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Album
Pomegranate
Steuart Liebig →439 listeners1,305 plays
cryptogramophonefree jazz21c sunburstminimalismcontemporary jazz
about this album
This is what you get when you pair one fine composer-bandleader-bassist with a rag-tag group of improvisational malcontents who know how to stir up a set of arrangements into a noxious brew of little big-band aesthetics and creative anarchy. Add to this mixture to four soloists from outside the ensemble — for whom particular pieces of music is written — fold in, stir radically, and allow the air of freedom to penetrate thoroughly. The end result is Pomegranate. Steuart Liebig's all-star band of improvisers — that includes the composer on bass, drummer Alex Cline, violinist Jeff Gauthier, trombonist Scott Ray, John Fumo on trumpet, and Ellen Burr on flute — back four soloists in as many compositions designed to create spectral and textural possibilities along a chosen field of harmonic convergences and free-form intervallic encounters, offering a wider than intended color palette for both soloist and ensemble, thereby stretching composition and players to their respective limits. The soloists — saxophonist Vinny Golia, French horn player Tom Varner, bassist Mark Dresser, and guitar god Nels Cline — all respond with aplomb, taste, and the fiery awareness of this unique opportunity. While each of the four compositions here is nothing less than stellar in its complexity and lush arrangement for both group and soloist to take direction from, it is Dresser's "The Motionless Blue of Fallen Skies" and Cline's "The Darkness of Each Endless Fall" that stand out. On the Dresser tune, th
