One of the most intuitive facilitators of the balance between individual freedom and collective responsibility in the jazz of the past half-century was the late bandleader and arranger Gil Evans, whose skills could make improvised solos sound like threads in composed themes, and the playing of written music sound like improvisation. And one of the most inventive developers of the Evans method in more recent times, drawing on Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen and Takemitsu as much as Ellington or Miles for ideas, has been been the expatriate Zimbabwean composer and arranger Mike Gibbs.
Gibbs left Zimbabwe for the Berklee jazz school in the 1960s, then came to live in London in the following decade. A slow worker with a small ego, Gibbs has needed the kind of unquestioning and generous patronage that is rare on the jazz scene, and as a consequence far more of his work has been in teaching and movie- and TV-scoring than ambitious jazz projects. But last year Gibbs found his patron in Colin Towns, a comparably gifted jazz composer with a bigger success-story in screen-music, which has enabled him to run his own orchestra and record label.
Nonsequence is the outcome of Towns's investment, the best Mike Gibbs disc in well over a decade. It was recorded with Germany's NDR Big Band and a bespoke outfit of American postbop virtuosi including trumpeters Randy Brecker and Lew Soloff, and saxophonists Chris Potter and drummer Billy Kilson from the Dave Holland band.
Gibbs has used a mixture of new materials - expansions of earlier fragments that originally belonged in other contexts, interpretations of pieces by John Scofield, even Glenn Miller - plus music from the 1970s, when his glowing orchestral sound and ambiguously raucous harmonies were new to the jazz world. All this is presented in an open framework that gives considerable freedom to the improvisors.
The title track and opener is the least obviously engaging of the pieces to begin with, but an emerging punchy big-band riff and fast walking bass under the Claus Stotter's trumpet solo begins to announce the powerful presence of a more straightforward jazz feel throughout the session that Gibbs hasn't embraced so unequivocally in years.
One of the strongest features on the set is at the other extreme of Gibbs's palette on You Get the Picture (from the score for Bill Forsyth's Gregory's 2 Girls), a simple pattern of paired chords that builds to a masterly exercise in tone colouring and interplay. The African hi-life jive of Thul'ulalele is a total contrast, its familiarities opened up with the bold insertion of Gil Goldstein's accordion. The floaty chords of Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade get a startling counterpoint from tenorist Christof Lauer's snorting, Rollins-like low notes and bursts of free-blasting; and Hiram Bullock's howling rock guitar over Gibbs' tone-colour firework display on his 1970s Berklee throwback Knees Up Mother is a triumph. At 64, Mike Gibbs might just be beginning a personal renaissance. - John Fordham, guardian.co.uk
Tracks
01. Nonsequence (Mike Gibbs)
02. You Get The Picture (Mike Gibbs)
03. Now Listen Here Or "Thul'ulalele" To Be Precise (Meshack Mkhwanazi)
04. Moonlight Serenade (Glenn Miller)
05. Rumour Has It (Mike Gibbs)
06. With All Due Respect (Mike Gibbs)
07. Lost In Space (John Scofield)
08. Knees Up, Mother... (Mike Gibbs)
09. Be That As It May (Mike Gibbs)
10. Gather The Meaning (Mike Gibbs)
CHRIS HUNTER alto saxophone (3) (5 to 9)
ALEX FOSTER alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute (3) (5 to 9)
LUCAS LINDHOLM bass (1) (2) (4) (10)
STEVE SWALLOW bass (3) (5 to 9)
HOWARD JOHNSON contrabass clarinet, tuba (3) (5 to 9)
BILY KILSON drums (3) (5 to 9)
IAN THOMAS drums (1) (2) (4) (10)
MARK MONDESIR drums (1) (2) (4) (10)
JOHN CLARK french horn (3) (5 to 9)
KARYN DOBBS french horn (1) (2) (4) (10)
RICHARD RIEVES french horn (1) (2) (4) (10)
HIRAM BULLOCK guitar (3) (5 to 9)
STEPHEN DIEZ guitar (1) (2) (4) (10)
WOLF KERSCHEK marimba (1) (2) (4) (10)
MARCIO DOCTOR percussion (1) (2) (4) (10)
VLADYSLAV SENDECKI piano (1) (2) (4) (10)
GIL GOLDSTEIN piano, accordion (3) (5 to 9)
CHRISTOF LAUER saxophone (1) (2) (4) (10)
FIETES FELSCH saxophone (1) (2) (4) (10)
FRANK DELLE saxophone (1) (2) (4) (10)
LUTZBÜCHNER saxophone (1) (2) (4) (10)
PETER BOLTE saxophone (1) (2) (4) (10)
CHRIS POTTER tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone (3) (5 to 9)
DAN GOTTSHALL trombone (1) (2) (4) (10)
DAVE BARGERON trombone (3) (5 to 9)
DAVID TAYLOR trombone (3) (5 to 9)
INGO LAHME trombone (1) (2) (4) (10)
JIM PUGH trombone (3) (5 to 9)
JOE GALLARDO trombone (1) (2) (4) (10)
MICHAEL DANNER trombone (1) (2) (4) (10)
STEFAN LOTTERMANN trombone (1) (2) (4) (10)
ALEX SIPIAGIN trumpet (3) (5 to 9)
CLAUS STÖTTER trumpet (1) (2) (4) (10)
DIRK LENTSCHAT trumpet (1) (2) (4) (10)
EARL GARDNER trumpet (3) (5 to 9)
INGOLF BURKHARDT trumpet (1) (2) (4) (10)
LENNART AXELSSON trumpet (1) (2) (4) (10)
LEW SOLOFF trumpet (3) (5 to 9)
MICHAEL LEUSCHNER trumpet (1) (2) (4) (10)
REINER WINTERSCHLADEN trumpet (1) (2) (4) (10)
RANDY BRECKER trumpet (3) (5 to 9)
THE NDR BIG BAND
Recorded February and May 2001 at the NDR Studios in Hamburg and May 2001 at Edison Recording in New York
Provocateur Records - PVC 1027