- Sound Bites
- Tango Teaser
- Miss Demeanour
- Storyman
Voyage Around Vladyslav
5. Hemingway
6. Creole Cat Call
7. Bird of Prey
8. Song of the Curlew
9. Dancer with Bad Lipstick
10. Quiet Thoughts
11. Blue Period
12. Quiet Visionary
13. Franks Big Boogie Machine
14. A Kiss For Eternity
15. Blues for Another Time
16. Lend Me Your Ears
17. Ghost Train Through The Chaos Theory
The elegantly designed and
produced sleeve of this CD tells you nothing
at all about what you are about to hear. Sure,
it tells you who plays on which track and
where and when it was recorded and mixed,
but absolutely nothing about the NDR Big Band,
Colin Towns or the musical programme!
Colin Towns is of course
an amazing arranger and composer of music
for the Theatre, Cinema, TV, Radio and regularly
performs concerts with his own large orchestra,
he is based in the UK. but his various work
takes him all over the globe.
The NDR Big Band is based
in Hamburg, Germany, it is akin to the Lincoln
Centre Orchestra in the USA, in that it has
performed tours with the music of many jazz
and swing favourites, Benny Goodman and Duke
Ellington would be just two examples. The
musicians are world class, but as the vast
majority of names would be unknown to a UK
listener, I have not listed them. These guys
are top men and they could hold their chair
in any band, anywhere.
What you want to know now,
is does this combination of Towns and the
NDR Big Band work, my humble opinion is that
mostly it does, the music is complex but very
interesting. There are some moments of the
awful squawking that contemporary composers
seem to need to put into every recording somewhere,
but not too many.
What I found interesting
was the variety of moods Colin has created
in different parts of the album, Middle Eastern,
Electronics, Chamber Pieces, Fun, Elegance,
Dance and even Chaos (Last track). These difficult
pieces are all performed to the highest standard
by this excellent orchestra.
I am not a great fan of much
contemporary Big Band music, but I like this
album and recommend it to all. What a shame
the BBC does not see fit to broadcast TV shows
of musicians of this calibre, what a treat
it would be!
Don Mather
CD Reviews
Provocateur Records PVC1038 
