Label:
Hat Hut Records – Hat Art 1991/92
Format:
2 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Box Set / Country: Switzerland / Released: 1982
Style:
Free Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Free Improvisation
Track
A1 on June 15, 1981, at Thalwil Gemeindehaussaal
Track
A2 on October 29, 1981, at Bern Restaurant Schweizerbund
Track
B1 on October 28, 1981 at Geneve New Morning
All
other on October 30, 1981 at Zürich Bazillus
Cover
art by – Klaus Baumgärtner
Photos
by – Heinz Heinrich Stoller
Packaging
concept by Werner X. Uehlinger
Recorded
by – Peter Pfister
Mixed
and edited by – Peter Pfister, Mathias Rüegg and Werner X. Uehlinger
Produced
by Pia and Werner X. Uehlinger
A1
- Haluk ......................................................................................
14:05
A2
- Plädoyer For Sir Major Moll .....................................................
6:10
B1
- Nanan N'z Gang .....................................................................
11:10
B2
- Blue For Two ............................................................................
6:15
C1
- Suite For The Green Eighties Part I .......................................
11:25
C2
- Suite For The Green Eighties Part II ........................................4:05
D1
- Suite For The Green Eighties Part III ......................................
7:50
D2
- Suite For The Green Eighties Part IV ......................................
8:00
D3
- Suite For The Green Eighties Part V .......................................
5:45
Orchestra:
Lauren
Newton – voice
Karl
Fian – trumpet
Herbert
Joos – flugelhorn, baritonhorn, double trumpet, alpenhorn
Christian
Radovan – trombone
Billy
Fuchs – tuba
Harry
Sokal – soprano sax, tenor sax, flute
Wolfgang
Puschnig – alto sax, bass clarinet, piccolo flute
Ingo
Morgana – tenor sax
Woody
Schabata – vibes, marimba, tablas
Uli
Scherer – pianos, melodica
Jürgen
Wuchner – bass
Wolfgang
Reisinger – percussion, drums, paiste gongs
Janusz
Stefanski – drums, percussion
Mathias
Rüegg – leader, composer, arranger
It
might as well be said now so the hate mail can flow fast and free: I happen to
agree with music critic/composer and historian Art Lange that Mathias Rüegg,
leader, composer, director, etc., of the Vienna Art Orchestra is, without
question, Europe's answer to Duke Ellington at the end of the 20th century,
though he clearly isn't yet in Ellington's league. With Suite for the Green
Eighties, a work inspired in equal parts by the gaining of popularity and power
by the Green Party in Germany, Austria, and elsewhere in Europe, and also by
the classic book by Charles Reich called The Greening of America, the five-part
work is a crosshatch of jazz, blues, circus music, postmodern harmonic and
intervallic invention, and dance music (as in ballet). The temptation to call
it a pastiche is too easy to drape over this mammoth construction of color and
texture in sound.
Before
this suite begins -- and it is actually more like a symphony than a jazz suite
-- there are three Rüegg compositions that set the audience up for the drama.
There is the New Orleans jazz-flavored "Haluk," with its riveting
soprano solo by Harry Sokal; the glorious Gil Evans-ish "Plädaoyer for Sir
Mayor Moll," with its elegant quotation from "I Only Have Eyes for
You," and microtonal flügelhorn solo by Herbert Joos, which turns the
piece inside out and makes it a modal meditation on minor sevenths; and the
woolly "Nanan N'Z Gang," which sounds -- in its opening measures --
like it was written in the medina in Morocco or Algeria. It eventually evolves
into a post-bop modal stomp with a killer alto sax break from Wolfgang
Puschnig. When the "Suite" finally begins, listeners are almost taken
off guard since it sounds like a coda. Before the vibes and trumpets go into a
dance of intricate counterpoint, the band plays "fliessend," smoothly
and evenly, and the movement becomes almost contemplative, with the exception
of the two contrapuntal instruments now playing in restrained tones. As the bop
horn lines state the theme for the rest of the suite, short, choppy interludes
of dissonance and even sets of quiet tone rows are inserted into the melody!
Rüegg's harmonic sensibility is so developed that he has no difficulties in
traversing isorhythms to get to his desired place. By the time the last
movement is reached, one would swear that all elegiac notions have been left
behind in order to join Buddy Rich and Count Basie in a Kansas City block party.
Swinging brass, jump-start rhythms, and angular solos carry the joyous suite to
its impossible ending -- in the quiet of the evening with only the feeling that
something new is possible for the first time in a long, long while. (_Review by Thom Jurek)
If
you find it, buy this album!
