Un cairn à John Hollenbeck
Project
Charmed by the music of John Hollenbeck, Cairn is inviting this Berlin-based American drummer to collaborate together on a project placing written music face to face with improvisation, and jazz with contemporary music. The project revolves around Hollenbeck’s music, as a jazzman, drummer, and vibraphonist, but woven into the background are also notions of harmonic consonance and repetition. To what extent do these two ideas converge towards a more general perception of sound texture, and towards stylistic research?
The international label ECM and John Hollenbeck have expressed to Ensemble Cairn their common desire to start again this project in the form of a recording and a distribution of this program. A disc release is planned during the year 2018.
Reflections
For this project, Hollenbeck’s music, repetitive, and very harmonic, leads us to look for other types of music featuring similar qualities but from a completely different genre, and leading in other directions, akin to a comparable style of music but one which operates in a wholly different dimension.
Aside from the commission given to John Hollenbeck, the concert makes room for moments of improvisation which should link together various written passages. These improvised interludes, inserted inside the actual pieces, bring together John Hollenbeck, Simon Drappier on double-bass, and Fred Gastard, a highly versatile saxophonist from the world of jazz.
Jérôme Combier
John Hollenbeck is one of the rare artists who have mastered the tradition of big band composition while crossing aesthetic borderlines and speaking directly to the time we live in today. eternal interlude, the follow-up to the Grammy-nominated “A Blessing” and the second CD by John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble, is an audacious example of the power of big band jazz to express emotions well beyond swing-era clichés.
Hollenbeck’s music is a daring mix of pure, heart-on-sleeve lyricism and robust rhythmic propulsion, and eternal interlude is earning acclaim for its rich, panoramic orchestral textures as well as its members’ powerful individual voices. As Nate Chinen said in the New York Times: “The drummer and composer John Hollenbeck inhabits a world of gleaming modernity, and “Eternal Interlude” (Sunnyside), the second album featuring his Large Ensemble, reflects both the clarity and brightness of his vision.”
Site Le Poisson rouge
"John ventures Franceward to join Ensemble Cairn. Or, as we might say in English, a mindbending and ballerific evening. Ensemble Cairn specializes in what other folks might call difficult music. Spectral, post-spectral, improvisational collaborations, the works. For this program John Hollenbeck has been invited to perform a brand new work commissioned by L’Ensemble, “The Commons,” based on (wait for it) The Commons framework. John et al. will also play a réorchestration of Rainbow Jimmies, initially commissioned for Bang on a Can, PLUS two works from What Is The Beautiful, including “Flock” and “Limpidity of Silences,” making its live premiere. To top it off, will also be joined for this performance by most excellent French saxophonist, Fred Gastard." Jacques Swartz
Amplified concert
Programme
Limpidity of silences 7'
by John Hollenbeck
for piano
The commons 27’
by John Hollenbeck
Rainbow Jimmies
by John Hollenbeck
The Flock
by John Hollenbeck
Ensemble Cairn
Flute : Cédric Jullion
Clarinet : Ayumi Mori
Piano : Caroline Cren
Guitar : Christelle Séry
Violin : Naaman Sluchin
Cello : Ingrid Schoenlaub / Frédéric Baldassare
Percussions : Sylvain Lemêtre / Arnaud Lassus
Double bass : Simon Drappier
Direction : Guillaume Bourgogne
Guests
John Hollenbeck (drums)
Frédéric Gastard (saxophon)
Amplified concert