The Claudia Quintet

John Hollenbeck, The Claudia Quintet | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 1, 2002)
• Original Release Date: February 1, 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Blueshift CRI
• ASIN: B000062SSM
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #345,362 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1.  Meinetwegen

2.  a-b-s-t-i-n-e-n-c-e 

3.  Love Song for Kate 

4.  Thursday 7:30pm (holy) 

5.  Thursday 11:14am (grey)

6.  Thursday 3:44pm (playground)

7.  Burt and Ken (

8.  ...after a dance or two, we sit down for a pint with Gil and Tim... 

9.  No D 

10.  Visions of Claudia 

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist

JOHN HOLLENBECK

Composer, Drummer, Percussionist, Bandleader

John Hollenbeck has created a body of work that challenges all boundaries. Exceptionally creative and versatile, Hollenbeck continues to create a passionate new musical language based on world rhythms, lyricism, and spirituality. His performing and recording career has spanned such areas as big band and small group jazz, tango and other Latin-tinged styles, new klezmer, ambient rock, and cutting-edge work that defies categorization, both on his own and with Meredith Monk. John’s music is a bold attempt to combine a wealth of experience into a style that is as accessible as it is advanced.

This fall, John Hollenbeck will release a spate of discs on the new CRI jazz imprint Blueshift. Though there’s no controversy about the authenticity of Hollenbeck’s jazz drumming chops, these recordings will beg the inevitable question: Is his own music jazz? Well, yes it is in ways, but it’s also a whole lot more. John’s sound has evolved more quickly than society’s ability to create new words and media industries with which to describe and promote it.

It is difficult to categorize Hollenbeck’s music with one label:

The Claudia Quintet (November release) reveals tremendous wit, tasteful improvisation, strong melodies and equally strong grooves.

Quartet Lucy (October release) is a union of spacious, understated, ethereal, spiritual moods which reflect the influences of Brazilian and other world music folk traditions.

no images (September release), an eclectic composer’s statement features an all-star team including David Liebman, Ben Monder, Ellery Eskelin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.

All three releases share some elements - polymetric layering, improvisation, inside/outside contrasts, percussionist sensibilities, and the rare opportunity for the music world to experience such a complete array of an emerging composer’s ever-expanding aesthetic.

Hollenbeck’s most high-profile work has been with Meredith Monk, Bob Brookmeyer’s New Art Orchestra, and the Cuong Vu Trio. He has also been a frequent performer with the Maria Schneider Big Band, the BMI Orchestra, the Village Vanguard Orchestra, Michael Moore, Achim Kaufmann, and Jim McNeely. He has been a fixture in Germany with Bob Brookmeyer, the WDR Big Band, and with commissions of his own, including a recent chamber piece, "The Cloud of Unknowing," commissioned by the Bamberg Choir and issued on the Edel Classics label.

Outside of jazz, John Hollenbeck has worked with David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness, Frank London (of the Klezmatics) and projects in Colombia with Antonio Arnedo and in Argentina with Fernando Tarres. He has toured with former Piazzolla pianist Pablo Ziegler, including a concert at Carnegie Hall.

John Hollenbeck’s compositions combine elements of his education and experiences in jazz, world, popular and classical music. He earned both a B.M. in Percussion and an M.M. in Jazz Composition from the Eastman School of Music. He has also earned numerous awards, grants and commissions, including a Meet the Composer grant and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. He won the Jazz Composers Alliance Composition Contest in 1995 and was awarded the 2002 IAJE Gil Evans Fellowship. John created and performed the percussion score to Meredith Monk's Magic Frequencies and is currently working on the percussion score for her ensemble’s newest work Mercy, in collaboration with Ann Hamilton.

