Search - Don Cherry, Bobo Stenson, Lenart Aberg :: Dona Nostra

Don Cherry + Bobo Stenson = WorldbeatEuroJazz

Douglas T Martin | Alpharetta, GA USA | 06/25/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Very much an ECM recording - austere and stark and rarely swinging. Jazz legend Don Cherry works with a quintet of European musicians; Cherry gets top billing but he's the guest sitting in as opposed to leading. The first three and a half minutes of "Fort Cherry" consist of Don Cherry playing trumpet in a trio with drummer Anders Kjellberg and percussionist Okay Temiz. Anders Jormin contributes some scraping and other percussive sounds on the bass before pianist Bobo Stenson joins with some abstract chording. Saxophonist Lennart Åberg and Cherry trade the languid theme back and forth before the piece ends - they have sort of a Euro-World-Jazz thing going. The following track "Arrows", one of several tracks that is credited to all members, sounds more like an improvisation than a composition - like a Jackson Pollock painting where all the random bits and pieces come together to create the whole. All of the tracks save one have the same slow tempo and almost sound like a suite rather than different songs. The one track that stands out is Ornette Coleman's "Race Face", a grooving hardbop-style tune that gives Åberg and Kjellberg a chance to cut loose (Kjellberg is scorching). Outside of the Ornette tune there's not much to offer the diehard jazz fan. But for fans of abstract-improvisational-worldbeat-Eurojazz "Dona Nostra" is a rewarding recording. In fact, if you ever wondered what the Bley/Surman/Peacock/Oxley ECM recording "In the Evenings Out There" would sound like with a trumpet added - and who hasn't - this is it."