Legendary Jazz Ensemble ICP Orchestra Wrap Up Their US Tour

This album makes a good segue with Marc Ribot’s Saturday night concert. Dutch jazz pianist Misha Mengelberg and his ten-piece band ICP Orchestra (Instant Composers Pool) are legendary in European jazz circles and respected outside the continent for their mix of lavish arrangements and devious improvisation. They’re currently on US tour (see remaining dates below); their latest cd, simply titled ICP Orchestra (since superseded by a new vinyl album!), is a cinematic, noir-tinged concert recording from 2009. These folks date from the 1960s (Mengelberg was composing ten years before then), and as expected, there’s plenty of absurdism, irony and humor in their work. As is obvious from the first track here: a brief, klezmerish song with vocals, the band waiting impatiently to spin off their axis.

Which they do quickly on the second track, led by violinist Mary Oliver’s nightmare cadenzas establishing the noir ambience which returns again and again here, through a thoughtful Thomas Heberer quartertone trumpet solo over a steady detective beat. Then it walks and screams and falls apart in a series of cacaphonic, unrelated conversations that rise to a din, and then out cold. It’s paradigmatic for what’s to come, with saxophonist Michael Moore’s Sumptious, shifting from a richly melodic, distantly ominous late 50s theme to rubato, uneasy atmospherics. The next cut contrasts Oliver’s shrieky excursions with judicious, apprehensive piano from Mengelberg, followed by a radically deconstructed take of Herbie Nichols’ Busy Beaver, Oliver leading the charge out of the morass with a lusciously memorable crescendo.

The horror reaches breaking point with the sixth track, Mitrab, an improvisation that quickly rises to terror, sax shrieking out of a chilly, starlit piano intro, individual voices falling away, less horrified as it winds down. The Lepaerd, a jaunty swing tune, builds nonchalantly to a chase scene, falls away and then rises with the whole orchestra blazing. They follow it with the funniest track here, a low, rustling, conspiratorial tone poem, except that everyone seems to be the end of their own individual phone conversations. At the end, they walk out of the room, leaving the violin still fully engaged and completely unperturbed. They close with an altered swing blues by bassist Ernst Glerum and then a clever, amusing version of Ellington’s Sonnet in Search of a Moor (from the classic 1957 Suite Thunder) where the bass gets all the melody lines and the solos. Throughout the set, there are inspired moments from the whole group, including Han Bennink on drums, Tristan Housinger on cello, Wolter Wierbos on trombone and Tobias Delius on tenor sax. Remaining US tourdates are:

April 7 – Austin / Epistrophy Arts

April 8 – Houston / Nameless Sound

April 9 – Des Moines / Caspe Terrace

April 10 – Chicago / Hungry Brain

April 11 – Chicago / Cultural Center

April 12 – Seattle / Earshot Jazz