Jazz Professional               

 

THE CRESCENDO ARCHIVES

History is made every day and, as far as the music scene is concerned, Crescendo has faithfully recorded it month by month. To many, the articles and features are more than of passing interest. We carefully file our copies in the prescribed binders and delight from time to time in turning back the years to revive memories and to seek information. The one thing lacking in this work of reference is an index. What a boon it would be if someone had the time and patience to compile a complete index going back to issue No. l! Wally Horwood

Those are the words of Wally Horwood, at first technical editor and then, for many years, co-director of Crescendo & Jazz Music. He wrote them in June 1975 in volume 13, number 11 of the magazine.
Wally is, sadly, no longer with us. When he died in 1996 I came into possession of his vast collection of bound copies of Crescendo. And with them I have made his wish come true. Alas, too late for him, but no less a boon.  Ron Simmonds

 READ EVERY WORD EVER PUBLISHED IN CRESCENDO & JAZZ MUSIC MAGAZINE SINCE IT FIRST APPEARED AT THE TOUCH OF A KEY!

INSTANT RETRIEVAL OF WORDS OR PHRASES

The Crescendo Archives database contains every word ever written in the magazine from its first issue to that of the present day. The Archives constitute a fully searchable 11,000 page digital text–only document that can be read, page by page, as if browsing through the original volumes. Entering a name, part of a name or a fragment of some remembered phrase brings up, in a millisecond, a list of issues containing the searched item, to be browsed through, with ultra–fast page turning, zoom, copy and paste facilities. The above words of Wally Horwood were found, for example, by typing index AND Crescendo in the search dialogue box and retrieved within a few seconds from a database containing some 9,000,000 words!

The Archives are contained on four CD ROM disks readable on PC Windows and Macintosh. They can be viewed individually or downloaded to the computer hard disk for even easier reading.
The Harry Francis Memoirs  

Included in the package are all of the Harry Francis articles in the series Jazz Development In Britain, As I Was Playing and As I Heard It. They constitute an unparalleled history of British jazz from a man who was in the midst of it all right from the very beginning.

This is what you can do with the Crescendo Archives

  • Call up, within seconds, any one of the priceless Interviews conducted over the years by Les Tomkins with just about every jazz celebrity there has ever been.

  •  Have at your fingertips all of the superb Radio and TV Notes,  compiled by Brian Gladwell for a day by day report on British jazz broadcasting.

  • Read the Portraits of many famous jazz musicians by Jean Maggs.

  •  Wonder at the genius of Ken Rattenbury in his Thesis series of famous solo transcriptions..

  • Hold your sides once more at Jack Carter’s dark humour in his A View From The Stand.

  • Learn everything you will ever need to know, and more, about the saxophone in the brilliant Les Evans’ Reed Clinic.

  • Get all the U.S.A news from Chip Deffaa, Howard Lucraft and Virginia Wicks.

  • Read nearly forty years of record reviews.

  • Look up old friends, whoever they are, and wherever they might be today. Just type and click!
  • Browse through the Harry Francis Memoirs for an astoundingly accurate account of British jazz before, after and during the war years.

           You can even find out what Igor Stravinsky had to say about jazz. Simply type Igor Stravinsky & Jazz and select Match Case and Proximity to go right to the article. (The & shortcut refers to the Boolean search AND).

To see how this works take a look at this excerpt from a Buddy Rich interview.

Wherever you look you will find something you never knew before. If you are a working musician you will find yourself in there somewhere!

Buy now - only £45
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