Scheen Jazzorkester & Thomas Johansson - As We See It...

2019 CD release.

Here’s some fantastic music with an agenda, or more exactly, an entire program of action. Since the days of the researches developed by the likes of Globe Unity Orchestra and Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath the challenge remains the same: how to make a big band improvise without the restraints usually applied when there’s the idea that a large ensemble needs a tight organization? In the mentioned cases the musicians involved were free improvisers wanting to establish some kind of order through scores, structures, arrangements and / or conduction.

This time, the point of departure is the inverse one: how to make a conventional jazz orchestra, usually working inside very defined parameters, to open its perspectives and be more spontaneous? Norway’s Scheen Jazzorkester has six records behind them with more structured and arranged music, with the particularity of only using compositional materials by their own members. The last one, “Commuter Report”, had a commissioned piece by keyboardist Eyolf Dale, known from the projects Albatrosh and Wolf Valley. Now it’s the co-founder of the free-form bands Cortex and Friends & Neighbors who takes the lead in this new step documented in “As We See It…”: the music he wrote had from the start the intention to be reconverted by the orchestral interpretations, with instructions clear enough for musicians who aren’t used to the particularities of free jazz and free improvisation. The final result is astonishing, with everybody’s personal expressions being fundamental in the mix. Music liberation has a new victory.