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ramboy 21
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Available
Jelly was originally a trio of
American jazz musicians – Gregg
Moore, Stuart Curtis and Jimmy
Sernesky – who came to Amsterdam
from Salt Lake City in the late
70s accompanying a mime troupe,
and decided to stay there. Moore
subsequently invited his brother,
saxophonist / clarinettist Michael
(who, besides the name, has little
in common with the unlikeable
fatso who shoots
"controversial"
documentaries) to join them, since
when the band has been the major
outlet for his superb work on
saxophone and clarinet. The
line-up has remained constant
since 1995: it's a pianoless
sextet also featuring trumpeter
Eric Boeren, tenor saxophonist
Tobias Delius, trombonist Wolter
Wierbos, bassist Ernst Glerum and
percussionist Michael Vatcher. Although the album title refers to Bilbao, as in the Brecht / Weill song from Happy End which closes proceedings, it's just as much a journey along the shores of nostalgia in multicultural and liberal Amsterdam. In the light of today’s many prohibitions and divisions, Brecht's lines have much to say about that fair city: "Now they've cleaned it up and made it middle class / With potted palms and aspree / Very bourgeois, very bourgeois [..] They've cleaned up all the pools of broken glass / On parquet floors you can't grow grass." So appropriate – it's almost a shame the Jelly's version is purely instrumental. As usual, the album (their sixth, not counting reissues) presents an eclectic mix of material. Two tracks are based on the folk music of Myanmar and Indonesia: on "Selat Sunda" the brasses pump away like an approaching locomotive (recalling at times Masada's debut album), while on "Bulan/Khek Borates", based on Siamese folk music, bassist Ernst Glerum strums chords as if he were playing an acoustic guitar. When it comes to straight jazz the most impressive soloist throughout is Wierbos, a fine example of the "avant-garde brass improviser as defender of jazz tradition", who shines on from the opening "Lovelock", through Hoagy Carmichael's "Baltimore Oriole", Boeren's "Wollič", and "Colima". The twelve compositions are so beautifully arranged that they almost deserve filing away in the Classical section alongside the Brecht / Weill opera, but despite the playfulness – Burt Bacharach's "Little French Boy" and "Mad" (subtitled “A Fake Madagascar tune") are so loose and child-like they're virtually careless – the overriding impression, established early on in the Mingus-like "Facade", developed by Toby Delius’ tenor work on “In the Secret Garden” and confirmed by the closing title track, is one of gentle melancholy.–VJ Vid Jeraj, Paris
Transatlantic, APRIL
2006 |
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| Michael
Moore, alto saxophone, clarinet,
bass clarinet; Tobias Delius,
tenor saxophone, clarinet; Eric
Boeren, cornet; Wolter Wierbos,
trombone; Ernst Glerum, bass;
Michael Vatcher, percussion 1. Lovelock 05:30 2. Bulan/Khek Borates (trad. Myanmar) 03:55 3. Facade 05:20 4. Baltimore Oriole (Hoagy Carmichael) 05:47 5. Little French Boy (Burt Bacharach) 03:15 6. Selat Sunda 04:42 7. Jackdaws and Blackbirds (Eric Boeren) 05:01 8. Wollic (Eric Boeren) 04:08 9. Mad 04:33 10. Colima 05:21 11. In the Secret Garden 03:41 12. Bilbao Song (Kurt Weill) 04:32 All other compositions by Michael Moore Recorded 25-27 January, 2004 by Frank van der Weij, assisted by David Klooker and Bento Kassies at E-Sound Studios, Weesp, NL
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