Round Midnight Research Articles

The remarkable Jersey hailstorm of 1–2 November 2023: description and comparison with other cool season, dual‐hazard storms

AbstractAround midnight on 1/2 November 2023, Jersey (Channel Islands) was impacted by a supercell storm which produced both a tornado, rated T6/IF3, and very large hail. This article presents details of that remarkable hailstorm and places it into context by investigating severe hail events during the October–March cool season in the UK and Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man. The storm is compared to previous ‘dual‐hazard’ events during the cool season, where both a tornado and severe hail were produced.

Exploratory evaluation of the pilot programme of Round Midnight Virtual Decisions: KNIVES Workshops, a VR-Based Violence Prevention Programme

Round Midnight is a creative arts company that specialises in the use of drama and technology in education. They piloted a series of Virtual Reality (VR) based workshops for children and young people across Birmingham, focusing on issues within communities such as knife crime and gang violence. An exploratory evaluation of the initial impact of the workshops was carried out in two Year Five and Year Six classes in a primary school in Birmingham. Quantitative and Qualitative pre- and post-survey data from children, and a teacher focus group, were used to assess the influence of the programme on the following: (1) Understanding knife crime, the misconceptions and why people may carry knives; (2) Understanding the dangers, consequences and implications of carrying knives; (3) Recognising loyal and trustworthy friendships; (4) Recognising how to resolve conflict safely.Survey data suggested a decrease in children’s self-reported likelihood of carrying a knife after they had participated in the workshops. The data suggested children had more in-depth knowledge of knife crime, including the misconceptions, consequences and impacts of carrying a knife after participating in the workshops. Children also showed an understanding of safe conflict resolution after the workshops. Overall, the data suggests that the pilot of the Round Midnight Virtual Decisions: KNIVES curriculum had a positive impact on children’s knowledge, understanding and attitudes toward knife crime. Practical applications are discussed.

The logic of forming a musical text in a solo piano-jazz improvisation by M. Petrucciani on the theme of T. Monk’s “’Round Midnight”

Statement of the problem. Due to the natural tendency to constant renewal, the phenomena that arise in the field of jazz music-making, cause special scientific interest. The jazz art of the second half of the 20th century is represented by numerous names of bright musicians who formed the latest approaches to improvisational art in their creativity. One of such musicians was an unique pianist of Italian-French origin – Michel Petrucciani (1962–1999). The study of his heritage provides opportunities to reveal some aspects of modern jazz art, which are genetically related to the embodiment of the traditions of Western European music-making in piano jazz, and also to mark the vectors of its further evolution. Nevertheless, M. Petrucciani’s solo piano creativity is not studied for a present time. Some English-, French- and German-language articles, films and interviews with the musician are represented, mainly in online-resources. These works have mostly biographical direction and contain brief information about pianist’s aesthetic views and preferences, his creative achievements, and the state of his health, since the artist suffered from a rare congenital disease all his life. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to reveal the specifics of the structural and compositional logic of jazz improvisation on the popular theme of T. Monk’s “’Round Midnight” interpreted by M. Petrucciani, in the context of solo piano creativity of the latter. The solo piano work of M. Petrucciani, who without exaggeration can be called one of the outstanding musicians of the last century, has not yet been subject to scientific analysis in domestic musicology, which determines the innovative focus of this study. A set of research approaches – historical-genetic, comparative, hermeneutic, traditional methods of musicological analysis – contributed to the disclosure of the chosen topic. Research results and conclusion. In the course of the research, genetic, genre, structural, intonation, rhythmic, textural and other features inherent in the theme “’Round Midnight” were revealed in the context of compositional and piano-improvisational style of T. Monk – a progressive musician-innovator, one of the inspirations of the bebop style, as well as a conclusion about the features of individual interpreting the theme by M. Petrucciani was justified. M. Petrucciani in the improvisation on T. Monk’s “’Round Midnight” theme demonstrates self-own unique bright improvisational style, talentedly combining virtuosity with intonation meaningfulness and accuracy of phrases, with expressiveness of a musical statement that has a philosophical undertone, and the academic traditions of music-making, learned during his studies, with American and Western European jazz ones. The variety of methods of melodic-harmonic, textural, dynamic development used by the pianist testify not only to the musician’s desire to demonstrate virtuoso mastery of the instrument, but also contribute to the realization of the unique concept of the work.

