The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update

Michael Mantler

EN / DE

In 1968, composer-trumpeter Michael Mantler recorded The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. Released on the JCOA label (and subsequently distributed by ECM), this classic, groundbreaking album of composition and improvisation featured Mantler conducting a large jazz orchestra that included some of the era’s iconic free improvisers as soloists: pianist Cecil Taylor, cornetist Don Cherry, trombonist Roswell Rudd, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, guitarist Larry Coryell, saxophonist Gato Barbieri. In the process of digitizing his catalog, Mantler reacquainted himself with early scores, eventually envisioning fresh performances of this vintage material. With The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update, Mantler has re-imagined his 1960s music for the 21st century, with electric guitar and amplified string quartet added to the instrumentation. The Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band of energized young Europeans, conducted by Christoph Cech and featuring Mantler on trumpet, was recorded in these updated scores live at Vienna’s Porgy & Bess club in 2013. Just as the original did in 1968, the result sounds stirringly contemporary, brimming with dark majesty and a bright sense of sonic possibility.

1968 nahm der Komponist und Trompeter Michael Mantler das Album The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra auf. Ursprünglich auf dem JCOA-Label veröffentlicht (und später von ECM vertrieben), präsentierte dieses bahnbrechende, heute als Klassiker geltende Album ein von Mantler dirigiertes, großes Jazz-Orchester. Es hatte einige der Ikonen unter den freien Jazzimprovisatoren jener Ära in seinen Reihen: Den Pianisten Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry am Kornett, den Posaunisten Roswell Rudd, die Saxofonisten Pharoah Sanders und Gato Barbieri, sowie den Gitarristen Larry Coryell.
Im Zuge der Digitalisierung seines Katalogs machte sich Mantler mit den alten Arrangements wieder vertraut, und entwickelte schließlich Ideen für neue Fassungen des Originalmaterials. Für The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update hat Mantler seine Musik der 1960er Jahre nun für das 21. Jahrhundert neu gedacht, dabei kamen E-Gitarre und ein elektrisch verstärktes Streichquartett zur Instrumentierung hinzu. Die Nouvelle Cuisine Bigband, bestehend aus jungen, energiegeladenen Europäern, dirigiert von Christoph Cech und mit Mantler an der Trompete, nahm diese modifizierten Arrangements 2013 live im Wiener Club Porgy & Bess auf. Das Resultat klingt aufregend gegenwärtig, voll dunkler Grandeur und einem scharfen Sinn für klangliche Möglichkeiten.
Featured Artists Recorded

August-September 2013, Porgy & Bess, Vienna

Original Release Date

07.11.2014

  • 1Update One
    (Michael Mantler)
    04:47
  • 2Update Eight
    (Michael Mantler)
    06:00
  • 3Update Nine
    (Michael Mantler)
    05:45
  • 4Update Eleven
    (Michael Mantler)
    07:01
  • 5Update Five
    (Michael Mantler)
    05:03
  • 6Update Six
    (Michael Mantler)
    07:23
  • 7Update Ten
    (Michael Mantler)
    06:45
  • 8Update Twelve Pt. 1
    (Michael Mantler)
    06:50
  • 9Update Twelve Pt. 2
    (Michael Mantler)
    02:48
  • 10Update Twelve Pt. 3
    (Michael Mantler)
    02:29
Unter anderem mit dem Saxophonisten Harry Sokal, dem wunderbaren Gitarristen Bjarne Roupé und dem radio.string.quartet.vienna kommt es zu einer Neuauflage, die Mantlers Musik ins Heute transferiert: vitaler Big-Band-Sound mit Ecken und Kanten und einer gehörigen Portion Freiheit.
Tilman Urbach, Fono Forum
 
Modern sounding but not outré in any obvious way by the standards of today its ‘free jazz’ idiom contoured around dense clusters of plangent notes, French horns enriching and humanising the other brassy textures, the three double bassists beefing up the sound in places. These are mostly quite short individual pieces with thick horn and reed ensemble passages an all-pervasive and sombre tonal presence occasionally interspersed by scrabbling break-out sections within the big band, in the urgency of ‘Update Twelve Pt 2 (Preview)’ an escaping solo of Bjarne Roupé somehow a resolution, breaking the musical collective code momentarily. As much Bartók or Messiaen-influenced as Cecil Taylor or Mingus in the mind’s eye, this is all highly abstract expansive music sometimes gloomy sometimes smashing free, the orchestra remaining a tightly controlled group presence throughout sounding considered and wise.
 Stephen Graham, Marlbank
 
With a different approach, a wonderfully responsive Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band, the brilliant amplified radio string quartet Vienna and soloists including Bjarne Roupé on guitar, Wolfgang Puschnig alto sax and David Helbock piano, he has produced an album to match the original. It’s one of the finest jazz albums he’s produced in years.
Peter Bevan, Northern Echo
 
The original silver double-album of the JCO is a masterpiece. Mantler’s ‘update’ is equally serious and pretty fantastic on its own. An obsessive and painstaking reworking, the painter returning to the canvas nearly 50 years later, brush in hand.
John Corbett, DownBeat
 
Wenn man hineinhört, ist man erstaunt. Erstaunt über die Wucht dieser Musik, ihr wild-fröhliches, fast unbekümmertes Herumströmen. Erstaunt über das, was da alles beinahe urwüchsig auftaucht, sich verbindet und verschwindet. Intuitiv bestimmt, aber getrieben von starkem Formempfinden und Ausdruckswillen.
Henning Bolte, Jazzthetik
 
