What is it about the excellent Mons label and big band music? A couple of years or so ago I had the pleasure of reviewing three cracking albums by the Zurich Jazz Orchestra, led by the German guest conductor, composer and multi-instrumentalist Steffen Schorn: Three Pictures, Dedications and To My Beloved Ones. Now here comes another terrific big band release from Mons, led by the German tenor saxophonist, composer and conductor Tobias Hoffmann.
Some may detect a touch of pretension in the fact that Hoffmann calls the splendidly attuned and diversely swinging and kicking large ensemble he leads here an orchestra rather than a big band. That would be unfortunate. A YouTube interview with Neon Jazz reveals a straightforward and open, warm and absolutely unpretentious character. If Hoffmann feels that “orchestral” conveys the amount of attention paid on the present Innuendo to matters of both tone-poem delicacy and stonking power, diversely pitched rhythm and passage after refreshing passage of thematic exposition, extension and transition (courtesy of the most beautifully weighted, mood-setting and variegated voicings), that’s fine by me.
Hoffmann leaves his sax aside here, concentrating on composing (all the pieces are his) and conducting, leading the same musicians who appeared on his previous, recent and well-received Conspiracy. In the aforementioned Neon Jazz interview, he traces his development from unenthusiastic school days playing recorder to the gradual awakening of an interest in jazz via participation in local bop bands, with the impact of first hearing Weather Report’s Birdland, long after its initial release, a key memory (and thinking of the best of all the jazz-rock outfits, relish here the searing, rock-fired guitar solo by Vilkka Waal on The Lake).
Having come relatively late to the music, Hoffmann’s response to the question “In a dream world, what sort of jazz from the past would you most like to have heard live?” is interesting. “If you had asked me a few years back, I would have said Coltrane, sometime in the early-to-mid 1960s. But right now I would say, above all, some music from Bob Brookmeyer.”
“Jazz”, says Hoffmann, “is for me the best music for offering the freedom to explore and combine different worlds, different aspects of life and art.” The overall quality of the result here is so splendid that I don’t want to single out any more special moments – but sample the concluding Perseverance for evidence of the many fruits of Hoffmann’s conviction, as revealed in his informative sleeve-note. He says “The more I deal with classical music, the more interesting I find through-composed music with forms that do not always repeat themselves, but are continuously developed within a piece.”
A most stimulating and enjoyable release, Innuendo is delivered with first-class musicianship all round. As intelligent and poetic as it is sensuously vivid, and with track-by-track sleeve-note information on all soloists, this really is big-band music of orchestral quality. Bravo!
Discography
Innuendo; Summer Solstice; No Way Back. Sanctuary; Convictions; Bipolarity; The Lake; Perseverance (78.01)
Hoffmann (comp, cond); Florian Trübsbach, Patrick Dunst (as ss, f, cl); Robert Unterköfler (ts, ss, f, cl); Martin Harms (ts, bcl, f, cl); Jonas Brinkmann (bar, bcl); Maximilian Seibert, Sebastian Burneci, Florian Menzel, Gerhard Ornig, Jakob Helling (t, flh); Simon Harrer, Robert Bachner, Daniel Holzeitner, Johannes Oppel (tb); Vilkka Wahl (elg); Viola Hammer (p, syn); Iver Roban Krizic (b) Reinhold Schmölzer (d, elec). Graz, Austria, 25-27 August 2023.
Mons Records MR 874873
