Eric Boeren - Coconut

Styles: Cornet Jazz
Year: 2012
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 58:56
Size: 136,4 MB
Art: Front

( 5:29)  1. Coconut
(10:26)  2. What Happened At Conway Hall, 1938?
( 4:39)  3. Shake Your Wattle
( 4:42)  4. The Fish In The Pond
( 5:34)  5. Little Symphony
( 1:19)  6. Crunchy Croci
( 4:03)  7. Crunchy Croci (Continued)
( 5:09)  8. Padàm
( 5:29)  9. Joy Of A Toy
( 6:11) 10. Journal
( 5:51) 11. BeeTee's Minor Plea

There are parallels between Ornette Coleman's approach to collective improvisation and that of Dutch avant jazzers from the 1960s onward, so the emergence of a Dutch quartet that pays homage to Coleman's groundbreaking circa-1960 foursome isn't a big surprise. Cornetist Eric Boeren's quartet, whose 2012's recording Coconut is the most recent of several discs finding common ground between Coleman and the Dutch jazz mindset, is not merely a repertory band; indeed, only two tracks out of 11 on Coconut are Coleman compositions. Rather, Boeren who takes on cornetist Don Cherry's instrumental role composed the lion's share of material performed on this intimate live date, finding the meeting point between Coleman's groundbreaking developments in melody, harmony, and group interaction and his own Dutch-schooled, anything-goes improvisational sensibility. Veteran Han Bennink plays only a snare drum here, and he's astounding from the opening moments of the leadoff title track, well named given its ebullient island flair, as he conjures up sounds that suggest timbales, congas yes, maybe even a coconut  while Boeren and saxophonist Michael Moore build riffs into melodies into improvised singing dialogues. As Wilbert de Joode transitions into a walking bassline, Bennink moves effortlessly into hyperswing mode beneath Moore's saxophone, whose beautiful tone is all his own even as he dips into Coleman-esque bluesy phrasing.

At over 15 minutes in length, "What Happened at Conway Hall, 1938?" is epic in scope, with thematic material cropping up here and there across a lengthy, suite-like structure. Boeren and Moore engage in telepathic conversations and Bennink shouts his enthusiasm; after a calypso-flavored passage slides into relaxed swing and Moore steps out on alto, the band moves into exploration of pure sound and space, including extended techniques with mouthpieces maybe nobody in this group actually needs a complete musical instrument. The piece closes with a Boeren-Bennink duet until de Joode kicks in with a vamp seguing into "Shake Your Wattle," with Boeren muted yet jaunty and the band uniting in spirited fashion. "The Fish in the Pond" moves into a freer rhythmic space, the horns' long and bluesy lines over de Joode's twisting arco refracting a bit of Coleman's well-known "Lonely Woman" side. With "Little Symphony" and "Joy of a Toy," the quartet treats listeners to a pair of Coleman "leftovers" recorded in July 1960 but not released on LP until over a decade later on Twins. These relatively concise and accessible tunes are delivered with themes intact and expertly played, characteristically swinging through the improvs and featuring group collective interplay that can only come from four musicians with years of experience collaborating in a place like Amsterdam. And a curve ball greets listeners at the disc's conclusion, as the band delivers a sparse but unique and credible read of Booker Little's "Bee Tee's Minor Plea," also from 1960. Boeren and friends know that 1960 was a hell of a jazz year, and with Coconut they've helped achieve the same for 2012. 

~ Dave Lynch https://www.allmusic.com/album/coconut-mw0002438005

Personnel: Cornet, Leader – Eric Boeren; Bass – Wilbert de Joode; Reeds – Michael Moore ; Snare [Snare Drum] – Han Bennink

Coconut

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Eric Boeren Quartet - Cross Breeding

Styles: Jazz
Year: 1995
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 71:26
Size: 164,0 MB
Art: Front

(8:04)  1. Mapa
(4:56)  2. The Fifth Of Beethoven
(7:53)  3. The Legend Of Bebop
(4:51)  4. Beauty Is A Rare Thing
(3:20)  5. Blues Connotation
(3:26)  6. Cross Breeding
(4:12)  7. Efficient
(4:44)  8. A Hoi Tin Moment
(4:33)  9. Coalcart
(4:33) 10. 'Chords'
(3:47) 11. Free Jazz
(4:08) 12. Happy House
(9:03) 13. Hoera Voor J.P. Bae
(3:50) 14. Pluto

In a way every improviser’s story is a refraction of their personal experience. Cornetist and composer Eric Boeren’s begins in the brass band in the Netherlands’ far south where folks speak their own dialect grooving on the horns’ interplay and massed power. After he came to Amsterdam to study, he learned other communal dialects, as free improviser and as a member of (among other bands) the Peru-to-Madagascar-to-Ellington co-op Available Jelly, Sean Bergin’s South African-influenced M.O.B., new music composers Guus Janssen’s and Paul Termos’s improvising groups, and Michiel Braam’s orchestra Bik Bent Braam, with its musical mobiles.From the mid-1990s Eric has helped organize weekly improvisers’ series in Amsterdam (currently at community center Zaal 100, Tuesdays), where he began his own investigations into Ornette Coleman’s compositional and improvisational methods Ornette’s way of tweaking forms and inventing new material on the fly. That led to the Eric Boeren 4tet with Michael Moore on reeds, Wilbert de Joode on bass and Han Bennink on drums, a band that mixes Coleman’s themes and Boeren’s contrasting numbers in freewheeling suites. (Their CDs are on BVHaast and Clean Feed.)

With that band’s frequent presence at international festivals, Eric’s circle has grown; witness his Boerenbond, with New York’s Peter Evans on trumpet. Berlin’s Tobias Delius on tenor saxophone and Chicago’s Jason Adasiewicz on vibes. Eric’s compositions and musical games are designed to facilitate focused collective improvisations. Boeren has likened every new language he’s learned, in his journey from Brabant village to Amsterdam to the global stage, to another new door opening, onto new vocabularies and syntactical possibilities. His musical trajectory shows the same progression: Boeren keeps opening doors, for the fresh views. He also leads the HO&I (HOt and Improvised), with the contrasting electric guitars of Franky Douglas and Paul Pallesen, plus Julius Peter Nitsch’s electric bass and Tijn Jans’s drums. Boeren’s and Douglas’s compositions mix free funk with Caribbean, Latin American and South African beats. Different companions, a different emphasis but with every voice contributing to a spontaneous conversation. Eric says: “I am very fond of collective improvisation where music in the background can move to the front, and foreground music can be used as a background, and several musical ideas can co-exist in multiple layers. 

Improvisation to me is about adjusting musical ideas on the spot. A band is a team, and I want to be a team player. One of the most difficult aspects of collective improvising is to hear other musicians developing melodic ideas in a different direction then I was working on at the moment. The challenge is to bring all of this information together in a way that makes sense!” Bio ~ http://www.doek.org/project/eric-boeren/

Cross Breeding

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