Aan & Uit

Those fortunate to have witnessed a performance by pianist Misha Mengelberg's ICP Orchestra on a night when their beautifully ramshackle conception comes together and pulls apart in perfect disharmony know there is no finer live jazz outfit on the planet. The experience at its best involves all the senses — not just the ears — as unpredictable set lists and improvisations draw from the languages of swing, bop, free jazz, and classical music. Scores are shuffled around on music stands; hand signals trigger unexpected escapades by the entire band, various subunits, or soloists; bandmembers wander on- and off-stage. How to capture such a thing in recorded form? While ICP albums such as Bospaadje Konijnehol I and II, Jubilee Varia, and Oh, My Dog have much to recommend them and belong in the collection of any forward-thinking jazz listener, they are no match for the living, breathing ensemble spread out on a stage in real time. Pieced together from three nights of recording at Amsterdam's BIMhuis in late 2003 and released in 2004 on the ICP label, Aan & Uit (On & Off) can't compare to "being there" either, but it is also one of the ensemble's most wonderfully diverting, entertaining, and even beautiful albums. Regardless of whether you have been to an ICP show, the consistently high-caliber musicianship and the integration of sometimes astoundingly diverse musical forms make this quite well suited for experiencing through the necessarily limited medium of a compact disc.

Mengelberg's multi-track "Picnic" moves unpredictably yet effortlessly through its various episodes and dialogues incorporating elements of free jazz, structured improvisation, brass band, chamber music, and finally hepcat swing; the perception of flow and momentum is assisted by the linked titles within the suite, which taken together read "A beautiful day...Let's go the river...And have a Picnic...Play some badminton...Let's go home before...The sparrows start waving their pyjamas." Meanwhile, Thomas Heberer's swinging polystylistic "Let's Climb a Hill," which appears later in the disc and features a hot trumpet solo from the composer, suggests a return to the "Picnic" and serves as a further unifying statement. The resolution-free "Aan & Uit" chamber music intro and outro nicely bookend the disc; these are the types of appealing Mengelberg miniatures that can get lost (as in "Een Gewelfde Rugleuning" [A Curved Backrest] in his "De Purperen Sofa" [The Purple Sofa] suite on Bospaadje Konijnehol I) when buried deeply between mad free-blowing segments. On a piece like "Opa," with a subdued "Taps"-like trumpet call sounded over extended phased notes from reeds and strings, Mengelberg — not just a crazy jazz cat on the lookout for peculiar juxtapositions — moves into compositional territory similar to that of an early collaborator who has taken a decidedly different path, Louis Andriessen. The delicately measured and then jaunty "Tijd Voor de Quadrille" might even have some listeners thinking of Michael Nyman's modern neo-classicist approaches to soundtrack music such as Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract — which also suggests further comparison to Greenaway score composer Andriessen (proposed new soundtrack title: M Is for Man, Music, Mengelberg). Even "Va-et-Vient" — a reeds-and-strings trio improvisation involving Ab Baars, Mary Oliver, and Tobias Delius — sometimes tips toward classical stylings and techniques, although a screaming, overblown free jazz crescendo liable to shatter your windows appears toward the conclusion. This is still an ICP disc, after all, and as such is a jazz record poised to leap from the comfort zone, careening from the classical to the avant jazz end of the listening spectrum, and sometimes even holding these elements in precarious balance simultaneously.

First-time jazz listeners (better late than never) might find tracks like "The Sparrows...," "Let's Climb a Hill," Tristan Honsinger's "Ever Never" (an exuberant free-for-all capturing some of the flavor of kweli-inspired compositions penned by Mengelberg or Gerry Hemingway), and Hoagy Carmichael's "Barbaric" to be the most immediately appealing; they might also conclude that the infantile Dadaist babbling (courtesy of Mengelberg) and piano/drums explosions (courtesy of Mengelberg and Han Bennink) are rude intrusions into the otherwise slow and gentle dance band swing of "De Sprong, O Romantiek der Hazen." But the good news here is that the ICP Orchestra have retained the lively absurdism and unbridled expressionism so integral to their identity. And more good news is that the ICP have released a CD that should be immensely enjoyable even to the uninitiated, not just dazzled members of the band's concert audience seeking souvenirs after the ICP multi-sensory circus has rolled through town and left more conventional jazz groups in the dust.