finally braved the big smoke from Wicklow to play under the title of the Coolgraney Jazzband at the Merrion Inn from 8.30 pm.

Thursdays: Niall McMahon (clarinet), Tony Drennan (piano), Dave Fleming (bass) and Jack Daly (drums), playa very listenable to up-market cocktail type jazz, but buy them a brandy or two and look out for a rave-up! At the Grove Hotel Malahide a rathher primitive but beautiful band ( hear that clarinet player) The Silver Leaf New Orleans Orchestra are blasting it out in the true style. Fridays: Colie Walsh, our old friend, is still at it with his now almost legendary 1930's style band The Fair City J azzzband at the Merrion Inn oppposite St. Vincent's Hospital. Do go ... they always seem to have famous international Jazz "heads" dropping in. Gus Hackett on clarinet and the leader himself sound reallly like the real thing. Saturdays: Two of the best sessions around at present. At the Merrion Inn, Kevin Hayes (that indefatigable leader/bass player has a raving line-up known as The Jazz Coasters (I call them the Jazz mats). Anything from "I'll Remember April" to "That's A Plenty" may be expected! They beat us all to it by reecording the first Irish jazz LP I know of. Matt Feddis and His Jubilee Jazz Band have the record of running the longest Jazz session ever known in Dublin circles. Seven years at the Coliemore in Dalkey! He is now MD at myoid haunt in Killiney on Saturday nights - outstanding soloist in this band is Charlie Deveney from Bray. Go some week.

Sundays: Your largest choice. Killiney is out, over. Sorry. However, we can offer you the following: The South County Hotel, a group calling themselves The World's Worst Jazz Band - don't believe it (although sometimes I am told people are tempted to). I can't in all fairness comment because I play Sunday mornnings in Howth. Try it and see. Also on Sundays, I finish this piece with the information that Gerry Ryan's Jazz Odysssey with yours truly supplyying pathos and comic relief appear weekly from 12.30 pm at the St. Lawrence Hotel in Howth.

See you somewhere in the milieu .......•

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Films

Another Man, Another

Woman Claude Lelouch

again rambling through the coincidences and misunderrstandings that eventually bring lovers together. But for once the meeting is worthhwhile, with wryly nostalgic performances from James Caan and Genevieve Bujold as the unlikely Wild West vet and Parisienne emigre who find truth in a shootout.

The Last Wave - Director Peter Weir shows that the eerie unease evoked so effecctively in "Picnic at Hanging Rock" was no fluke: This time Sydney lawyer Richard Chamberlain, taking up an aborigine murder case, begins to have weird apparitions. Stones and caves again asssume symbolic power. Annother triumph for Australia's energetic young film inndustry.

Mitchell - Useful only as a training guide for would-be recruits to Pinochet's secret police, showing in admiring close-up and slow-motion how to crush hands in car doors, knee-cap suspects, blast away stomachs and faces with shotguns, to say nothing of taking out a heart with a fish hook. The Censor apparently considers this preeferable to the humanity of Fellini's "Casanova".

Oh God - The Second Coming in the no-nonsense form of George Burns, complete in baggy slacks, a nylon winddcheater, sneakers and a vizorred cap. John Denver, Caliifornian supermarket manager, is His messenger of Good Tiddings summoned for interview to Hope Street - and all the other jokes are equally obbvious. Something of a lettdown from Director Carl Reiner, once noted for his black humour.

The Turning Point - Almost another "Julia", but in a conntemporary New York ballet setting. Two old friends Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft, whose lives took separate paths, meet several years later, but this time as rivals: the catalyst in their relationship being Mac Laine's teenage daughter who wants to emulate Bancroft's dancing achievements. Poor Mikhail Baryshinikov is the man caught in the femaelstorm.

An Unmarried Woman - Sennsitively explored dilemma of a New York middle class wife (all Paul Mazursky's movies are set in New York) who thought she was safe in a very good marriage: when it breaks up she finds herself commpletely lost with an overrwhelming sense of hopeelessness. Shattering portrayal by Jill Clayburgh (for which she won Cannes best actress award).

Viva Knieval - Like Muhammmad Ali, stunt freak Evel has no difficulty acting himself convincingly. Sneer, if you like but he's a genuine Am~rican hero, as real as Superman or Batman or "Star Wars" defying impossible odds with spectacular stunts, which makes this naive enterrtainment a must for children.