For probably 99% of the music I listen to, I vastly prefer live over recordings and live recording over studio. Big band jazz is my oldest love, trad (instrumental folk) my deepest, opera my newest. They’re all genres centred around live performance. It’s the way music has been for most of human history, people playing for themselves and other people. Studio effects can be interesting but they don’t have the same immediacy. While it may be a shared endeavour for the musicians and producers, we as an audience can only give them our money, not our energy.

Top is (Duke) Ellington at Newport, from the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. Superbly talented geniuses who were on fire and we’re so lucky it was recorded. The gem amongst gems is the sequence of Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue with an Interlude from Paul Gonsalves. Both group and solo work are excellent, everyone on top of their game. Starts out mellow, and then builds, and builds, and builds. Listen to the crowd loving it. They know they’re experiencing something truly special. https://piped.simpleprivacy.fr/watch?v=wIX7fnYANak

Lau Live Lau (word for a particular quality of light in Orkney) is a Scottish & English experimental trad band who are phenomenal live, especially in tunes like this where they build and build the energy. They crank the musical tension and when they let it go, it’s visceral. Being in the room and feeling the vibrations is the best, but this album (good headphones mandatory) will do. https://piped.simpleprivacy.fr/watch?v=hoEYutpgnuQ

That said, the last time I heard them play was a double bill with a young Danish trio called Dreamers’ Circus and they out-Lau’ed Lau.

Trad music is great like that.

More mainstream, I’m also very fond of The Allman Brothers Band at Filmore East.