WIENER ART ORCHESTER – Tango From Obango (Art Rec. – 1002 / LP-1980)

Label: Art Records – 1002

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Austria / Released: 1980

Style: Contemporary Jazz, Free Improvisation, Free Jazz

Recorded on the 22/23 Nov. 1979 at the Schmettersound Studio Bisamberg/Vienna.

Design [Cover] – Herbert Pirchner, Roland Wernbacher

Photography By – Elisabeth Fleischmann, Herbert Pirchner

Recorded By – Herbert Kopecky

Mixed By – Josef Braitenthaller

Producer – Hans Heinrich C. Stoller, Mathias Rüegg

Distributed By – Extraplatte

Printed By – HofmannDruck

Matrix / Runout (Side A): X 273 - AR 1002-A

Matrix / Runout (Side B): X 274 - AR 1002-B

Rights Society: Austro Mechana

side 1:

A1 - Tango From Obango ........................................................................................ 13:27

A2 - Polish Contrasts ................................................................................................. 9:31

A3 - Voila Di Here ...................................................................................................... 1:25

side 2:

B1 - The World Of BeBand & BigBop ...................................................................... 12:40

B2 - Panta Rhei ......................................................................................................... 5:55

B3 - Charly's Trauma ................................................................................................. 0:37

Personnel:

Mathias Rüegg - arranger, conductor

Lauren Newton - voice

Karl Fian - trumpet

Herbert Joos − flugelhorn, baritone horn

Christian Radovan − trombone

Wolfgang Puschnig − alto saxophone, flute

Harry Sokal - tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute

Roman Schwaller − tenor saxophone

Uli Scherer − piano

Harry Pepl – guitar

Werner Pirchner − marimba, vibraphone

Jürgen Wuchner − bass

Fritz Ozmec − drums

Wolfgang Reisinger – percussion

The Vienna Art Orchestra is a 14-member jazz orchestra that features the avant-garde arrangements and compositions of its leader, pianist Mathias Rüegg. This LP is a 1980 debut, an important document in the post-modern jazz movement...

The opening, title track is a joyous, folkish tango that's been cartoonishly toyed with, featuring three solo sections. The marimba section is also ornamented with vocalese from Lauren Newton, followed by an extremely playful horn lead that sounds like a toy instrument. The solo offering from violinist Rudi Berger has an electronically effected fusion sound. A tight, alto sax solo by Wolfgang Puschnig ties everything together neatly with a lengthy, unaccompanied performance. This leads right into a mellow, tenor sax and marimba introduction to "Polish Contrasts." The lead here is eventually taken by a bright, cosmic soprano sax (Harry Solkal)... For a short piano piece, background singing and clapping recorded on the tour bus serve as a backdrop. Newton brings back her playful scatting, in clear imitation of a squawking free-jazz sax solo for an a cappella intro to "The World of Be-Band & Big Bop." After about three minutes, the instrumentalists slowly materialize behind her until the mad marimba possesses her. After a full six minutes of amazing scatting, the song itself is introduced and six more minutes of cross-genre pollination follow.

... Musical puns and variations on serious themes abound from the orchestra pit, but unlike Rüegg's Euro counterparts like Franz Koglmann and Stan Tracey, this man has a sense of where colorization and parody end and a new musical language is created. In this sense he resembles both Frank Zappa and Willem Breuker, but uses tradition differently -- not as a guidepost but as a landmark on the way to someplace else (and Rüegg knows exactly where he's going, judging by his charts). The man's imagination is the limit because his band can do virtually anything he dares to dream up...

Truly, Tango From Obango is an amazing debut from a band that offers more than it could possibly receive.

(Reviews by Tom Schulte and Thom Jurek)

If you find it, buy this album!

VIENNA ART ORCHESTRA – Suite For The Green Eighties (2LP-1982)

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!