Time Negatives of Variable Universe: On Sun Ra and Amiri Baraka

This essay was originally posted on Sean Bonney’s blog ’Round Midnight: Notes on Baraka, subtitled ‘notes and essays on militant poetry and poetics’, on 26 July 2019. It was delivered as a talk for Cesura/Acceso: Journal for Music and Experimental Politics in 2014, a recording of which can be found at the following link: https://soundcloud.com/cesura-acceso/sean-bonney-time-negatives-of-variable-universe-on-sun-ra-and-amiri-baraka.

Analysis of Jazz: A Comprehensive Approach by Laurent Cugny

Reviewed by: Analysis of Jazz: A Comprehensive Approach by Laurent Cugny Eunmi Shim Analysis of Jazz: A Comprehensive Approach. By Laurent Cugny. Translated by Bérengère Mauduit. (American Made Music Series.) Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. [x, 384 p. ISBN 9781496821881 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9781496821898 (paperback), $35; also available as an e-book, ISBN and price vary.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Laurent Cugny is a French musician and musicologist who collaborated with Gil Evans in the late 1980s. His previous books on jazz include Las Vegas tango: Une vie de Gil Evans (Paris: P.O.L, 1989), Électrique Miles Davis, 1968–1975 (Marseille: A. Dimanche, 1993), Une histoire du jazz en France (Paris: Outre mesure, 2014), and Hugues Panassié: L'œuvre panassiéenne et sa réception (Paris: Outre mesure, 2017), none of which is available in English translation. This volume, a translation of his Analyser le jazz (Paris: Outre mesure, 2009), is an ambitious venture to create a comprehensive system of analysis by encompassing a wide range of subjects that the author considers relevant in jazz analysis, many of which are not usually found in the standard literature on jazz theory and analysis. Comprehensiveness is reflected in its three-part structure: the first part engages in conceptual explorations, including the definition of a "work of jazz" and related concepts; the second part focuses on musical elements, such as harmony, rhythm, form, sound, and melody; and the third part discusses [End Page 432] various subjects, including the history of jazz analysis, transcription, and an overview of analytical approaches. In the first part, Cugny takes pains at defining various concepts and terms, devoting the first two chapters, for example, to the idea of a "work of jazz." He explains that "a work of jazz could only be a performance" (pp. 36–37) and distinguishes it from a composition, whether written by jazz musicians or not: "a composition remains a work in general and becomes a work for jazz in the moment that a jazz performance uses it as a starting point" (p. 37). He also distinguishes a "work of jazz" from Western classical music, which he calls "art music": "A jazz performance is an object that conceals a composition as it creates a new version of it, whereas a performance of art music reveals the written work" (p. 36). Interestingly, he often uses the term object in his discussion: "[A composition] cannot manifest itself in a (jazz) sound object outside of a performance, which, as it is being carried out, becomes a real object in its own right. This real object is different from the composition, which remains an unexpressed 'ideal' object" (p. 36). It is certainly important to emphasize the performance aspect of jazz, especially involving improvisation, but it is not clear why he focuses so much on what a "work of jazz" is. Although he sometimes uses examples (like Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight") to make his point, his discussions often become as vague as some of his terms. For example, he defines the term moments as "segments in the continuous sound that are characterized according to factors that the analyst decides on (amount of improvisation, parameters, etc.)" (p. 52). Intent on establishing a comprehensive system, Cugny also heavily engages in classification systems that divide things into categories and subcategories and then further subdivide them into more subcategories. Although it is important to demonstrate the relationships between various concepts and elements, this endeavor often results in a series of catalogs that seem excessive. In distinguishing between "what is composed and what is improvised," for example, he suggests that it "is possible to create a more precise tool with six notions articulated in two categories: the modes of elaboration on the one hand (fixing process, codes of play, improvisation) and the modes of exchange (instruction, cue, interplay) on the other hand" (pp. 55–56). He then divides one of the six notions, the "fixing process," into two categories, a "fixed text" and a "written text"; the former is then further "classified in three types of elements: the composition, the fixed fragment, and the harmonic changes" (p. 56). This type of multilevel categorization, combined with vague terms, often...

Formation of the composition “’Round Midnight” in the course of Thelonious Monk’s creative career

Formation of the composition “’Round Midnight” in the course of Thelonious Monk’s creative career

Portmantonality and Babbitt’s Poetics ofDouble Entendre

This essay presents a theory of musical and verbaldouble entendreinspired by and applicable to the late-period music of Milton Babbitt. Rather than assuming the appropriateness of any single method (which might tend toward singularity of meaning), a number of approaches are applied to three late works: primarily hisWhirled Series(1987), and secondarily hisCanonical Form(1983) andGloss on ’Round Midnight(2001). These are interpreted through various kinds of analysis, not only serial, but also tonal (chordal and voice-leading), associational, pitch-permeational, and form-functional. Connections to Tin-Pan-Alley song lyrics, jazz improvisation, hermeneutics, and Gibsonian affordances are discussed in relation to these musical analyses. All this is done to infer and cultivate connections (represented as aconceptual integration networks) between Babbitt’s extra-theoretic verbal expression and extra-dodecaphonic aspects of his music, connections that suggest an underlying poetics (a tacit motivational philosophy implicitly fueling his creativity) that provides pragmatic benefit to the artistic ambitions of diverse personal identities.

