Barry
Guy New Orchestra
Oort-Entropy
(Intakt)
If
it’s jazz we are talking about, then the relationship between the individual
and the ensemble – and also the related issue of the relationship between
composition and improvisation – has a story as long as jazz itself.
How far back one is willing to go could be just a practical matter:
Duke Ellington? Count Basie? Fletcher Henderson? Then we have the well-known
Ellingtonian dictum which says that to really write for musicians one
has first to watch them playing poker. On paper, this is all familiar
stuff; only on paper, though, as the interpretations of Scott Joplin
and Jelly Roll Morton recorded by the trio Air for their album Air Lore
(1979) made immediately apparent.
Ornette
Coleman catching a flight to New York is often considered as the moment
after which avant-garde jazz can never become part of the mainstream
anymore. But we could also go back in time, to an orchestral line-up
which could play both "the tradition" and the "avant-garde",
and do both extremely well: Sun Ra’s Arkestra;
here, the vast re-release program by Evidence makes things very easy
for the buyer – my personal suggestion as first step being The Magic
City (1965). We could also discuss at length about Charles Mingus and
his writing for medium-sized ensembles – it goes without saying that
newcomers should start with The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (a work
which once one would have assumed to be "common knowledge",
but since it was recorded back in 1963…).
Money factors are obviously to be taken into consideration – hence,
only oral history when it comes to the highly celebrated Muhal Richard
Abrams Experimental Band, and only late – and occasional – orchestral
experiences for Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. The prevailing atmosphere
in the "free jazz" days was not exactly conductive to a serious
study of the written form, hence the highly suspicious viewing of the
(American) Jazz Composer’s Orchestra led by Michael Mantler, who in
Communications (1968) wrote complex frameworks for Cecil Taylor’s piano.
The same attitude was reserved for people such as Anthony Braxton, whose
(quite large, and extremely diverse) discography is maybe today the
one presenting the largest number of works for ensemble – an area that
Braxton himself had defined as Creative Orchestra Music.
The
situation is quite complex in Europe, where original and interesting
discographies were annihilated by the usual lack of interest. Chris
McGregor’s Brotherhood Of Breath are not mentioned very often (but why?);
the surviving catalogue being quite slim, all that’s available can be
purchased with no risk. The German line-up called Globe Unity Orchestra,
led by Alexander von Schlippenbach, on the albums titled Improvisations
(1977) and Compositions (1979) had portrayed an interesting dichotomy;
the same is true here: get whatever is available. Still somewhat active,
somehow, is the Dutch Instant Composers Pool Orchestra led by Misha
Mengelberg, an ensemble that for this writer is the perfect combination
of (relative) accessibility of form and (relative) inscrutability of
intent.
Released
in 1972, and fortunately available on CD, Ode is the ambitious first
chapter by the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra led by Barry Guy. An
excellent bass player who’s perfectly at ease in many situations, be
it solo or orchestra, a musician who’s highly fluent in many disparate
idioms – from jazz to classical music, including baroque music and contemporary
classical – Guy’s goal was to create a compositional framework which
could be of benefit to the players while at the same time profiting
from the considerable skills they had gained during their improvisational
practice. The most recent phase started with Polyhymnia (1987), which
together with the Braxton pieces recorded one year later is featured
on the CD called Zurich Concerts. The London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra
catalogue is not too large (it goes without saying that the difficulties
for such a large and original line-up are not few), but it’s of a very
high quality, and not at all difficult to get. Selecting an album as
their "best" is obviously not easy, but I have a personal
weakness for Portraits (1994), where a highly developed structural organization
and excellent contributions from the players go hand-in-hand with a
certain accessibility for the listener.
I’m
sorry to admit it, but it’s true that somewhere along the line I started
taking the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra (and its existence) for
granted. I preferred to concentrate on Barry Guy’s trios, first of all
the one featuring pianist Marilyn Crispell and percussionist Paul Lytton;
so far, this trio has released two albums: Odyssey (2002) and Ithaca
(2004), both excellent. So I totally missed the news, four years ago,
about the release of Inscape-Tableaux, the first recorded chapter by
the Barry Guy New Orchestra. This new orchestra presented a reduced
line-up (ten members, for obvious financial reasons) which featured
some new faces, many of whom had already played with Guy: while Evan
Parker and Paul Lytton where still here, there were also Swedish Mats
Gustafsson and Raymond Strid, and Marilyn Crispell. It goes without
saying that having one trombone where there had been three provides
for big compositional challenges, and the same goes for having quite
different personalities to blend.
Oort-Entropy
features the same line-up from the previous CD, with one important exception:
Agustí Fernández (whom I had already appreciated with
Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble) replaces Crispell on piano
(she’s now quite reluctant to travel, it seems). In his fine liner notes,
Greg Buium alerts us to the fact that on the long composition in three
parts which is featured on the CD some themes which had appeared on
Ithaca appear again. To start from my conclusion, I’d say that on the
new CD Guy largely succeeds in creating a new entity that doesn’t make
one too nostalgic for the previous ensemble; but I’d also say that Oort-Entropy
doesn’t seem to attain the peaks reached by the London Jazz Composers’
Orchestra.
It
goes without saying that the instrumental voices have a lot of personality.
Parker is as good as expected, and I also liked Fernández, who
on piano is now lyrical, now highly percussive; Hans Koch, on bass clarinet;
Johannes Bauer – I hadn’t listened to him in a long time – on trombone;
also nice trumpet and fluegelhorn by Herb Robertson, and tuba by Per
Åke Holmlander; percussions (Lytton and Strid) are as good as
expected. The first part is quite agitated, with a nice splice, almost
Ellington-like, at 8′ 32"; there’s a nice episode for trombone
and piano starting from 11′ 25"; and a fantastic moment – "whispered,
with harmonics" – for piano and double bass at 15′ 32". I
liked the second part – more meditative in tone – the best; it’s all
good with a very nice ending – again, double bass harmonics, played
with arco. The third part presents Evan Parker on soprano in his usual
fine circular breathing mode, and a nice piano arpeggio, along with
tuba, bass clarinet, and percussion at about 8′.
Beppe Colli
© Beppe Colli 2005
CloudsandClocks.net | Nov. 2, 2005