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Showing posts from January, 2005

Memories of the USAAF 389th Bomb Group at Hethel, the Green Dragons

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It is sixty years since the end of the war, but deep in rural Norfolk residents claim that more than memories are still active. Legend tells how a crew member of a USAAF Liberator badly wounded on a mission flying from Hethel was transferred to the nearby military hospital at Morley, where sadly he died. Local residents recount of how, at night, the spirit of the airman still walks between the hospital (the site today for Wymondham College ) and the old base at Hethel. In the war Hethel was the base of USAAF 389th Bomb Group, today it is the high-tech headquarters of Lotus cars . The 389th Bomb Group called itself the Green Dragons after the Green Dragon pub in Wymondham which was the local for the crews, and today the pub still remains virtually unaltered. The Green Dragon name has been perpetuated into the twenty-first century by the USAF 564th Missile Squadron which was originally assigned to the 389th Bomb Group at Hethel, and drew all its heritage and history from the old Bomb S

Bare ruined choirs

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Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang Shakespeare Sonnet 73 Castle Acre Priory, Norfolk English monastic ruins are almost more impressive than a living monastery; they are doubly dramatic. They pose formidable questions about God and the soul, to which the light and shadows of their ruined architecture offer the merest hint of answers. So much blighted beauty is awe-inspiring. They are as unexplained as Stonehenge, and the grass preaches as powerfully as the stones. One wants to share in their massive darkness. The Frontiers of Paradise by Peter Levi Wymondham Abbey, Norfolk History, which tells of the slow rise of civilized peoples, and of many fortunate epochs in which things of beauty were created in profusion, has also many a melancholy record of the whoelsale destruction of the beautiful works of man, all too rare in any age. In the long list of those who have destroyed things fair and lovely - a list that has seen a lamentable increase in length even while these vo

Michel Petrucciani

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Improvisation is a recurring thread on An Overgrown Path. Keith Jarrett is already well woven into the postings, and the colossus of Bill Evans (whose influence reaches as far as Gyorgy Ligeti ) awaits. But today it is the turn of jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani. First, let's get the obvious out of the way. Osteogenesis Imperfecta, the so-called "glass bones" disease meant that Michel Petrucciani grew to just three feet tall, weighed a mere fifty pounds, and was left fatally vulnerable to illness, resulting in his death in 1999 at the age of just thirty seven. He made his impact before making allowances for those with disabilities quite rightly became the norm.But Michel Petrucciani needed no compromises, he was a giant of the keyboard in everything except stature. He was born in the land of the Gods, provence, to a French mother and Sicilain jazz pianist fatehr. Like Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, who he is often compared to, Petrucciani had a classical training, and h

Elgar's other enigma

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Like Pliable Elgar was a keen cyclist , here he is in Malvern with his much-used Sunbeam tourer. Jessica Duchen's classical music blog about Edward Elgar's birthplace at Broadheath, Worcestershire reminded of a link to him sitting on my bookshelf. The score of Elgar's Violin Conerto contains an enigmatic dedication in the form of a mysterious Italian phrase - "Acqui esta encerrada el alma de" - followed by five dots; meaning that the identity of the dedicatee of this perenially popular work is unknown. Some years ago I bought a second hand copy of the autobiography of Mrs Richard Powell, 'Dorabella' of the tenth of the Enigma Variations ('Edward Elgar - Memories of a Variation published by Methuen). Stuck into the book are hand written letters and postcards sent to the original owner by Mrs Powell who was then living in East Grinstead. A letter of 12th Feb 1950 from Mrs Powell in her own hand writing says the following ... "What a curious fac

Death of a renaissance man

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Those that I stand in awe of are leaving me. First, Bernard Levin left us last autumn (see my post And so to Wagner ). And today comes the sad news that author, broadcaster and sometime jazz musician Humphrey Carpenter (left) has left us at 58 after losing the fight with Parkinson's. Humphrey Carpenter was a true renaissance man. Author of remarkable biographies including Tolkien, Spike Milligan and W.H.Auden, and of course the wonderfully 'politically incorrect' biography of Benjamin Britten. Plus (my favourite) the definitive biography of BBC Radio 3, The Envy of the World . As if that wasn't enough he was a successful children's author. And he was an erudite yet accessible broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 . Humphrey was a graduate of Oxford, and although his research was meticulous he wore his scholarship lightly. He would have been amused, not annoyed, at the irony of Radio 3's 'new generation' presenter Petroc Trelawny managing to get both t

Bach at St Peter Mancroft, Norwich

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One New Year's resolution was to make On An Overgrown Path a bit more spontaneous, and a bit less like an online version of the Discovery Channel. So in line with that New Year's Day saw a visit to the church of St Peter Mancroft Norwich for the traditional all Bach organ recital played by their Organist and Master of Music Kenneth Ryder. St Peter Mancroft is in the heart of Norwich, and the present church dates from 1390 when it was attached to the former nearby Benedictine community of St Mary in the Fields. The magnificent 14th Century church is now juxtaposed against the striking 20th Century Forum building which houses Norwich Library and other amenities. The organ is a large three manual Werkprinzip instrument built by Peter Collins in 1984, which is wonderfully suited to music of the baroque period. Fascinating that within a week The Overgrown Path has taken me from the magnificent remains of the Cluniac Priory at Castle Acre , in remote North Norfolk via Vespers at t