A laboratory study of the acaricidal, repellent and oviposition deterrent effects of three botanical oils on Tetranychus urticae (Koch, 1836) (Acari: Tetranychidae)

The biological activities of essential oil obtained from water distillation process of basil leaves [ Ocimum basilicum L. (Lamiales: Lamiaceae)] cv Round Midnight and crude oil obtained from the cold-pressed process of chinaberry tree seeds [ Melia azedarach L. (Sapindales: Meliaceae)] and a commercial neem oil product (Nimbecidine) [ Azadirachta indica (A. Juss, 1830) (Sapindales: Meliaceae)] were assessed against two-spotted spider mites, Tetranychus urticae (Koch, 1836) (Acari: Tetranychidae) using a residual method on leaf disc under laboratory conditions at Bursa Uludağ University during 2018-2019. The lethal concentrations (LC50 and LC90) of Nimbecidine, chinaberry and basil oils were estimated as 0.8 and 1.8 mg/L, 4.0 and 6.9%, 5.4 and 11.7%, respectively, 72 h after treatment. The lethal times (LT50 and LT90) of Nimbecidine (1 mg/L), chinaberry (6%) and the basil (8.4%) were 64 and 107 h, 41 and 73 h, 65 and 110 h, respectively. The females had a strong aversion to bean leaf surfaces sprayed with the sublethal concentrations of Nimbecidine (0.125-0.75 mg/L), chinaberry (0.75-3%) and basil (0.7-1.4%) oils. Significant decreases were recorded in the number of eggs laid on bean leaves sprayed with the sublethal concentrations for Nimbecidine (0.031-0.5 mg/L), chinaberry (0.75-3%) and the basil (1.4-5.6%) oils compared with unsprayed bean leaves. The study showed that the assessed concentrations of the oils obtained from the basil and chinaberry compared to the commercial botanical product (Nimbecidine) have similar biological effects on T. urticae .

Composition and improvisation in the aspect of the music infl uence on the expressive structure of the fi lm

Composition and improvisation in the aspect of the music infl uence on the expressive structure of the fi lm

Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk (1917–1982)

Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk (1917–1982)

Music in the shadows: noir musical films

Smoke. Shadows. Moody strains of jazz. Welcome to the world of films, where tormented antiheroes and hard-boiled musicians battle obsession and struggle with their music and ill-fated love triangles. Sultry divas dance and sing the blues in shrouded nightclubs. Romantic intrigue clashes with backstage careers. In her pioneering study, Music in the Shadows, film noir expert Sheri Chinen Biesen explores musical films that use film noir style and bluesy strains of jazz to inhabit a disturbing underworld and reveal the dark side of fame and the American Dream. While noir musical films like A Star Is Born include musical performances, their bleak tone and expressionistic aesthetic more closely resemble the visual style of film noir. Their narratives unfold behind a stark noir lens: distorted, erratic angles and imbalanced hand-held shots allow the audience to experience a tortured, disillusioned perspective. While many musicals glamorize the quest for the spotlight in Hollywood's star factory, brooding noir musical films such as Blues in the Night, Gilda, The Red Shoes, West Side Story, and Round Midnight stretch the boundaries of film noir and the musical as film genres collide. Deep shadows, dim lighting, and visual composition evoke moodiness, cynicism, pessimism, and subjective psychological points of view. As in her earlier study of film noir, Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir, Biesen draws on extensive primary research in studio archives to situate her examination within a historical, industrial, and cultural context.

Filming improvisation: Jazz criticism’s neglect of film style

Abstract How is jazz filmed? This article argues that jazz criticism has prioritized the musical and historical authenticity of jazz films, but has neglected the ways in which film style creates and comments upon scenes of improvisation. How do films about jazz negotiate the ‘now’ of diegetic improvisation and the ‘then’ of the recorded, edited event? Analysis of mise-en-scéne, camera movement and the performance of actors are argued to be essential to an understanding of narrative fiction film’s depiction of improvisatory processes. Through close readings of two sequences in Young Man with a Horn (1950) by Curtiz and Round Midnight (1986a) by Tavernier, and by looking at past attempts to analyse these films, I suggest that we need a more refined understanding of what ‘improvisation’ means on film. By attending to the formal properties of film, criticism can discard tired debates around representation and authenticity.

