A Blessing
John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble
Contemporary jazz big band music is-too often-the doldrums for me. Since the 50’s there have been too many potholes: politeness, third stream, background forgettableness. Some of those negatives are present here-too much effort is made to be respectable, and that’s a bust of course. It’s almost like a 13-year-old trying to prove he knows everything: throat-singing, whoop-electronics sounds from the 60’s movie “The Time Machine”, the works. And Theo Beckman’s precious singing gives me the creeps-he’s a sort of avant Art Garfunkel. These folks have chops galore, but they’re just not using them in any imaginative way.
Omni Tone
Richard Grooms