Customer Reviews

Inspiration

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is about time someone recorded Sam River's big band compositions. The music here is exciting, the performances solid, and the personnel first rate. The music lives up to Sam River's stature as one of the few great masters of the music.

Thankfully, in a music scene dominated by regurgitations of the past of which are hailed as brilliant artistic accomplishments, Sam Rivers has raised the bar and shows us the music can be fresh, exciting, and innovative.

I am a very fortunate man. Why? Is it because I have finally found a pair of shorts that don't ride up? No, no, no. It's because I live in the same town as Sam Rivers. I have had the great oppotunity to see Mr. Rivers on several occasions both with his regular trio and in various big band outtings. The big band groups have always held special status for me. I have never seen a musician "play" a group the way Sam Rivers does. He has the extraordinary gift of being able to pull the most amazing performaces from the other players. His own playing is always astounding, ranging from brash to playfull. What, you ask, is all the big hooplah about? Grab this disc and find out. Be warned though, if your idea of "jazz" is John Tesh, you're in for a rude awakening. This music will grab you by the collar and not let go! So, bring your ears. You'll be glad you did.

Big bands = dynamics & discipline? Combos = creativity & emotional range? Those limits don't apply here!

You've got to be willing to show how good you are to play in one of Rivers' bands.

If you bring something with you, this is the stuff to listen to. Not for a Top-40 sensibility - it's never ever "jazz lite".

Very sound-driven, the politics of instrumental ensemble playing have rarely been presented in a manner so varied and clear to this listener.

the orchestration here is more traditional than i expected, what with an assemblage of horn blowers associated with free jazz, though free jazz is sometimes a code meaning for strong improvisers, as is the case here with the ribvea all-star orchestra. the brilliance of this recording is in the orchestral scaffolding and how it supports the soloists, all blowing over the top what seems like a composed jam session, individual horns often on the tail of one another, completing a single idea by the previous player, as though rivers devised a set a musical problems, provided the setting, and turned loose a group of horn players to work out solutions. from song to song, from space to space (was it sun ra who said space is the place?), i had the feeling that whenever a player was struck with inspiration to say something he seized the moment, that each moment was a new possibility in an unnumbered series of possibilities.

This music kicks ass emotionally and intellectually. Rivers assembled the cream of the progressive jazz musician community, all of them masters in their own right, to play his densely layered complex charts. Most of the music has a solid backbeat with hardcore Bootsy Collins- meets- Cecil McBee funk/jazz bass laying it all down and commenting on the ensemble lines and drums simultaneously and yet it swings.Matthews understands Rivers music as well as anybody on the planet and with the brilliant Anthony Cole on drums they make a superb team. Tone clusters, dense polyrythmic counterpoint, cycles within cycles of motifs-this music is composition of a very very high order and should cement Sams' reputation as one of the greats in the history of the music, both as a player and a writer. all the players have short solo spotlights in between ensemble passages that are wonderfully varied-they come in and make statements and melt back into the multi vectored background as the band surges through the charts. Not a perfect record in all respects (there are almost no perfect records out there), but one that commands attention and admiration. This one, if you know what you are getting into, is a must. Just to hear the accumulated wisdom of almost 70 years of improvising in Sams' solos is worth the admission price.

This, and its compianion, Cumination, are avant-big band albums by Sam Rivers. This music is brash, cerebral, very, very complex, and just the highest quality of jazz.

In most of these numbers, the emsable locks together, playing thorny, atonal patterns, There are solos, and the rhythm sectiton plays extremely well. The players, of course, have more lattitude in their solos, and these passages are the only ones that are "free" in the strict sense. The group parts are dissonent, but extreamley structured.

And this stuff is LOUD! with extremely sharp brass. (If you thought avant-gaurd jazz was heavy in the 60s, wait until you hear it with acid sterile, modern digital production.) It is in no way related to rock, but is as fearsome as any thrash or avant-punk album I have.

The music is also extreamly layered--there is a HELL of a lot going on here. And the technical ability is always brilliant.


You are going to have to sit with these albums for a long time--and do so when your spouse is not home--but the payoff will be giant. Dense and intimadating, these albums are no place for even a free jazz acolyte to start: listen to Coltrane and the 60s stuff first-Sam Rivers included- then approch this

Rivers is a great soloist and good writer, but too many soloists are crammed into these pieces, so they all end up sounding the same--strings of solos broken up with chunks of orchestral writing. The spark of Rivers's 1974 "Crystals" LP is missing. For better big band music from "free" players, try William Parker's "Sunrise in the Tone World" or any of Cecil Taylor's large ensemble projects (e.g. "Melancholy").

This music is completely extreme. Its way too dischordant and only seems to resolve itself once every 40 bars, and then only for one beat. I can't believe this was recommended to average jazz browsers as the best of 99. Its the musical equivalent to Jackson Pollock and Henry Bacon making a piece of art together. Bacon laying down some twisted sculpture whilst Pollock sellotapes canvas on parts and flicks paint all over it. If you put this as background music to a film, the screen would have to be split into twelve with manic cinematography in ten of them, a beautifully edited, touching play in one, and an annoying flickering strobe light in the twelvth. Ironically, despite hating 98% of it, this is one hell of an inspiration.