Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.
-Nina Simone
about me
Live from Cadiz, Spain!
Welcome to Partisans.org.uk, the musings of a lifelong jazz fanatic and his ever-patient wife, now living out our retirement near Cádiz. I’m Peter Harland, a former music teacher, saxophonist (in spirit more than in practice these days), and a man who has spent the better part of his life chasing the perfect sound. My wife, Liz, has been on this wild ride with me for over forty years, rolling her eyes at my endless vinyl collection but always tapping her foot to the good stuff.
“My music is the spiritual expression of what I am—my faith, my knowledge, my being.
– John Coltrane
The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.
– Thelonius Monk
About This Notebook
I spent most of my working life teaching music.
Somewhere along the way I accumulated too many records, too many stories, and far too many opinions about jazz. Then Sara and I moved to southern Spain, where the weather improved dramatically but the arguments about music remained much the same.
Partisans is a notebook about the things that have stayed with me: records, musicians, concerts, instruments, old teachers, old students, and the strange ways music attaches itself to places and memories.
Jazz sits at the centre of most of it.
But this is not a review site, a collector’s catalogue, or an attempt to document every great recording ever made. There are plenty of people better qualified to do that.
Instead, these are observations from a life spent listening.
Some posts are about records. Some are about Spain. Some are about musicians I admired, concerts I still think about, instruments that refused to cooperate, or conversations with Sara that ended with her reminding me that not everyone hears music the same way I do.
Recent themes include:
- jazz records and collecting
- concerts and live music
- life in southern Spain
- teaching and learning music
- instruments and musicians
- memory and listening
- the places music leaves behind
- Sara’s ongoing resistance to avant-garde jazz
Start Here
Sara, Silence, and the Night We Nearly Left a Jazz Club. Again
A familiar disagreement about free jazz, marriage, and whether listening with your brain is the same thing as listening with your ears.
Sunday Paella, and That Time We Played Monk at Our Wedding
A wedding memory, a Sunday lunch, and the long overlap between jazz and family life.
The Record Shop in Seville Where the Man Refused to Sell Me Monk
A record hunt that became something else entirely.
Trying to Buy a Trumpet in Jerez
One instrument, several misunderstandings, and a reminder that music rarely travels in a straight line.
The Vinyl I Can’t Let Go Of: One Record, Ten Memories
Why certain records become part of the furniture of a life.
A Working Principle
The older I get, the less interested I become in ranking musicians, arguing about the greatest albums ever recorded, or proving that one style of jazz is superior to another.
What interests me now is why certain pieces of music stay with us.
A record. A concert. A conversation. A solo heard at the right moment. A memory attached to a place.
Most of us build our lives around those things without noticing.
This notebook is my attempt to notice.