The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band

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The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band
General information
Genre (s) Creative jazz
founding 1972
Founding members
Co-leader, saxophone
 Flavio Ambrosetti
Co-Leader, Trumpet
 Franco Ambrosetti
Co-leader, drums
 Daniel Humair
Co-leader, piano, arrangement
 George Gruntz
saxophone
 Phil Woods
saxophone
 Herb Geller
saxophone
 Eddie Daniels
saxophone
 Dexter Gordon
saxophone
 Sahib Shihab
Trumpet
 Benny Bailey
Trumpet
 Virgil Jones
Trumpet
 Woody Shaw
Trumpet
 Dusko Goykovich
trombone
 Jiggs Whigham
trombone
 Erich Kleinschuster
trombone
 Åke Persson
trombone
 Runo Ericksson
bass
 Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen

The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band or Concert Jazz Band (CJB) is a European jazz formation. The big band emerged from a workshop as part of the Zurich Jazz Festival 1971 with George Gruntz and Franco Ambrosetti . The formation was then founded in 1972 under the name The Band with Gruntz, Ambrosetti, Flavio Ambrosetti and Daniel Humair as co-leaders. From 1978 it traded as The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band under the direction of Gruntz.

Band history

The creation of the Concert Jazz Band

In the autumn of 1971 George Gruntz received an inquiry as to whether he would like to lead a few workshops during the Zurich Jazz Festival, in the sense of “test laboratories where new pieces and novel arrangements could be tried out”. American musicians living and working in Europe should take part; The saxophonists Herb Geller , Leo Wright , Heinz Bigler , Dexter Gordon , Don Byas , Sahib Shihab , Benny Bailey , the trumpeters Franco Ambrosetti, Benny Bailey, Art Farmer and Dusko Goykovich , the trombonists Jiggs Whigham , Slide Hampton , Albert Mangelsdorff were present and Åke Persson ; the rhythm section was made up of pianist Gruntz, bassist Isla Eckinger and drummer Tony Inzalaco .

Since George Gruntz had previously worked with the NDR Big Band , a few weeks before the festival, festival directors André Berner and Franco Ambrosetti had the idea to found a big band . So the festival band became a kind of “pilot project for the large formation that we were to found a few months later, in 1972 in Lugano , and which then (...) became my Concert Jazz Band in 1978 ,” Gruntz said in his memoirs “ Born a white negro ”.

George Gruntz

The actual founding of the CJB took place in 1972 when Franco Ambrosetti, Daniel Humair and Gruntz met at Flavio Ambrosetti in Lugano. The models for their big band were the 1966 Don Ellis Big Band and the Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Big Band. With the organizer Gérard Lüll, a “wish list” of musicians was drawn up, some of which coincided with the workshop participants from the previous year; the line-up looked like this: in addition to the co-leaders Flavio and Franco Ambrosetti, Daniel Humair and Gruntz, the saxophonists Phil Woods , Herb Geller, Eddie Daniels , Dexter Gordon and Sahib Shihab, the trumpeters Benny Bailey, Virgil Jones and Woody Shaw played and Dusko Goykovich, as well as the trombonists Jiggs Whigham, Erich Kleinschuster , Åke Persson and Runo Ericksson ; Danish bass player Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen , Gruntz and Humair played in the rhythm section .

The sheet music and arrangements should come from Gruntz himself, with two compositions from each co-leader; they later only played compositions by the band members, all of which were arranged by Gruntz. This was to ensure that “a varied repertoire is created, but a personal, unmistakable sound prevails.” One of the first pieces Gruntz arranged for the CJB was Ornette Coleman's “ Lonely Woman ”. Franco Ambrosetti organized concerts in Lugano and Milan as well as in the series "Jazz in Baden" near Zurich , and the first album The Alpine Power Planet was recorded for SABA-MPS .

The development of the Concert Jazz Band since 1972

John Scofield at the Moers Festival 2006, member of the CJB 1978, 1988 and 1991

The whole project initially operated under the abbreviation “The Band” with the four co-leaders father and son Ambrosetti, Daniel Humair and George Gruntz. Another tour did not take place until four years later; In 1978 only Franco Ambrosetti and Gruntz were among the co-leaders; therefore the band has now been renamed The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band (GG-CJB) or the Concert Jazz Band (CJB) under the direction of George Gruntz. Elvin Jones stepped in for Daniel Humair, who was indispensable in Paris at the time .

Daniel Humair ; Founding member in 1972

In the following years, the respective editions of the Concert Jazz Band always played with a solid base of musicians and a number of internationally known artists, e.g. in 1976 (and 1983) with Charlie Mariano , 1978 John Scofield , 1980 Joe Henderson , 1981 Joe Farrell , 1982 Jimmy Knepper and Billy Harper ,

In 1987 Lee Konitz was a guest soloist in the CJB, in 1988 Kenny Wheeler , Sheila Jordan , Enrico Rava and Manfred Schoof , in the 1990s Randy Brecker , Wallace Roney , John Clark , Dave Bargeron , Art Baron , Jerry Bergonzi , Bob Mintzer , Ray Anderson , Jack Walrath , Django Bates , Chris Hunter , Bob Malach , Mike Richmond , Ellery Eskelin , Mark Feldman , Danny Gottlieb and many other musicians.

