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ACT Visions of Jazz ACT 9460-2

 

1. Heinz Sauer - Michael Wollny - Where is the Line
2. Solveig Slettahjell Slow Motion Quintet - Another Day
3. Nguyen Le - Dhafer Youssef - Byzance
4. Depart - Harry Sokal - Heire Kanzig - Jojo Mayer - Timeless Dreams
5. e.s.t Esbjorg Svensson Trio - Brewery of Beggars
6. Wolfgang Haffner - Nils Land-grant - Lars Danielson - 24 Hours
7. Michael Schiefel - Do the Rumba
8. Lars Danielson - Eivind Aarset - Jon Christensen - Melange Bleu
9. Helge Sunge Orchestra - Olga Kenova - Marilyn Mazur - Lesson 3
10. Julia Hulsmann - Roger Cicero - I Cannot See
11. Christof Lauer - Michel Goddard - Gary Husband - De Cuir De Cuivre
12. Berlin Calling - Carsten Daerr - Daniel Erdmann - Bambus
13. (em) Wollny Kruse - Schaefer - Takashi
14. Alboran Trio - Balkan Air
15. Eric Watson - Peter Herbert - Christophe Marguet - New York Maxie

Total playing time 74.03

I assume that, ACT who are based in Munich in Germany produced this composite record as a means to promote their extensive jazz catalogue, which includes American artists, as well as the European ones that are featured here.

The music is extremely diverse and it is unlikely that many listeners are going to like everything they hear, but most will find something which is to their taste. Many of the tracks attempt to be too clever as far as I am concerned, the musicians are too tied up with technical correctness and as a result the very essence of jazz disappears. This is probably the fault of music universities, who spend such a disproportionate amount of their team teaching music technology and seem to forget that many of the greatest jazz innovators knew nothing of all that, but played what they felt in their heart and their head. A lot of what I hear makes me wonder whether jazz as I know it has a future! Which is rather sad!

I was disappointed to find that ACT had not included a sleeve note with their record, but instead had included their 2006/7 catalogue. This is a fascinating document and it contains many albums I would very much like to own, but unfortunately it tells you little about the artists on the record. It is even quite difficult to find the album each track is taken from in the catalogue!

Don Mather

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