DR Big Band Feat. Mike Stern Chromazone (2008)

Early 90s founded the guitarist Chuck Loeb, the keyboardist Mitchel Forman and drummer Wolfgang Haffner fusion formation Metro, which has since published several albums. Headed by Michael Abene, these three musicians now took on the album Big Band Boom together with the WDR Big Band and guests Nicolas Fiszman (bass) and Roland Peil (perc). The name says it all: Metro pieces in big band with funky horns and driving rhythm section!

For over forty years, Carla Bley has written music that infuses jazz traditions with her own personality. She continues to lead a variety of ensembles, from small combos to large-scale big bands. With Looking for America, Bley returns to the big band format. Totaling 18 pieces, the group is a rich blend of 13 horns, two keyboards, and a rhythm section. She has worked with many of the featured musicians for decades, and Bley consequently composes and arranges with their individual voices in mind.

As he gained more and more respect and critical recognition in the early years of the 21st century, Dave Holland took a leap and expanded his music outward into a big band format. The word "expanded" is key here, for what Holland has mostly done on What Goes Around is send his quintet format through an expansion process, where there are more pieces in the puzzle, yet the same overall conception of sound remains. All but one of the pieces here are rewrites of earlier, previously recorded selections, dating from 1983 all the way to 2000. All of the charts are composed with a sureness and a grounding in tradition that belies the fact that this is Holland's first big band album.

During August 2015 the WDR Big Band performed an impressive concert of large ensemble jazz crossed with African timbres and rhythms, at the Cologne Philharmonic. The guests also included Rhani Krija on percussion, Henry Dorina, electric bass, Woz Kaly, vocals and Jean-Philippe Rykiel, keyboard. The pieces were arranged and conducted by Michael Mossmann. The music is presented by Mokhtar Samba: it is about vibrant rhythms and hypnotising melodies. As Samba feels very close to the music of his ancestors, his pieces are naturally heavily influenced by the elementary power of African rhythms.

At the very beginning, jazz was called "a combination of nervousness, lawlessness, primitive and wild animalism and debauchery." This definition was given by a more conservative generation who considered jazz a decadent phenomenon. However, despite such estimates, jazz came to its heyday in the 20s, and in the 30s and 40s determined not only the musical fashion, but also the lifestyle of that time in general. The 4CD compilation presented here is a great example of popular music from the 40s of the last century. The time when Glenn Miller and his orchestra, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman and other orchestras shone on the stage.