Customer Reviews

Allegresse

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Maria Schneider has rightly been accorded the highest accolades for her arranging abilities, consistently winning top jazz readers and critics polls. Until this spectacular recording, her composing and band-leading abilities have lagged slightly behind. Allegresse changes all that.

She's managed to retain--even extend--the brilliance of her arrangements while adding riveting compositions and consummate band leadership. And what a band it is! This strikes me as the most fluid, most accomplished, most consistently brilliant big band ever. Featuring some of the absolute best players at their positions, especially Frank Kimbrough, my current favorite pianist; Ben Monder, perhaps the best of the younger guitarists; Tony Scherr, a masterful acoustic and electric bassist; and Jeff Ballard, a percussionist of the very first rank, the band also includes lesser-known but equally accomplished players like Rich Perry, Rick Margitza, Charles Pillow, and Scott Robinson (winds); and Dave Ballou and Greg Gisbert, trumpets. They tackle the difficult and tricky charts with uncanny fluidity combined with a kind of offhand bravado that is never less than interesting and often approaches pure genius.

I confess, big band is among my least favorite types of jazz. Too often I find a kind of slickness and empty virtuosity replaces true feeling and emotional depth. Not here. Technical playing of the absolute highest accomplishment effortlessly melds with vast panoramas of musical coloration and hugely evocative compositions stunningly arranged to produce a listening experience of the first order.

This is glorious music of great feeling and beauty.

I was very impressed by Scheider's previous CD's on Enja, "Evanessence" and "Coming About," but I found them hard to really love. There is a slight "clinical" feel to them and in places the music is almost frightening in its intensity ("Bombshelter Beast" on Coming About, for example). I put off buying Allegresse for a while because of my experience with these two CD's. I knew I would have to wait for a time when I was ready for some really challenging music.
I should not have delayed getting this CD, however. Allegresse is a beautiful album, which I played three times on the day it arrived. Schenider's characteristic complexity is still here, but overall the music is warmer and more appealing. The hard edges have given way to softer pastels and the music seems to have more "room to breathe." There is still plenty of bite, however, and there are some intense passages, most notably on Dissolution, which feaures excellent soprano sax by Tim Ries.
Schnieder is not so much a writer of memorable melodies, but a weaver of textures which keep unfolding throughout these long pieces, of which "Journey Home" is my personal favorite. The soloists are all excellent, but it is the ensemble sound which remains in the listener's mind. There is so much music here that it will take you many listens to fully explore its riches. This is easily Maria Schnieder's best and most appealing CD to date. Highly recommended.

Schneider's two previous cds were good to very good, but this new one is simply magnificent. She utilizes the depth and breadth of her jazz orchestra to weave a wonderful inter-twined fabric of melodies and harmonies. She just doesn't double or triple lines to add power, but rather sets off a complex weave that continues to fascinate me with each repeated listening. The playing is generaly gentle and soft but demands to be listened to in order to reveal new things with every playing. Like some of Mingus' best work, it's like a magician's hat that keeps offering up more and more and more -- whether coloured scarves, birds or flowwers -- take your pick. Of the thouseand or so jazz cds I own, this has quickly jumped into my top ten list.

If you've ever danced an irregular waltz after midnight on a rural French bandstand, you know that it's the closest thing Westerners are likely to feel to the ecstasy of whirling dervishes. Maria Schneider knows the magic of irregular waltzes too, and in "Hang Gliding," the 11/4 opening track on Allégresse, she casts a weaving rhythmic and melodic spell that still takes my breath away after repeated listenings. The enchantment lasts for the whole CD, right through "Sea of Tranquility," which reinvents the solo as a continuous dialogue between baritone saxophonist Scott Robinson and the band from the first beat of the piece to the last. If "Big Band" means Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey to you, then the swing in this CD may elude you. But if it means Gil Evans -- one of Ms. Schneider's mentors -- or if more recently you have heard and appreciated bandleaders and composers like Vince Mendoza (Sketches) and Louie Bellson (East Side Suite), the delicate beauty of these pieces will make you fall in love with music all over again.

I simply can't say enough good things about this CD. As a college musician, I often find that "new" or "innovative" often just means dissonant or strange and hard to understand. However, this CD is very innovative, and I would wager that even a listener who has never heard jazz before will take a liking to it. Her music is of the highest quality. This is in my "must have" list. Be sure to check this one out.

Maria Schneider writes serious arrangements for serious musicians. This album is not for your middle of the road jazz listener, but for those jazz fans who wish to be challenged and enlightend by music. This is a true masterpiece. Schneider's composition and arangement skills are growing, and are evident in "Dissolution." The comparisons to her mentor Gil Evans will continue, especially after listening to the muted trumpet on the title track. The opening number, "Hang Gliding," as well as "Journey Home" and "Sea of Tranqulity" are the more accessible tracks, and showcase Schneider's ability to write for her orchestra and its soloists.

This is certainly the best album of Maria Schneider, wich means it's wonderful, since her both previous albums, "Evanescence" and "Coming About", are very, very good. I would give five stars to each, and six to this one, if I could. Just buy this, hear it, cry like a baby for the beauty of it, and write me an e-mail saying "thank you!".
By the way, I don't believe it's out of stock. That's a crime.

Two Words--Subtle Power. This Album takes all of Maria Schneiders most intimate composition utilities and places them directly in front of you. Then you find more, and more subtle things in the already subtle music. It's like looking into a fractal, her music is ever expanding, and maturing. I love this album, I truly do. Please buy it, and hear pure love, passion, joy, stress, evil, and exhileration....all in one.

I don't know what it is, but Maria has always had a way of captivating me. She has an impeccable way of fusing the realms of classical and jazz. I feel that she reminds me of another amazing composer, Billy Childs. They both have taken the chamber ensemble to a new level.

Maria Schneider's really hot now, and, well, while she's a really great orchestrator and arranger, she's just not a terribly interesting composer. If you compare her to her mentor, Gil Evans, or to Oliver Nelson, it's obvious that she's right up there with the greats when it comes to voicing a piece for an ensemble. She's better at arranging than a lot of my favorite composers, like Carla Bley. What's missing is theme and development.

There's a lot going on in Schneider's compositions- so much that none of them really have a unifying theme of any sort. If you think back to the Great Gil Evans/Miles Davis collaborations, or Oliver Nelson, or Mingus, every piece has some strong theme that characterizes the composition. No matter how outside the harmony or free the structure, there's a core there, a theme that gets stuck in your head. Something you can whistle. And that's what's missing here.