THE VILLAGE VOICE: Datebook - John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble
THE VILLAGE VOICE: Datebook - John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble
BY RICHARD GEHR
"The big-band LSD meditation you’ve been waiting for can be found in “Long Swing Dream” from the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble’s grand new All Can Work. The drummer-composer’s third album with his powerful twenty-piece ensemble is richly inventive, as usual, and contains longer and shorter pieces inspired by the likes of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, and the group’s late trumpeter, Laurie Frink. There’s also a high-register remake of Billy Strayhorn’s “Elf,” and a maximalist rendition of Kraftwerk’s “The Model,” which hearkens back to Hollenbeck’s earlier collection of pop covers. Tuesday’s concert, the first in a series of co-presentations with the neophilic New Amsterdam label, opens with a set by harmonically kaleidoscopic guitarist Ben Monder and vocal experimentalist Theo Bleckmann, who’ve been recording together since 1997."