Performed by Matt Perrine bass and Sousaphone Accompaniment: Tim Laughlin's New Orleans All-Stars Many people consider New Orleans the birthplace of jazz. After all Louis Armstrong was born and played there as well as Joseph King Oliver the Dodds Brothers Sidney Bechet and a roster of players to fill not one but many all-star bands. Louis Prima was a 'child of the Crescent City' as is Harry Connick and Wynton Marsalis. The whole Marsalis clan was raised there and are all acknowledged jazz masters so its reputation as the seminal jazz town has long been acknowledged. We assembled a band of New Orleans' best players for our times veterans all of many street parades andsteamboat gigs and asked them to put together a typical program of New Orleans classics. Under the direction of Tim Laughlin clarinetist supreme and led by Connie Jones Jr. one of the great hornmen of this city which boasts so many great players they put together an album of must-hear must-have songs that every traditional jazz player cherishes. Hear them now in these perfect renditions. Then join the band on your own instrument be it clarinet trumpet trombone tenor piano bass or drums as they swing through the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Yorke Edition-Born in Oxford in 1917 Francis Baines was a well-known and much respected professional double bass player. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London with Claude Hobday where he later taught. Something of an eccentric he immersed himself in early music at a time when few people were taking it seriously. He owned a beautiful Amati bass that he had restored as a violone which it probably was originally and he was a regular fixture as a principal player in a number of orchestras and ensembles that dedicated themselves to period performing including those directed by Denys Darlow with whom he broadcast and recorded frequently.Besides playing the doublebass Francis Baines was an exponent of the treble viol and led the Jaye Consort of Viols which he founded. He also played several kinds of bagpipe and the hurdy-gurdy. As a composer he dabbled in many styles one of his greatest claims to fame being that of writing for the popular Hoffnung concerts in the 1960s. He was the author of a number of papers about the history of the double bass sometimes arriving at scholarly conclusions that were colourful if not always entirely accurate. He discovered the Giovannino del Violone sonatas subsequently published by Yorke Edition although today it is thought that they were probably not written for a 16' pitch instrument at all. His edition of the Capuzzi double bass concerto published by Boosey & Hawkes was for many years one of the few solo works available for the instrument. This however he largely re-composed because he thought it could be improved: towards the end of his life he confessed that with hindsight he probably should have treated it differently.Grounds was written in 1969 as a sort of party piece and was given to Yorke Edition in support of a drive to enlarge the repertoire for the instrument in a wide variety of styles. It was set on the syllabus of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music for many years.Francis Baines died

for String Quartet op. 35a-Josef Suk played second Violin in the Bohemian String Quartet. Since 1914 the ensemble was obliged to perform the Austrian national anthem at the opening of every concert. Suk decided to supplement this obligatory piece with a work inspired by the ancient sacred Bohemian St. Wenceslas hymn. The hymn?s message a plea for the well-being of the Czech people directed at their patron saint was immediately understood by the audience.The Bohemian String Quartet performed this single-movement Meditation for the first time on 27 September 1914; the premiere of the version for string orchestra followed on 22 November 1914 played by the CzechPhilharmonic. That same year the piece was published by Fr. A. Urbánek together with arrangements for Piano and Organ.This first Urtext edition prepared by the Sukscholar Zdenek Nouza is published in two scorings one for string quartet and another for String Orchestra (BA9584). The orchestral version differs in some details and has an added part for Double Bass.First Urtext editionInformative trilingual Foreword (Cz/Eng/Ger) and Critical Commentary (Eng) by the editorTwo versions published in two separate editions