Oh Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree: Coffee in Popular Music

Oh Blessed Holy Caffeine Tree: Coffee in Popular Music

The Right Mistakes: Confronting the “Old Question” of Thelonious Monk's Chops

Though once considered an incompetent pianist, Thelonious Monk has long been celebrated for his playing as much as for his compositions. Yet his pianism continues to occasion critical unease; a defensiveness is detectable in discussions of Monk's technique even today. This may be because considerations of Monk's playing tend to avoid or finesse peculiarities that raised questions about his ability in the first place. These include the jarring dissonances which strike some listeners as mistakes. Examination of Monk's dissonance usage suggests two analytic categories. “Timbral dissonance” is an aspect of tone, idiomatic to the Black music tradition. The more idiosyncratic “syntactic dissonance” serves, rather, to challenge or subvert musical conventions. An analysis of Monk's 1968 solo recording of “Round Midnight” focuses on syntactic “wrong-note” dissonances. Neither errors nor merely facets of Monk's tone, their significance is bound up with their “wrongness”: they make sense because they sound wrong in a meaningful way, as significations on musical norms. Considered in pertinent contexts—the chord changes, the jazz piano tradition, and the improvisational process—Monk's “mistakes” evince a trickster logic, wry humor, and a precision that speaks directly to lingering uncertainty regarding his technical accuracy.

'Round Midnight

'Round Midnight

Melancholia, Mammon, and Magic

always night, or wouldn't need light.-Thelonious Monk1LIKE 'ROUND MIDNIGHT, his best known composition, Thelonious Monk's dictum speaks to a cross-cultural basis for complex emotions called melancholia and deep involvement of those emotions with creativity. With Monk's words in mind, I will turn toward some landmarks in Renaissance culture in which dynamic interplay of night and light is explored.This essay offers a wide-ranging discussion of melancholia in The Faerie Queene. By a circuitous route, it will arrive at a focus on Sir Guy on in his encounter with Mammon and narrative's descent into Mammon's underworld. My argument proceeds first through Marsilio Ficino's Three Books on Life, placing Ficino's diagnosis of consequences of being born under Saturn within framework of a treatise that covers several other topics, all of which offer ways to counter ill effects of severe melancholia. I will argue that Ficino's treatise helps us to understand The Faerie Queene, and that his rationale for therapeutic magic should be taken seriously by readers of Spenser. I remain committed to proposition, advanced tentatively in Spenser's Supreme Fiction, that the poet's worldmaking and procedures of a magician whose power comes from daemon Love may be much alike.' I will say at outset, however, that anyone who embraces possibility of therapeutic magic, along with any poet who aims to move readers toward virtuous action, must also confront possibility of failure and a return of melancholy theme, It's always night.1Most readers of The Faerie Queene are acquainted with melancholia and recognize traits of that distemper in several of poem's characters, but subject has not received a deep treatment specific to Spenser/' As an obvious trait in major and minor characters on dark side of poem (Night, Aesculapius, Despair, Mammon, Huddibras, Maleger, and Malbecco), melancholia is presented to us as something to be feared, and to be avoided if possible. The poem's melancholy lovers (Timias, Marinell, Amoret, Florimell, and Priscilla) receive sympathy in their predicaments, but they are somewhat culpable, never glamorous in their suffering. Redcrosse, Una, Arthur, and Britomart experience melancholy at times, but they are not overcome by it. And last but not least, since Merlin's role in poem resembles poet's own, when great seer looks into future with Britomart and Glauce his spirite is first enabled, then in end overcome in a halfe extatick stoure, by a prophetic furor that is akin to melancholia (IH.iii.21 and 50).The figure of Phantastes, one of honorable (II.ix.47) lodged in turret of Alma's castle, is full of melancholy, and a special case. He occupies a position of prestige, yet his appearance-Bent hollow beetle browes, sharpe staring eyes,/That or seemd-is as grotesque as Mammon's, indicating that he was borne with ill disposed skyes,/When oblique Saturne sate in house of agonyes (52). Fowler observes that while Saturn's influence is to be expected in a book dominated by Aquarius, we are hardly prepared to find it exerted in Castle of Alma itself (Numbers of Time 101). I follow Hamilton's commentary in correlating three sages and their rooms with three higher faculties of soul (fantasy or foresight, judgment or understanding, and memory), and also with future, present, and past, all constituting an allegory of Prudence, intellectual virtue most closely allied with moral virtue of Temperance.4What is melancholia, as manifested in a figure so mad or foolish as Phantastes seems to be, doing in an allegory of Prudence, and what could wild energy in his chamber possibly contribute to future-oriented education of Guyon and Arthur? Melancholia typically afflicts older people, and it is surprising to find it embodied in a young man with a hyperactive imagination. …

