Konijnehol II

Despite its strange title, this is essentially the ICP Orchestra playing three suites by pianist, composer, and arranger Misha Mengelberg. The band for this particular session consisted of Ab Baars, Han Bennink, Michael Moore, Ernst Reijseger, Wolter Wierbos, Tristan Honsinger, Mengelberg, Evert Hekkema, Maartje Van Hoorn, and Ernst Glerum. The first, "K-Stukken" ("K Pieces"), is a series a of eight works ranging in length from just under three minutes to just over seven. The set begins with a small, metropolitan-type theme played by the entire band and fades into an exercise in tonal inequality for saxophones and trombones, before entering into Western European folk song and polka, and before moving into improvisation, blues, elegiac jazz, etc. On "Tegenstroom" ("Countercurrent"), Mengelberg uses a septet to realize large intervallic conceptual ideas about counterpoint. It's compelling for its incessant pulse and drive and unexpected turns of melodic invention. Finally, on "Epilog," Mengelberg allows himself to engage in his fetishistic pursuit of carnival music as an extension of both big band jazz and serialist composition. On these six pieces, swing, oompah circus tunes, 12-tone methodologies, and timbral studies all merge and become "carn-evil" music. There is great humor in these latter works, and they are delightful in how diabolical they are. This is ICP being itself, playing with all the boundaries at once, and extending them without losing the essence of their profound musicality.