Light in the dark (Ignatzek) [6:26]
Little Sunflower (Hubbard) [6:48]
Eu E A Brisa (Alf) [5:08]
Believe it or Not (Drabek) [3:37]
Corcovado (Jobim) [6:14]
Cantaloupe Island (Hancock) [3:31]
Misty (Garner) [6:47]
The Shadow of Your Smile (Mandel) [4:21]
The Monster and the Flower (Roditi) [7:22]
Obrigado (Ignatzek) [4:30]
Moonlight and Tears (Drabek) [5:24]
The Girl from Ipanema (Jobim) [8:07]
Claudio Roditi (Trumpet, flugelhorn, vocals)
Klaus Ignatzek (piano)
Jean-Louis Rassinfosse (bass)
Hans Dekker (drums)
Bremen Philharmonic Strings
Steffen Drabek (conductor, arranger)
Recorded live, November 13 2005, Schlachthof,
Bremen.
The trio of Brazilian-born
trumpeter Claudio Roditi, German pianist Klaus
Ignatzek and Belgian bassist Jean-Louis Rassinfosse
has been working together for some years now.
Roditi has been based in New York since 1976,
after study at Berklee, and has a considerable
and well-deserved reputation as a trumpeter
within both hard-bop and Latin-jazz traditions;
he has worked with, amongst many others, Joe
Henderson and McCoy Tyner. He worked for some
time with Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations
Orchestra and then with the Jazz Masters,
Slide Hampton’s Gillespie tribute band. His
work with Cuban reed player Paquito D’Rivera
attracted many plaudits. Klaus Ignatzek is
a thoroughly accomplished pianist, equally
at home in bop and hard-bop idioms, who has
extensive experience working with European
and American greats. Rassinfosse is another
European musician who has worked successfully
with a whole catalogue of masters, both European
(such as Tete Montoliu and Michel Petrucciani)
and American (e.g. Pepper Adams and Clifford
Jordan). For ten years he worked and recorded
with Chet Baker – so he knows a thing or two
about accompanying a trumpeter.
The three have recorded some
beautiful trio albums for the Nagel Hayer
label – Three for One (recorded 2002,
NH 2028), Light in the Dark (recorded
2004, NH 2004) and Reflections (recorded
2005, NH 2065). On these drumless recordings,
the sense of space and transparency allows
the interplay of instruments to be heard with
exceptional clarity; there is an intimacy
of mutual attention and subtlety of exchange
which makes the recordings chamber jazz of
a high order.
Here the trio has been supplemented
by the addition of Dutch drummer Hans Dekker
and a body of strings arranged and conducted
by Steffen Drabek. The resulting live recording
comes, unfortunately, as something of a disappointment.
Dekker is a good drummer, and he doesn’t,
in any crude sense, swamp the work of Roditi,
Ignatzek and Rassinfosse; but he does, unavoidably,
change the nature of their musical conversation,
particularly rhythmically, and the change
isn’t for the better, since the rhythms have
become much more homogenous. But the real
problem lies with the strings. Mixing jazz
soloists with stings has never been an easy
thing to bring off – it is easy to think of
many attempts which failed and hard to think
of many that succeeded (Clifford Brown with
Neil Hefti’s arrangements?, Art Pepper with
Bill Holman’s arrangements?).
The strings here largely have
the effect of muddying the textures still
further; some of the writing is rather oversweet
and there are times when there seems to be
little real connection between what the four
jazz musicians are doing and what the strings
are doing. Nor does the recording balance
really integrate them consistently. Roditi,
in any case, doesn’t seem to be on his very
best form. Ignatzek is excellent; indeed,
some of his solos are the best reason for
listening to the album, and will probably
be the reason I shall make occasional future
returns to it.
The best of Roditi-Ignatzek-Rossinfosse
is to be heard on their ‘pure’ trio albums,
not on this rather unsatisfying, if well intentioned,
creation .
Glyn Pursglove
CD Reviews
Nagel Heyer 2072 [68:22]