The House of the Setting Sun

“Become a rag again and the poorest may wave you” Pier Paolo Pasolini: To the Red Flag I put my mouth to your misery, New Orleans, inundated and soaking with death. Here lies: war lies piled so high, this floating prison of a cemetery cries out of rage at the end of its breath. Here, in the last delta, Desire lies on its side, is rolled, and rolled over upon by its own government, and crushed. Summertime is over and the livin’ is dead, and ’round midnight all hopes are looted. No one will come clean of the Katrina of New Orleans in this sinking house of the setting sun. Bodies so Black and so blue from loving what wouldn’t spit on their shoes if they needed a shine. Let alone a dime. Or water. America, you were always scorched earth in our mouths, always a baptism of crap, always a rain of disaster streaming down the panes of our broken eyes. Now our rags are the most torn, our jazz the most blue, our poor the poorest that can be worn in the soul’s thrift shop. Now that all is lost and there’s only nothing to lose...“Long live the courage and the sorrow and the innocence of the poor!” The real flag’s in tatters. Begin to wave it. Jack Hirschman

When bad things happen to great musicians

Earlier work has shown how jazz can deepen the meanings of a cinematic experience; can enrich the development of plot, character, or other dramatic themes in a motion picture; and can contribute to various aspects of a film’s significance. Conversely, the present essay focuses on how this cinemusical process can break down—leading to unsatisfactory or problematic results—especially in a jazz biopic that portrays the life of a great musician. In this connection, dwelling on the dark side of artistic genius, the essay discusses how cinemusical uses of jazz have failed to provide the needed dramatic effects—falling short of conveying the essence of true tragedy—in three major tragedepictions portraying the undeniably sad lives of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972); of a Lester Young/Bud Powell/Dexter Gordon composite character in ’Round Midnight (1986); and of Charlie Parker in Bird (1988).

No Room for Squares: Jean-Pierre Melville, Jazz and the French Bachelor

, The birth of the cool is a phrase that ordinarily evokes cutting-edge American phenomena like Miles Davis, Abstract Expressionism and the Beats,' Karen Durbin wrote recently in the New York Times, 'but in France, it could describe the casual stylish gangster movies of Jean-Pierre Melville. 'I Similar to the title of one of Hank Mobley's most famous albums, No Room for Squares, the Melvillean universe is a nocturnal one where the heroes are decidedly' cool' , usually on the wrong side of the law and therefore subversive, and, like the best oflate night jam sessions, always in movement. Similarly, there is a common thread that further connects the Melvillean protagonists, besides the trademark fedoras and trench coats (whichmakeupa sortof'uniform' for coolness in Melville's films): they are always bachelors and loners who invariably find themselves in a nightclub at a pivotal time when, of course,jazz serves as more than simple background music but as a metaphor for the 'lone wolf the Melvillean hero becomes. Just as the poet Jacques Reda compared Miles Davis to a nocturnal wanderer '[qui] continue a reflechir Ie meme soleil disparu, de rader dans un entre chien et loup interminable,'2 Melville's Bob Ie Flambeur, for example, revels in a sort of wistful freedom allowed for by his bachelorhood. Free from the structures and responsibilities of domestic life, he can come alive 'round midnight' while his married counterparts are safely tucked into their beds. As Melville explains regarding Bob: 'Bob est un homme libre. II a choisi de vivre a Montmartre parce que pour lui Montmartre est encore Ie seul endroit ou I' on puisse vivre. C' est Ie dernierrefuge. II y vit pendant la nuit jusqu' a I' aube, entre loup et chien, puisque Ie soir, c' est entre chien et loup. '3 Indeed in such films as Bob Ie Flambeur (1957) or Deux hommes dans Manhattan (1958), ludic and nocturnal spaces (such as casinos,jazz clubs and even the ubiquitous empty streets) fill the void Melville's protagonists feel during the day while also providing them with a counter-universe that they can hang on to as an alternative system of values. If during the day these bachelor heroes (or anti-heroes) flounder in a boring quotidian they reject, they reclaim the night hours as their own because it is at night that they can reassert their true personalities and feel free both spatially and spiritually.

Arts and health.

Arts and health.