Fire!orchestra

Fire! Orchestra - Arrival (2019) {Rune Grammofon RCD2205}
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© 2019 Rune Grammofon | RCD2205
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Contemporary Jazz Vocals / Experimental Big Band

Fire! Orchestra started out as a 28 piece ensemble in 2011, initiated by the Fire! trio of Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin. Now down to a "mere" 14 members, keeping the rhythm and horn sections to their bare necessities while bringing on a string quartet to expand the canvas, this "cleanup" has worked wonders. The two exceptional and powerful singers, Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg have been members since the start and shine as brightly as ever. With "Arrival" the ensemble have upped the ante on all levels and produced a stunning new album, with five originals and achingly beautiful cover versions of Robbie Bashos´s "Blue Crystal Fire" and "At Last I Am Free" by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers.

As brilliant as their previous album "Enter" is, with "Ritual" they have outdone themselves and produced a beast of beauty and power, extremely well executed, beautifully recorded and produced from only two days in the studio. Free improvisations, spontaneous horns, keyboard frenzy, abstract electronics, guitar mayhem and not to forget; those glorious twin voices of Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg. It´s about mysteries and rituals; in music and in life.

Fire! Orchestra started out as a 28 piece ensemble in 2011, initiated by the Fire! trio of Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin. Now down to a "mere" 14 members, keeping the rhythm and horn sections to their bare necessities while bringing on a string quartet to expand the canvas, this "cleanup" has worked wonders. The two exceptional and powerful singers, Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg have been members since the start and shine as brightly as ever. With "Arrival" the ensemble have upped the ante on all levels and produced a stunning new album, with five originals and achingly beautiful cover versions of Robbie Bashos´s "Blue Crystal Fire" and "At Last I Am Free" by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers. ”Arrival” is light and shade, joy and despair, structure and improvisation, performed by an ensemble of top notch musicians. We consider it a major piece of work, both in our catalogue as well as in Scandinavian "jazz".

Emboldened by the popularity of Inner Mounting Flame among rock audiences, the first Mahavishnu Orchestra set out to further define and refine its blistering jazz-rock direction in its second – and, no thanks to internal feuding, last – studio album. Although it has much of the screaming rock energy and sometimes exaggerated competitive frenzy of its predecessor, Birds of Fire is audibly more varied in texture, even more tightly organized, and thankfully more musical in content…

Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) is among the most prominent names in contemporary music scene today. This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu includes world première recordings of three works by Saariaho featuring bass-baritone Gerald Finley and harpist Xavier de Maistre as soloists. True Fire is a six-movement song cycle that was written to a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre National de France, for baritone Gerald Finley with an original idea to explore the scope of the baritone voice. The texts conclusively determined what the vocal expression would be like and how the details in the musical material would shape up.

Emboldened by the popularity of Inner Mounting Flame among rock audiences, the first Mahavishnu Orchestra set out to further define and refine its blistering jazz-rock direction in its second – and, no thanks to internal feuding, last – studio album. Although it has much of the screaming rock energy and sometimes exaggerated competitive frenzy of its predecessor, Birds of Fire is audibly more varied in texture, even more tightly organized, and thankfully more musical in content. A remarkable example of precisely choreographed, high-speed solo trading – with John McLaughlin, Jerry Goodman, and Jan Hammer all of one mind, supported by Billy Cobham's machine-gun drumming and Rick Laird's dancing bass – can be heard on the aptly named "One Word," and the title track is a defining moment of the group's nearly atonal fury. The band also takes time out for a brief bit of spaced-out electronic burbling and static called "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love." Yet the most enticing pieces of music on the record are the gorgeous, almost pastoral opening and closing sections to "Open Country Joy," a relaxed, jocular bit of communal jamming that they ought to have pursued further.

Japanese original release. "Birds Of Fire" from Mahavishnu Orchestra (John Mclaughlin) finally becomes SACD multi hybrid format reissue. Remastered in 2021, using the original master tapes. 7inch cardboard sleeve packaging.