What these players create here is a minor miracle. A postmodern quartet plays Duke loosey-goosey, and yet dots its performances with moments that recreate the sound and majesty of the Ellington orchestra. - Kevin Whitehead

10 MP3 Songs in this album (53:39) !
Related styles: Jazz: Modern Creative Jazz, Jazz: Modern Free Jazz, Mood: Quirky

People who are interested in Duke Ellington ICP Orchestra Sun Ra should consider this download.


Details:
Ab Baars: Kinda Dukish

Few missions in jazz are as perilous as re-arranging Duke Ellington tunes: youâre gonna do a better job of setting those jewels than he did? With the palette of distinctive voices he had to work with? Kinda dubious.

Still, Ellington helpfully provided a key to how another arranger might pull it off. Dukeâs own compositions and charts are famously built around the quirks and appetites of his own musicians, their peculiarities of phrasing and pet techniques. (This was true even when he and pen-pal Billy Strayhorn arranged Grieg and Tchaikovsky.) So: go and do likewise. It oughta work, if the players you collaborate with have their own distinct styles. A kinda big âif.â

For Ab Baars, Kinda Dukish is sequel to previous albums in which his trio tackled pieces by clarinetist John Carter (A Free Step), and many and varied Native American chants, tunes and games (Songsâboth are on GeestGronden, and well worth having).

âI was very happy with the results of the Carter and Indians programs,â Baars says, âbecause I was able to give a personal touch to material written by others. I felt confident the trio could transform even such strong and well known material as Ellingtonâs. For a long time I searched for pieces that had an open feel to them, pieces I could break up, rebuild or change. As I got deeper into it, it was inspiring to realize that Ellington himself applied this process to almost every composition.â

Indeed, in the 1950s, Ellington devoted a lot of time to remaking his early three-minute masterworks for the new long-player format. Concise oldies were stretched out, and sometimes given episodic treatments that might reflect the input of several arrangers, in or out of the band. âKinda Perdidoâ incorporates quasi-improvised choruses bandmembers Jimmy Hamilton and Clark Terry wrote out back then, which turned up in various Ellington versions thereafter. (Just hearing the horns play those variations here prompts Martin van Duynhoven to salute Dukeâs rimshot-powered drummer of the era, Sam Woodyard.)

For Baars, there was another conspicuous precedent: he was already a mainstay of Misha Mengelbergâs ICP Orchestra in 1990, when Misha recorded his radical takes on Ducal classics including âSolitudeâ and âCaravan.â But even a cursory listen to âMix Solitudeâ and âMixed Caravanâ on ICPâs Bospaadje Konijnehol I will confirm that Ab finds his own ways into and out of that material.

In adapting Ellingtonia for this program, Baars draws on those familiar tunes, relative obscurities (âAristocracy à la Jean Lafitteâ from 1970âs New Orleans Suite, âMr. Gentle and Mr. Coolâ) and a 1940 concerto for bass and orchestra, âJack the Bear.â

âI listened a lot to Dukeâs piano introductions, which are very inspiring,â Baars says. âWrestling with the material, I began to hear all the possibilities that are in it.â

The interpretive leeway is decidedly wide. Sometimes Baars and company luxuriate in the maestroâs exquisite tunes and counterlines, as if Dukeâs orchestra had been ingeniously miniaturized, as on âKinda Halfâ (after âHalf the Funâ 1956, from Such Sweet Thunder) and âKinda Braudâ (from âPortrait of Wellman Braud,â Dukeâs pioneer bassist).

Some interpretations are a bit more radical.

One sympathizes with the hypothetical listener who, knowing nothing of Baars but digging Dukeâs melodies, cues up this CD and is greeted by the opening of âKinda Solitude.â The experience would echo that of an unwary â60s record buyer who, wanting to hear a nice version of âBye Bye Blackbird,â had stumbled on My Name Is Albert Ayler, the album where the outward-bound tenor saxophonist bends standard tunes to the breaking point.

