Performers

Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra (Netherlands)

If jazz and creative music have always thrived on the productive frictions that result from the differences between key protagonists – consider how different Miles and Coltrane were or, even more dramatically, the diversity of members in the Ellington Orchestra – then the ICP Orchestra is as traditional a band as they come. With the playfully volatile and oft-contradictory duo of Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink at its core for more than 40 years, ICP is now a long-established 10-piece ensemble that features several of the most original voices in creative music.

Crucially, the Orchestra members have wholly absorbed the charmingly unstable and occasionally combative spirit of the Mengelberg/Bennink duo, and use it to animate Mengelberg’s brilliant compositions (a mix of jazz, Kurt Weill, old dance steps, and more), Monk, Ellington, collective playing (“instant composing”), and the rest of their expansive repertoire. The outcomes are kaleidoscopic, and thrive on the provocative tension that results when high conceptual rigour and craft – ICP is rife with virtuoso instrumentalists – intersect with (or are nimbly undercut by) wit and sheer playfulness.

During my tenure as writer of these program notes, I’ve generally refused the tired jazz brochure rhetoric that claims that a particular show is “not to be missed.” However, in the case of the ICP Orchestra, a radical band at the peak of its powers and brimming with outrageous (and outrageously varied) soloists, I’ll wholeheartedly make an exception.

Website:
www.icporchestra.com

Artists:
Misha Mengelberg - piano
Han Bennick - drums, percussion
Ab Baars - clarinet, tenor sax
Tobias Delius - tenor sax
Ernst Glerum - double bass
Thomas Heberer - trumpet
Tristan Honsinger - cello
Michael Moore - sax, clarinet
Mary Oliver - violin
Wolter Wierbos - trumpet