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Wednesday 18 May 2011

John Hollenbeck, red fish

What looks like his tone of writing beyond the circumference of its peer group? When he is not shaping the pulse of the battery? When the power of interpretation has been entrusted to another group, with another point of view?

We could not feel the need to ask these questions if Mr. Hollenbeck were not primarily known as a jazz musician. Composers dwell in ideas. the execution may or may not involve them. And Mr. Hollenbeck increased more and more accomplished as a composer, always more assured in the distinctive clarity of her voice. This point was home, powerfully, red fish in Greenwich Village Monday night.

Presented by Jazz dead, this was a project of double act featuring the large set of John Hollenbeck and, France, Orchestra National de Jazz de 10 pieces. The two bands played music by Mr. Hollenbeck: Orchestra, an initiative of the French Ministry of Culture, now in its 25th year, attacked a body of work called "Shut Up and Dance," recently released as a double album on the label of Jazz bee.

The artistic director of the Orchestra, for a term of three years, is Daniel Yvinec, a polymath who has studied the bass guitar in a jazz context in New York. Under his leadership, the institution has taken on a daring character, with a relatively young range to look like a set of student. Each room in "Shut Up and Dance" is a mini-concerto for a specific member of the Orchestra.

The theme relates to the music and human movement: a real concern for Mr. Hollenbeck, which has long collaborated with Meredith Monk body-based performance artist. (She was sitting at a table of centre across the two series). More texture, rhythm, was the currency of this performance. Several pieces derived strength from counters superimposed, such as the animation of five against four "Flying Dream," a prog-fusion tour sought to introduce Pierre Perchaud on guitar.

"Racing Heart, racing heart," featuring saxophonist tenor Remi Dumoulin, used a chunky pointillism, polyrhythmical; "Clips of joy," featuring Vincent Lafont on Fender Rhodes piano and electronics, rode a derivation of the rhythm of the samba.

However, the distinctive palette of the Group - heavy of the rhythmic section, with several wind instruments but just a trumpet and no trombones - clearly part of compositions. Often there were agreements which coalesced in dissonance airy, as reeds sidled in training.

The band managed this slippery music laudable, even when the soloists short: of Antonin - sorting Hoang saxophone alto and bass clarinet work on "Melissa Dance" felt awkward and squeezed, but the room itself was fantastically immersive, opening with a dark chordal ring and closure - after a longSlow swell and a coda Sci - Fi stark - with flutter Butterfly stamps, evoking the exciting side of classical minimalism.

The large set of John Hollenbeck has used the same effects as a whole, but with a little more than: polyphony, cacophony, plume. For this appearance, the Group was joined by a guest pianist, Uri Caine and two singers, Theo Bleckmann and Kate McGarry. The directory revolved around what Mr. Hollenbeck called "my idea of pop music," by Imogen Heap and Kraftwerk and Jimmy Webb songs. ("I forgot to listen to pop music as a kid", Mr. Hollenbeck usefully explained.)

The whole, conducted by J. C. Sanford, played with imposing dynamism, often construction developed on a drone. "Constant conversation", based on a text by Rumi, was conducted by a plunging downbeat, after the example of devotional Sufi music. The Ballad of Ornette Coleman "all my life" was Ms. McGarry singing openheartedly against a bleating horns accretion.

And "A Man of Constant sorrow" began with a forest sentence for all the bass-clef instruments in the band, and then switches into speed as a testimony of the Appalachian Celtic, with crosstalk. It has ended, after an exhilarating full band freakout, with saxophonist Tony Malaby wheezing a tenor your unique split, suggestively desperate.

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