Customer Reviews

Eternal Interlude

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

 

 

I'm old enough to have been a big fan of Count Basie and Woody Herman while they were still touring and recording, and I later embraced the Gerry Mulligan Concert Band and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band as well. The Gil Evans recordings with and without Miles Davis introduced me to another kind of "big band", more orchestral and less hard-charging, but no less satisfying. More recently I've admired the Maria Schneider recordings, but I wasn't familiar with The John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble. I am now, and I'm delighted.

This recording is uniformly outstanding. The orchestrations are complex, rich and original, and the lead players are just as good. Nineteen instrumentalists and a voice combine to make some of the most interesting jazz music I've heard, either live or on CD, in several years. Magnificent. Don't miss this.

This is the best album I have heard in a year. There are no dull moments, Hollenbeck always has you roped in. The soloists are phenomenal, and the long form of the composition makes for dramatic climaxes. A heavenly album.

3 1/2


Insightfully orchestrated experimental wide-screen jazz contains several bona-fide stunning seconds, an overall enchantment, but too many windy roads that go counterproductive places to be uniform.