Update is really what it says – not a reproduction or look back, but a new take on this music that shows something of what we’ve learned in the best part of half a century. This unique counterpart album is quite simply required listening for anyone with a scintilla of interest in large-scale modern jazz.
Mark McKergow, London Jazz News
 
Mantlers Charts sind frisch und explosiv, vor allem, weil er klug genug war, kein Remake zu versuchen, stehen zu lassen, was ihm an den alten Erfindungen als haltbar erschien, anderes so zu revidieren, dass eigentlich neue Kompositionen entstanden. Insgesamt ist das Gewicht auf die ausgeschriebenen Parts verlagert. Die aber werden mit einer Vitalität reloaded, dass wir gelegentlich fast vermeinen, eine aktualisierte (und raffiniertere) Ausgabe von Dizzy Gillespies ‚Things to Come‘-Bigband aus den späten Vierzigern vor Ohren zu haben.
Peter Rüedi, Die Weltwoche
In 1968, composer-trumpeter Michael Mantler recorded The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. Originally released by the orchestra’s own imprint and reissued later by ECM, this classic, ground-breaking album featured Mantler conducting a large jazz orchestra that included some of the era’s iconic improvisers as soloists: pianist Cecil Taylor, cornetist Don Cherry, trombonist Roswell Rudd, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, guitarist Larry Coryell, saxophonist Gato Barbieri. In the process of digitizing his catalog, Mantler reacquainted himself with early scores, eventually envisioning fresh performances of not only this vintage material, but also including new versions of material from that period never previously recorded. With The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update, Mantler has re-imagined his 1960s music for the 21st century, with the amplified radio.string.quartet.vienna added to the instrumentation along with the prominent electric guitar of Bjarne Roupé. They and the Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band of energized young Europeans, conducted by Christoph Cech, were recorded in these updated scores live at Vienna’s Porgy & Bess club in 2013. Just as the original did in 1968, the result sounds stirringly contemporary, brimming with dark majesty and a bright sense of sonic possibility.

An interview with Michael Mantler:

What visions for the future did you “hear” in your mind as you looked over the old scores for “The Jazz Composer's Orchestra” album?

After having not listened to this music for a long time, I was impressed by how fresh and exciting it still sounded after all these years. It seemed that the music should be allowed to have another life perhaps, reaching a new audience that would probably never have known it. A recording would be the most logical outlet, and to perform it live would be interesting, of course; but given the commercial considerations of today’s music business, these ventures are generally impossible. The exception was the support from Christoph Huber at Porgy & Bess in Vienna, who did make it possible to rehearse, perform and record the project.

Regarding the idea of an “update,” for me that implied an adding to and an improving of the original material. Sonically, I wanted to retain the original instrumentation, except for reducing the inordinate number of bassists originally used, seemingly no longer necessary. Musically, I strove to retain as much as possible of what still seemed agreeable to me about the notated elements of the scores, but in the end without any restriction imposed on myself as to changes that I felt necessary to make. Certain of the compositions ended up being almost unchanged, while some were so extensively revised that one could consider them almost as new compositions that nevertheless grew from the original materials.

Sonically, another element that has of course changed drastically is that the new recording is vastly superior technically to the original, which was – although recorded at RCA Studios, one of the most advanced studios at the time – done on just eight tracks by engineers who had never heard anything like this music before.

Is there anything in particular that has changed about large-ensemble jazz (and free improvisation) today that necessitated this album sounding different than the original? Or is it just a question of the times and the musical personalities?

I don’t think today’s large-ensemble jazz, or free improvisation, has much to do with it – I’m not all that familiar with the scene. I will say that on this Update album the performances are of a much higher technical and interpretative level as far as the musicians in the orchestra, with much more exact playing than in the original versions. As for the soloists, I deliberately chose mostly other solo instruments and personalities, in order to avoid a “re-do” and to achieve an “update.”

Has the ratio of composition to improvisation changed from the original album to the new one?

Very much so. Even though the original idea was, even then, to control and somewhat limit what were, in my opinion, the “excesses” of free improvisation, I came to find that there was still too much of it. Over the years, I have generally come to favour integrating improvisation ever more with notated compositional elements by providing more specific materials and “surroundings” for the improviser, as well as the room to interpret written solo melodies in a fairly free manner. I hope that creates a continuity that melds improvisation and composition into one homogeneous work.

Did anything specific spur the prominent use of electric guitar and amplified string quartet on “Update”? And which of the musicians had you worked with before?

I used the electric guitar as early as the original JCO with Larry Coryell and then ever since – for its power, its variety of sonic possibilities and its ability to “sing.” Bjarne Roupé, an exceptional guitarist, has been playing my music with me for two decades. A prime appeal of the new “amplified” string quartets, of which the r.s.q.v. is a prime example, is their versatility; this quartet consists of musicians who can play notated music of all kinds perfectly while also having the ability to play freely and creatively. As for other musicians, I’ve worked with alto saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig for many years, although mostly in the context of Carla Bley’s music. I found tenor saxophonist Harry Sokal and pianist David Helbock specifically for this new project, and they’re both wonderfully creative players, who immediately understood and interpreted the music without necessarily being influenced by the original versions.

What was the original aim of the Jazz Composer's Orchestra, and what feelings hit you when you listen to that original album? And what were your impressions when you heard this new group perform your updated scores?

The original idea was to create an orchestra that would concern itself with presenting free jazz within a larger, more controlled orchestral environment. It was also a political and social institution created to enable creative artists to work unencumbered of commercial constraints. I still love the original album for its power and excitement and the absolutely exceptional improvising – to me some of the best playing ever by those original soloists. As for the updated versions of these scores, they made it possible for me to give the compositions a new life – and the recording expresses ideally how I feel that music should sound now.