Track Listing

1. Avocet
2. Lapwing
3. Bittern
4. Kingfisher
5. Osprey
6. Kittiwake

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6111 in Music
• Released on: 2008-02-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds
• Running time: 37 minutes

Customer Reviews

A Welcome Return
It borders on criminal that this instrumental collection has taken until 2003 to find a CD release. Jansch with Danny Thompson and Martin Jenkins turns in five folk and jazzy tracks with some superb instrumental work. The analogue production and some of the worst of the noodling on the instruments show their age but elsewhere this is some of the most inspired and evocative music that Jansch ever created. The one minute and thirty seconds of 'Lapwing' provide one rare delight, a solo Bert Jansch piano piece.

Wonderful
Apparently even Bert himself lists this as his personal favorite recording of his accomplished career, and it's not hard to see why.

Six beautiful and beguiling instrumentals: the 18-minute Avocet, and five other shorter pieces each named after a different bird. This is one of the finest acoustic guitarists of all time really at the top of his game.

The pieces ebb and flow beautifully with various folky and jazzy themes disappearing and reappearing throughout. The mind boggles as to how the three musicians managed to remember the pieces, let alone play them so effortlessly.

This is no cheesy "easy listening" music, however, and yet none of it is anything short of magical.
It's the kind of music that you might imagine Nick Drake may have gone onto make in his later years, had he lived longer.

Much of the album conists of the simple trio of Jansch's guitar with Danny Thompson's superb double bass playing and Martin Jenkins on fiddle, punctuated by the odd bit of piano and flute.
For my part, I've practically listened to it on repeat since I first bought it a couple of months ago.

The sound quality on this re-mastered cd is warm and inviting, too, without any of the over-produced, ultra-clean, digital harshness that blights more modern music of this ilk.

A masterpiece from a true British master.

A High Point in a Career of High Points
I first bought this on vinyl when it was released and thought it was brilliant. "Music Fan from Pinkerton" ought to get the musical chip off his/her shoulder and actually listen to the music. I know it is superficially a bit easy listening but you cannot hide musical genius and I do not understand that anyone could not hear it here. I am not someone that likes my music pre-digested or unchallenging. I can happily listen to both takes of John Coltrane's Ascension at one go and find loud and discordant music relaxing (Thrakattack by King Crimson, all the electro-funk Miles Davis stuff such as "On The Corner"). I find it frustrating that many people will not try to listen to this more obviously challenging music but I find it more frustrating that many also fail to hear the complexity and subtlety of music such as Bert Jansch's Avocet when it would seem to be so much more accessible. This album is wonderful buy it, listen and you will be rewarded