One More Time [Hybrid SACD]

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Kenny Wheeler is one of the most imaginative composers in jazz, creating pieces that are at once tranquilly sonorous and alive with creative movement, their shifting parts suddenly matching and emerging into new life. Listening to his orchestral music can be like watching rivers or clouds. He has a gift for finding the richest brass textures in a conventional big band's instrumentation, creating swaths of burnished sound, often by having the entire trumpet section double on flüugelhorns. It creates an especially dark texture with the trombones and reeds, and Wheeler's mastery of voicings, drawn as much from Hindemith as from Gil Evans, can create symphonic depths.

This program of the trumpeter's compositions marks two events: Wheeler's 70th birthday and the 25th anniversary of Finland's UMO Jazz Orchestra, a first-rate big band, conducted by Kari Heinila, that brings its own luster to the trumpeter's charts. That brilliance is as apparent in the smaller instrumental groupings of one or two horns with rhythm section--like the flute and alto of "Blue for Lou"--as it is in the stately brass chords that introduce the 24-minute "One More Time Suite." Wheeler is the most frequent soloist on the suite, his trumpet and flügelhorn both reflective and passionate, but there are also solo and lead spots for several members of UMO. Wheeler is particularly fond of matching his horns with soprano saxophone timbres, and Jouni Jarvelo joins him in a lovely exchange in the suite's fourth movement. Similarly, Pepa Parvinen offers a beautiful introductory statement to the limpid "Sea Lady" before handing the line over to Wheeler. Norma Winstone's crystalline voice is used for words and melodies on "Only a Dream" and "Sea Lady," but it's even more impressive when she's improvising wordlessly, or being an integral part of Wheeler's orchestrations, soaring high above the horns with a distinctive, brilliant transparency. --Stuart Broomer

One More Time,UMO Jazz Orchestra,Challenge,Experimental Big Band,Finland,Jazz,Pop

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