[Dixielandjazz] Well, it ain't The Dutch Swing College Band!!!!!

Thu Mar 23 12:35:42 PST 2006

I've never liked it. It's always the same trick:
Go from chaos to an imitation of a jazz style and back.
The audience falls for it and thinks "they can play
orninary jazz also, so the chaos must have an artistic
meaning" But when you listnen closer, you'll hear that
their imitation of e.g. dixieland is less than mediocre.
Big bands do the same: a written arrangement which
incorporates a dixie or New Oleans part.
The "dixie part" is always a caricature of the real thing.
A few years ago my band's trombone player got ill
and I contracted an in that scene famous trombone player.
When we started the concert he did all the caricatures:
vibrato, long tailgates etc. for a short while and then found
out he could'nt cope. I will always remember his words:
"I did'nt know you take this music seriously.." And after
that tried to do the right thing, but stayed less than mediocre
in this style.
It's a bit like people who think they can imitate a Spanish
flamenco singer.
Playing trad jazz is a special craft. I know more trad musicians
that can play dixie, swing, bob and free jazz than the other way around.
Last week I played in a session with a big band trumpet player that
is regarded as one of the best in the trade. A meaningful solo
in Royal Garden Blues? Forget it: just a plethora of meaningless
notes.
I have also played in a session setting with some of the musicians
that were mentioned in the article. Forget it, without music
they don't have a clue.
On the other hand, as a non reader, I could not hold their
chair in a big band for a minute.
Different worlds, each have their own value, but I hate it
when OKOM is put down as simple. Nonsense!
To each his own, without putting down other men's crafts.

Cees van den Heuvel
http://www.revivaljassband.nl

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: "DJML" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 4:35 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Well, it ain't The Dutch Swing College Band!!!!!

For Cees and our Dutch friends, as well as the more adventurous members of
the DJML. The ICP, seems to be grounded in basic jump swing. Interesting if
only to illustrate the progression from OKOM to Avant Garde.

Cheers,
Steve

Jazz Review - ICP Orchestra's Experimental Jazz Swings at Tonic

NY TIMES - By NATE CHINEN - March 23, 2006

For the first 10 minutes of the ICP Orchestra's early set at Tonic on
Tuesday night, the pianist Misha Mengelberg and the drummer Han Bennink
indulged in an improvised duet, something they have been doing together for
roughly 40 years. Their styles were complementary, if a bit bizarrely so.
Mr. Mengelberg gave the impression of a man groping for the doorknob in a
darkened room. Mr. Bennink occupied the same room, but with a different
temperament, impatiently and heedlessly knocking things around.

That somewhat comedic contrast has always characterized Mr. Mengelberg's
rapport with Mr. Bennink; as an exploratory pair, they have as much in
common with Laurel and Hardy as with Lewis and Clark. In 1967, they applied
their collective energies to the formation of a Dutch avant-garde movement
called the Instant Composers Pool, or ICP. (A third founding member, the
multireedist Willem Breuker, left the organization within its first decade.)
The ICP Orchestra, a flagship in a small fleet of like-minded projects, took
shape in the early 1980's, with Mr. Mengelberg and Mr. Bennink at the helm.

The 10-piece group still adheres to Mr. Mengelberg's mandate of "instant
composition," a term that's best understood in opposition to the formless
expanse of free jazz. At Tonic, most of the music was spontaneously
conceived, and a good deal of it bore the hallmarks of free-form
experimentalism: clarinet squeals, saxophone shrieks, twitchy arco bowing on
viola, cello and double bass. But there were signposts embedded in the
music. Coordinated ensemble figures cropped up unexpectedly, hinting at a
secret discipline and a fondness for bygone jazz styles.

Swing < the jump-band variety, not the polished orchestral fare < was a
shadow presence throughout the evening. On one tune, horns and reeds
attacked a scrap of melody with ramshackle exuberance, while Mr. Bennink's
bass drum thumped four beats to the bar. Mr. Mengelberg, soloing with the
rhythm section, reached for a modern sensibility; he sounded more than a
little like the Duke Ellington of "Money Jungle," a 1962 outing with Charles
Mingus on bass and Max Roach on drums.

Every other member of the orchestra had at least one solo turn; a few, like
the clarinetist Michael Moore, the cellist Tristan Honsinger and the
trumpeter Thomas Heberer, made multiple contributions. The most engagingly
emphatic was Tobias Delius, playing tenor saxophone on a set-closer; he
began in the hard rhythmic style of Illinois Jacquet, and gradually pushed
toward catharsis.

Mr. Delius was essentially riding the wave of the ensemble's propulsion,
which transported the song from crisp Ellingtonian swing (circa 1930's) into
cacophonous group improvisation (late 60's). In that moment, and on an
equally immersive rumba, ICP lived up to its name; not just the first two
letters, but also P, for "pool."

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