Mark Solborg: 4+4+1 feat. Chris Speed

Mark Solborg 4 + 4 piece hornsection + 1 featured soloist. A tour de force from the musical frontline carried by a fabulous rhythm-section performing new contemporary music with an edge.

The project holds Solborgs compositional ideas for a large hand-picked ensemble with strong international individualists given a great amount of freedom within a composed framework.Texture and melody, transparency and warmth, composed and improvised are keywords. It’s about mutual intuitive understanding, musical equilibrium and a certain collective approach to joining complex, intricate writing, strong melodies and free organic interplay.

During Copenhagen Jazzfestival 2010 the group, featuring the American saxophone-player Chris Speed, performed and recorded these 5 new pieces written for the occasion by Solborg.

Django Bates wrote in London Jazz: “What an impressive line-up. They are all virtuosi; they are all individuals.”

With his unique and utterly compelling approach to melody and phrasing Speed is a major voice of his time. Together with Jim Black, Tim Berne, Michael Formanek, Cuong Vu, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Dave Douglas a.o. he has taken part in the formation of a new, comtemporary language within jazz and improvised music.

Reviews:

.....Solborgs 4+4+1 nonet bevæger sig som et skib i stovt sejlads med flaget hejst i vinden og med en dyrebar last, som bringes frem under stor tillidsfuld omhu. Den landsættes på kajen for årets ypperligste danske jazz.
- Bjarne Søltoft, Jazznytt, Norge.

CD of the month November 2012 “ ..et studie i veludført og innovativ musik..”
- Jazzstjerner.dk

. ..stunningly built up from a palette of tonal colors. Solborg’s CD impresses.
- Ken Waxman, New York City Jazz Record

A strangely compelling album by guitarist Mark Solborg At first blush, it sounds like large ensemble avant-garde… the clash of thunder, streaks of dissonance, honking and squealing.  And those elements are there, except it’s so much more than that.  Solborg weaves in sweet melodic lines, subtly at first, but becoming insidious and unmistakable for the thrashing beauty that they are.  Want an example?  Check out opening track “Mrs. Pedersen Takes the Tram.”  .. then there are tunes like “2620,” of gently nudging serenity, of monstrous notes spoken in a soft voice and with good intentions.  It’s an album of contrasts and incongruities which all fit together with a surprising tunefulness and dynamic interaction. …And when it gets there, it would be an understandable impulse to hit the play button and start it again from the top.  I’m pretty taken by this recording.
- Bird is the Worm ( http://www.birdistheworm.com/ )

“... Dristig eksperimentjazz ..en sjælden balance mellem spontanitet og kalkulerede ideer. Blødhed og nyfødt friskhed er der over Gunnar Halles trompetspil i 2620 der også byder på smukt svævende guitarspil af Solborg og flot iscenesat kollektivt drama. ..Torben Snekkestad høres på sopransax med særlig glød. ..den amerikanske kultmusiker Chris Speed løfter med sit personlige spil på tenorsax. “ - Chr. Munch Hansen, Politiken

..despite the number of contributors, the music feels extremely fluid and light, and this from one end of the record to the other. .. The opening of 2620 is remarkably ethereal and fragile. Gunnar Halle takes the lead, casting a wonderfully open motif over graceful clarinet drones. Although the sheer size and level of musicianship of the formation could appear intimidating, the music they have created is surprisingly light and melodic, even at its most complex and conceptual, making this at once a truly challenging and thoroughly enjoyable record.
4.4/5 – themilkfactory

..this is cutting- edge stuff from hip Danish musicians’ collective ILK
- Cormac Larkin, Irish Times