Baars knows that record well, but here he does it one better: one might miss that his rude tenor introduction is in reality the melody as written (albeit stretched out, like one of those skewed-perspective faces hidden in a Renaissance painting). But by the time that first track is over Ab will play the melody straight, with disarming tenderness. He gets to deconstruct and reconstruct the tune in the same performance. Heâs Mr. Gentle and Mr. Cruel, kinda.

The flexibility of his long-term trioâwith van Duynhoven and bassist Wilbert de Joodeâonly increases when they expand to quartet. Trombonist Joost Buis is an old friend and frequent collaborator on the Amsterdam jazz/improvising/new music scene, and an ardent Ellingtonian. He leads a tentet, Astronotes, whose rich, self-titled CD on the DATA label includes a suave remake of the Ellington/Strayhorn âZweet Zurzday.â (De Joode is the Astronotesâ permanent bassist, and Baars has guested with them many times.) The trio has made way for a trombone before, namely Roswell Ruddâs on Four (DATA), but give it up to Buis for cracking this tight-knit group, and so thoroughly entering into its spirit, on the heads and collective improvisations.

When Joost uses plunger mute to shape his notes, as on âKinda Gentle,â his open-voweled wah-wahs are easily distinguished from the nasal ya-yas of Charlie Irvis, Tricky Sam Nanton and their progeny. But Buis knows his Ellington trombones too well not to tip his hat here and there. On âKinda Caravanâ he eerily evokes Juan Tizolâs valve horn on the memorable A section, and slideman Lawrence Brownâs bellowing tone on the bridge (even if the notes are still Tizolâs).

If any contemporary bassist can suggest the shock and awe Jimmy Blanton inspired when he joined Duke in 1939, itâs de Joode. His sheer force and percussive pizzicato make other players sound like they barely graze the stringsâthough he also loves playing arco, to blend with the winds, or revel in his own repertoire of bowed textures. For power plucking and bent bowing, look to âJack the Bear,â and note how Wilbert survives the inevitable comparison. Itâs a thrill to hear him play Blantonâs actual lines on the theme.

Like Duke, Ab knows one way to make players happy is to ask them to do what they want to do already. Martin van Duynhovenâs drumming has always been meticulous, and spanking-clean to the brink of Dutch stereotype. Heâs one of those drummers who can make you hear the tune the bandâs playing in the contours and phrasing of his drum solo. In fact he used to play âDrop Me Off in Harlemâ on solo programs, and lives outside Amsterdam in Haarlem, so that selection was a no-brainer.

You might also look to âKinda Harlemâ as typical of the quartetâs approach to the particulars of small-group orchestration and suite-like forms. Like other episodic narratives, these keep you hanging on just to find out what happens next. For this and most pieces here, Baars made the crucial decision to reach for clarinet instead of tenor. The blend with trombone tips the overall vibe away from any hard-bop echoes and toward the clarinet-dominated swing era in which the Ellington band matured. Abâs clarinet voice is so flexible he can suggest a reed-sectionâs worth of personalities even without âdoingâ Hamilton, Barney Bigard, or Russell Procope.

What these players create here is a minor miracle. A postmodern quartet plays Duke loosey-goosey, and yet dots its performances with moments that recreate the sound and majesty of the Ellington orchestra. Itâs the kinda thing you wouldnât think possible if you hadnât heard it yourself.

We do not speak for the deadâdo not say, âEllington would have loved (or hated) it,â because how the hell would we (or anyone who makes such stupid claims) know that? So Iâll speak for myself: I kinda love it.

--Kevin Whitehead

thanks to ThuisKopie Fonds, Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst, Fonds voor de Amateurkunst en Podiumkunsten

recording Amsterdam Bimhuis June 13th 2005
by Dick Lucas DATA RECORDS

editing Dick Lucas and Ab Baars
design Francesca Patella
photo Nanou Kurstjens
liner notes Kevin Whitehead
production Ig Henneman

Stichting Wig
Prinsengracht 1009â
1017 KN Amsterdam
www.stichtingwig.com

distribution
TOONDIST
www.toondist.nl

© BUMA STEMRA