Product Description

I first got wind of drummer and composer John Hollenbeck about five years ago, not so long after I moved to New York City. According to the Village Voice, there was a smart new music scene bubbling up in the East Village at a healthy distance from the well established, capital-D "Downtown" scene centered around the Knitting Factory – and Hollenbeck was somewhere near the center of it. In specific, something besides java was brewing at alt.coffee, a homey little Internet café that resembled a college dorm room with a service counter. Every Monday night, the venue played host to the Refuseniks, an intrepid little trio of musical explorers comprised of Hollenbeck, accordion player Ted Reichman – then making waves as a member of Anthony Braxton’s latest bands and David Krakauer’s turbocharged klezmer trio – and bassist Reuben Radding. Many patrons did their level best to ignore the group as they surfed the web, but eventually word began to spread about the new music percolating at the coffeehouse. One night early in the band’s run, a woman named Claudia came forth from the throng to profess her ardent admiration for the band. "She rambled on and on about how she was going to make our gig a regular thing – she was going to tell all of her friends," Hollenbeck recalls. "When she was done captivating me with her good intentions, Reuben and I sauntered up to our instruments for the next set. He softly whispered to me, ‘She’s never coming back.’" Radding’s premonition proved accurate – the Refuseniks never saw Claudia again. "We tried to continue the relationship with casual fibs," Hollenbeck says, "like, ‘Hey, I saw Claudia on the street,’ or ‘Claudia left me a message that she is definitely coming this week.’ But Claudia maintained her absence. Eventually, Radding joined her, abandoning New York in pursuit of higher education. After a few months, Hollenbeck gathered a group of friends to form a new quintet. Alongside Reichman, the drummer enlisted the staggeringly inventive vibraphonist Matt Moran (who would come to be his closest musical partner), clarinetist/saxophonist Chris Speed and bassist Drew Gress. Moran was as yet unknown to most New Yorkers, but Speed’s slippery microtones and Gress’s assertive melodicism were familiar elements of saxophonist Tim Berne’s teeming music. Surprisingly, Claudia joined the new band as well, as its namesake and resident muse. "I called the group the Claudia Quintet in homage to Reuben," Hollenbeck says, "and I also wanted the group to have a sensitive, feminine quality." He hoped to downplay his leadership, in order to emphasize the ensemble. Since he intended to have the band play fully notated works as well as improvisations, Hollenbeck also saw in the name a parallel to the conventions of chamber music ensembles like the Arditti Quartet. Whether intentional or not, Claudia lent yet another quality to her namesake – a slippery sort of elusiveness that makes the band impossible to pin down and define. Is the Claudia Quintet a jazz band? A chamber ensemble? Truthfully, like its antecedents from the Modern Jazz Quartet to the Anthony Braxton Quartet, the band is both, and everything in between. A classically trained composer, Hollenbeck girds the opening "Meinetwegen" with rigorous structure – yet the music moves and lives and breathes naturally, flowing organically from an initial melodic kernel. Voicings shift amongst groupings of clarinet, vibraphone and accordion – establishing the group’s signature shimmer – while Gress’s solid drive and Hollenbeck’s light, lithe beat give the track undeniable propulsion. True to the paradoxical Claudia, somehow "Meinetwegen" is simultaneously swift and unhurried. "a-b-s-t-i-n-e-n-c-e" weds scrabbling free improv to odd-metered funk, while revealing both percussionists’ penchant for extending their sonic palettes through the use of cheap plastic toys. "Love Song for Kate" allows Gress and Speed to wax unapologetically rhapsodic in one of Hollenbeck’

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First outing of emerging monster band, June 15, 2004

By 

Jan P. Dennis "Longboard jazzer" (Monument, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Claudia Quintet (Audio CD)

I waxed rapturous about The Claudia Quintet's second offering, I, Claudia, and immediately set about trying to obtain this, their initial outing. It took a while, but am I ever glad I finally got hold of it! This grand disc is just about its equal.

"Earthereal" chamber world-jazz, that's what we've got here. These guys are probably its only purveyors, but the aural territory they stake out is filled with mystery, beauty, and rich coloration. As in their second offering, instrumental timbre and group interaction dominate. A good part of their sound, again, relies on Matt Moran's unusual vibes conception. But each member of this extraordinary assemblage of instruments (leader John Hollenbeck, drums & percussion; Matt Moran, vibes & percussion; Ted Reichman, accordion; Chris Speed, clarinet & tenor saxophone; Drew Gress, double-bass) makes a unique contribution to the gloriously inscrutable soundscape. Together, they manage consistently to conjure strange sonorities, playful polyrhythms, weird warblings, and titillating timbres.

Some of the tunes (esp. "Burt and Ken") bear a faint resemblance to Ben Allison's great group, Medicine Wheel, but although both bands create very smart postmodern jazz, The Claudia quintet has perhaps an even more distinct sound, on account of its strange instrumentation, so effectively and engagingly deployed.

Along with artists like Mephista, John Wolf Brennan, and the Jazz Composers Collective (Ben Allison, Frank Kimbrough, Michael Blake, and others), The Claudia quintet is pushing back the frontiers of jazz in a most attractive and beguiling way.

Among the most fascinating music being made today.

5.0 out of 5 stars Aaaaah & mmmmm!, March 7, 2002

By 

Aimee Baker (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Claudia Quintet (Audio CD)

I heard the Claudia Quintet live once when I was visiting New York and I was completely into the music and the playing--and this CD is just as amazing! If you're into great music that has some funk, some jazz and something totally new, then definitely check this out. A lot of the music really has this way of drawing me into a beautiful intro or melody which then slowly builds, creating this irresitable tension and anticipation--and I am never disappointed when the band switches gears and grooves to some awesome rhythms and amazing solos. And the combination of instruments is totally unique! I mean, an accordion?! But it's amazing what these musicians can do...I could go on...But you should definitely hear it for yourself!

5.0 out of 5 stars I love Claudia!, February 18, 2002

By 

trevor james (chicago ,IL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Claudia Quintet (Audio CD)

This group has a original WARM sound. The scope is from mellow lush ballads to d+b influenced tunes to avant-garde excursions. But it is always easy to listen to (I mean that in a good way)!
I have heard and love Speed and Gress but the others are new to me and a breath of fresh air. Hollenbeck's is a great composer and drummer! Check it out!