This selection is something very specific to English music - even more specifically to the North of England. I don't know when I first heard a brass band; probably as a child, even though the part of the North of England where I grew up was not a strong band playing area.Even so, I can't hear a brass band without getting shivers down my spine. There is something about the instrumentation I think, that creates such wonderful overtones.

Outside the UK, many people will have come across this music via the movie 'Brassed Off'. This clip shows the band from the film playing outside a hospital, where the conductor is terminally ill. It is a wonderful scene, played by the real-life Grimethorpe Colliery Band - and yes, that is a real place.

Brass band music is very varied. It includes transcriptions of classical and popular music, specially written pieces, hymns and religious music. This one is the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band playing 'Autumn Leaves'.

Here is the same band with the tune 'Horsley', one that you will probably recognise when you hear it.

Many of the bands were associated with industrial firms. This is the Leyland Band (a car company) playing the march 'Army of the Nile'.

Another factory band - the Foden Band (Foden was a lorry firm) playing a transcription of 'Suite Gothique' by Boellman. Originally for organ this was transcribed for Brass Band by Eric Ball.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_Gothique

Finally we have the Grimethorpe Colliery Band again playing 'Gresford', popularly known as the Miners' Hymn.

Gresford was written about a mining disaster. This film tells more about the event.

It's St Valentine's Day, so let's have some Romance! Chris de Burgh seems to be best known for 'Lady in Red', allegedly the song most sung by drunken maudlin men of a certain age(NSFW) but I prefer this one - "Missing you"

The really romantic voice for my generation is I suppose Nat King Cole. Also a great pianist of course, but his rich velvety voice gave him an audience way beyond his jazz roots and in the process did a great deal to damage racial prejudice as he captured women's hearts everywhere.Here he is with "When I fall in love."

For later generations there was a different voice and on the face of it an unlikely heart-throb - Barry White of course, here with "My first, my last, my everything

For one lady of my acquaintance though, despite the lack of a great voice this is the ultimate - Bob Dylan with "Lay Lady Lay"

Later still we have the more poppy sound of Police and "Every breath you take."

I'm not a great country music fan I have to confess, but there are a few singers I could listen to all the time. The wonderful Patsy Cline is one of these, in her own way I think comparable to the great Billie Holiday for the way in which she could pack such emotion into relatively simple songs. Here she is with "I fall to pieces."

I've got a post coming up on Latin music, but for the time being here is Ibrahim Ferrer, from the Buena Vista Social Club and "Dos Gardenias." It was Ry Cooder's great album of the same name that brought mne back to Latin music in fact.

Another great and sadly neglected voice is Julie London. Here she is in a clip from a film with "Cry me a river"

Not much commentary this time, just let the music wash over you.

I've put back the Music for Sunday post I had planned. Listen instead to Whitney Houston at her peak, displaying her fantastic vocal range.

Running late this week, so here is a delayed, 'Music for Sunday'.

I have always like the female voice in music. I'm particuarly fond of the pure sound of the soprano, without heavy overtones or strong vibrato, although as these selections will show, that isn't an exclusive preference.

Here to start however is an operatic voice, the inimitable Frederika von Stade singing Bailero from 'Songs of the Auverne' by Canteloube.

Despite what I just said, one of my absolute favourite albums, the one I would pick above all others for my Desert Island Discs is 'Lady in Satin' by Billie Holiday. It is the absolute antithesis of von Stade. Her voice is gone, but you only have to hear a couple of bars to hear pure magic. Here she is with 'You don't know what love is'.

Another wonderful performer, almost as intense as Billie in her own way, was the late Etta James. Here she is with 'I'd rather go blind'.

Being a child of the '60s, you would expect of course to find a track by Joan Baez. Here she is before she was famous, aged only about 17, singing 'Barbara Allen'. A pure voice indeed, without any overtones, yet instantly recognisable.

I haven't always liked Maria Callas' voice. I suspect I allowed myself to be influenced by those who decried her lack of technique, as if technique was more important than voice and performance. This is 'O Mio Babbino Caro'.

Back to pop now, with Linda Ronstadt. I came to her late, with an album recorded with a big band that included this song, written by Kate and Anna Mcgarrigle, 'Talk to me of Mendocino'. The lyric is beautiful, a description of a cross-country car trip in which the songwriter takes leave of the mountains of Quebec and other natural markers of her youth, only to come face-to-face with the majestic power of the Mendocino redwoods.

Finally, with this one we are going back a long way to an object of my teenage lust - the British singer Kathy Kirby with 'Secret Love' from 1962. She projected an incredible sexuality for those days. Alas she died not long ago.

As with Duke last week, I have lots more to choose from. No Ella yet, no Astrud Gilberto, Beyonce (yes!), Diana Ross or Dinah Washington, so watch this space...

I discovered the music of Duke Ellington when I was about 12 or 13, so probably around 1959. I've loved his work ever since; all of it from the 1920s till he died in 1974. In the words of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe "In the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington." I can't remember the original album I listened to back then, but I'm pretty sure it contained classics like Caravan, Rocking in Rhythm, Perdido, Satin Doll and Warm Valley.

Duke was a great pianist, although he always maintained that his instrument was his orchestra. Certainly, despite many changes in personnel over the years, his sound was always instantly recognisable. I'll save his piano playing for another post, but let's start where I began with Caravan, recorded in 1952 and featuring Juan Tizol on valve trombone.

Duke's music had many moods; he could be lyrical as in Caravan and he could produce a piece that swing along as hard as anything by Count Basie, Woody Herman or any of the great swing bands of the era. Here he is in 1931 with Rocking in Rhythm, a piece that continued in the band's repertoire for decades.

As an example of its continued popularity here it is again, played this time by Weather Report, in 1980.

Duke had less success with his singers than with his instrumentalists. None of them that I have come across were anywhere near his league as performers. His collaborations were something else however, including greats like Ella Fitzgerald and in a different style, the incomparable Mahalia Jackson. Here's Ella and Duke with Take the A Train.

Over the years Duke wrote many suites, perhaps the earliest being Black Brown and Beige. Here is Mahalia Jackson, with a live recording from 1958 of Come Sunday from that suite. Whatever your religious views, if this doesn't make your spine tingle and the hairs on your neck stand up, you must be dead!

Duke's music often showed great humour too. One of my favourite fun pieces, also from a suite (The UWIS suite) is Klop, which believe it or not is a polka. Still recognisable as such but unmistakably Ellington.

Let's end with a real snorter of a performance, from the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, with all 15 minutes of Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, featuring a rabble rousing solo from tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves.

Duke wrote over 1000 compositions so this post can only offer a taste. I will be back with his piano playing and almost certainly with more from the band.

I'm going to try and do a regular(ish) post on Sundays about music, or at least the music I like to listen to.

Many years ago, while still at school I think, so perhaps 50 years, I heard a wonderful voice, that turned out to be that of Amalia Rodrigues, probably the best exponent of the musical form know as fado.

Fado has been called the Portuguese blues, and it has much of the same sense of desperation and loss as the traditional blues. In the hands of a singer like Amalia Rodrigues, with an astonishing timbre and resonance, it probably reached its peak.

I have no idea what songs I saw her singing, but here are a couple of examples from Youtube, including one of my favourites 'Coimbra'. The first though is 'Fado Português'

'Coimbra'

I don't really know many other singers in the genre because it was the voice that drew me to the genre, not the other way around. Here however is Mariza, who whenever I've seen her seems to be wearing a black wedding dress!

Here is Mariza with another great Portuguese singer, Cesaria Evora from Cape Verde