Holland Music

Dave Holland Quintet - Live 1986 (2001) {TDK} [DVD5 NTSC]
DVD5 -> 4.05 Gb | All Regions | NTSC 4:3 | 59:13 | ISO Image
Audio: LinearPCM, 2 ch / Dolby AC3, 6 ch / DTS, 6 ch
© 2001 TDK DVD Video / ZDF
Jazz / Hard Bop / Post Bop / Bass

TDK releases another highlight in their series of memorable live jazz concert recordings from the last decades. The 1986 concert at the popular Zelt-Musik-Festival features the quintet formation of musician, eminent bassist, composer and bandleader Dave Holland.

The subtitle of "A Bridge of Dreams," a 2011 album with Ars Nova Copenhagen and Paul Hillier, is "a cappella Music from the Pacific Rim," and it includes the works of composers from Australia, New Zealand, California, and China, all of which draws in part, if not entirely, on non-Western musical traditions. Lou Harrison left the accompaniment for his Mass for Saint Cecilia's Day open-ended and here Andrew Lawrence-King provides a discreet undergirding using medieval harp, psaltery, and hurdy-gurdy. It bears a strong resemblance to Medieval plainchant mass in its predominantly monophonic, melismatic writing, and its modal character. The modes, though, are Harrison's own, based on traditional Indonesian and Chinese scales. The mass is a beautifully expressive, immediately engaging piece that reveals a fresh facet of the composer's brilliantly expansive imagination.

This LP features pianist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Barry Altschul during the brief period that, along with Anthony Braxton, they were members of the fine avant-garde quartet Circle. The music heard on this set is not quite as free as Circle's but often very explorative. Four of the six songs are Corea originals which, in addition to Holland's "Vedana" and Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti," form a very viable set of adventurous jazz, recorded just a few months before Corea changed direction.

Rod Stewart has teamed with Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra for Swing Fever, a 13-track salute to the timeless songs of the big band years. The album arrived February 23, 2024, via Warner Records. On Dec. 5, 2023, the day of the announcement, the stars surprised commuters at London’s St. Pancras rail station by performing the first single, “Almost Like Being In Love.” For the first time, Britain’s new partners in swing have united to share their peerless dexterity on a tribute to truly great songs such as “Ain’t Misbehavin,”“Frankie And Johnny,” “Sentimental Journey” and “Lullaby of Broadway,” recorded at Holland’s own studio in Greenwich, London.

Silk Baroque presents a musical encounter between Wu Wei and Holland Baroque, performing a programme that ranges from Baroque greats such as Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Rameau to Chinese traditional tunes, all tied together by the musicians’ openness to improvisation, experimentation and cultural exchange. Wu Wei plays the sheng, an extraordinary ancient Chinese mouth organ, which looks like a bundle of bamboo reeds cased in a metal bowl. It is a miracle of harmony, melody and rhythmic possibilities, and Wu Wei’s abilities fully bring out the sheng’s beauty: whispering, charming, and compelling. Age-old traditions come together in performances that sound fresh and contemporary. Silk Baroque carries listeners into a lively, enticing and fascinating sound world.

Holland Baroque offers a colourful sonic ride through the microcosmos on this soundtrack for Pim Zwier’s Metamorphosis, a film portraying the extraordinary seventeenth-century natural science artist Maria Sibylla Merian and the fascinating life of the insects she studied. Judith Steenbrink composed new music, combining nature sounds, Baroque-inspired dances and groovy melodies. Together with the sound design by Paul Gies this results in a sound world as iridescent, enticing and original as Zwier’s film.