Why is this flying so far under the radar?
greg taylor | Portland, Oregon United States | 03/29/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is a really outstanding recent big band recorded live in December, 2006 at the Roulette in NYC. The band leader, composer and realtime arranger is Hans Tammen, a player of endangered guitar.
I came across this CD while perusing the Innova web site label. What caught my attention was the personnel:
Mia Kimura, Mark Feldman- violin
Stephanis Griffin- viola
Tomas Ulrich- cello
Briggan Krauss- alto sax, baritone sax
Marty Ehrlich- bass clarinet, alto sax, flute
Robert Dick- flute, clarinet
Detlef Landeck- trombone
Dafna Naphtali- voice, live sound processing
Ursel Schlicht, Denman Maroney- piano, keyboards
Stomu Takeishi- bass
Satoshi Takeishi- drums
Tamman has composed 150+ musical units that he then strings together during the course of a performance by the Orchestra. Variations in every performance are determined by directions that Tammen makes as he conducts, by choices that the musicians make as to interpretive alternatives as they play and by their improvisations.
Obviously this requires great skill by the musicians. The solos are all outstanding. Listen to Mari Kimura start things off in the way she introduces Part 1- Opening of Antecedent on the sound samples. She more than holds her own playing with Mark Feldman (who I regard as arguably the greatest violinist in creative musics). Another strength of the recording are the Takeishi brothers. They constitute a rhythm section that is as flexible, as free and as driven as any currently working. Krauss' baritone squalls are another highlight- I love getting to hear him and Ehrlich working together.
We have been blessed with a lot of really good large ensemble music in jazz/freeimprov/creativemusics/whatevertheheckyouwanttocallit lately. Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra CDs, the TransAtlantic Ensemble CDs of Evan Parker and Roscoe Mitchell, some new Sam River's stuff that isn't on Amazon. This CD is as good as any of those. Why it seems to be so little known is beyond me. Look at that personnel listing again and listen to the samples. These guys must be heard.
"