Elvin Jones (1977); Member of the CJB in 1978 and as a guest in 1994

The Concert Jazz Band was generally more and more a tour project and the recordings rather a by-product. In 1981 the CJB performed at Ronnie Scott ’s Jazz Club in London ; The band's tenth anniversary was celebrated in 1982 with a two-week tour that began in the GDR and ended in Switzerland. The concerts in the GDR, where u. a. Dino Saluzzi , Palle Mikkelborg , Jimmy Knepper, Eje Thelin , Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky and Seppo Paakkunainen were released on the Amiga label.

In July 1983 the album Theater was created for the Munich-based ECM label with guest star Sheila Jordan; they played u. a. Excerpts from Gruntz '"World Jazz Opera". In the mid-1980s, the financial situation of the CJB was so uncertain due to a lack of sponsors that another tour could not take place again until 1988, although successful performances such as in New York's Carnegie Hall had taken place in 1984 . From 1986 the CJB received support from the Christoph Merian Foundation ; they were given a free rehearsal room for concert appearances in a carriage museum in Gut Brüglingen, combined with further concerts and recordings with HatHut Records ( Happening Now! ).

Sheila Jordan ; Member of the CJB 1983–1988

In 1987 there were Joe Henderson, Howard Johnson , Mike Richmond, Adam Nussbaum , Dave Taylor , Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Palle Mickelborg, Tom Varner , Sheila Jordan, Manfred Schoof and Sharon Freeman ; Then in the fall of 1987 a US tour took place, which started at Greenvich House in New York, went through Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, where the live album Happening Now! was recorded; further stations were Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. In 1988 a Far East tour followed with guest appearances in Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong; In the latter place, Petrowsky and Arturo Sandoval had to be left out as politically undesirable people.

In 1991 musicians from the Concert Jazz Band collaborated with Quincy Jones and Miles Davis as well as musicians from the former Gil Evans Big Band as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival ( Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux ). In the same year, Gruntz went to a studio in New York City for the first time with the CJB , worked with Ray Anderson and brought rap musicians such as turntable player DJAJ into the studio. In 1992 the CJB played for the first time in the People's Republic of China ; In 1993 the CJB cooperated with Ray Anderson for an album on the Gramavision label: After arguments with the label management, who initially wanted to publish the album exclusively under Anderson's name, it finally appeared as Ray Anderson - Big Band Music with a reference to the Concert Jazz Band on the cover.

Jimmy Knepper ; Member of the CJB from 1976 to 1995

For organizational reasons, the 25th anniversary of the CJB was set for 1996, with a concert at the Jungfrau-Joch summit in Interlaken and another appearance in Schaffhausen . Then the band went on a tour of Russia; the idea for this came from the Russian-born trumpeter Alexander Sipiagin . In 1998 three albums were released by the CJB with concert recordings from previous European tours; In 2001 another tour of China takes place; In 2008 the CJB played again in Russia.

In 2008, the CJB included Marvin Stamm , Tatum Greenblatt , Tobias Weidinger , Jack Walrath, Dave Bargeron, René Mosele , Gary Valente , Earl McIntyre, Howard Johnson, Chris Hunter, Sal Giorgianni , Larry Schneider, Scott Robinson, George Gruntz, Arie Volinez and John Riley.

Voices of the critics

Tom Harrell ; Member of the CJB 1980–1994

The jazz critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton see the Concert Jazz Band as somewhere between the liberal approach of a Globe Unity Orchestra on the one hand and the classic big bands of Duke Ellington or Stan Kenton on the other; probably the CJB is the "liberated" successor to the Clarke / Boland Big Band. Ian Carr wrote in the Rough Guide: Jazz to Gruntz's musical concept that it offered a wide spectrum from free improvisation to structured pieces. Werner Stiefele wrote in the audio magazine in 1996 : With every note (from the Big Band Music album ) you can feel that the band is one of the most perfect and virtuoso of the current jazz scene. In 1978 Michael Naura called the CJB a “cheerful ensemble that makes music and has more registers than the big swing and neo-swing bands that have frozen into monuments”. Martin Kunzler describes Gruntz's way of working as "a principle of synergy, the creative participation in the orchestra association"; he wrote titles and arrangements, "which in a short time inspired top musicians who had never played together before to extraordinary performances."

Discographic notes

Manfred Schoof 1984 in Hamburg; Member of the CJB 1987–1990
  • "The Band": The Alpine Power Planet (Saba-MPS, 1972)
  • "The Band": Live at the Zürich Schauspielhaus (MPS, 1976)
  • GG-CJB: The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band (MPS, 1978)
  • GG-CJB: Live at the Quartier Latin (MPS, 1980)
  • GG-CJB: Live at the Zürich Schauspielhaus (Kenwood, 1981)
  • GG-CJB: Live 82 (Amiga jazz, 1982)
  • GG-CJB: Theater (ECM, 1983)
  • GG-CJB: Happening Now! (HatHut Records, 1988)
  • GG-CJB: First prize (Enja, 1989)
  • GG-CJB: Blues'N'Dues et cetera (Enja, 1991)
  • GGCJB & Ray Anderson: Big Band Music (Gramavision, 1991)
  • GG-CJB: Beyond Another Wall - Live in China (TCB, 1992)
  • GG-CJB: Sin'N'Wins'N'Funs (TCB, 1996) sampler with unpublished material
    The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band May 4th 2011 in Vienna
  • GG-CJB: Liebermann - Live at JazzFest Berlin (TCB, 1999)
  • GG-CJB: Merryteria (TCB, 1999)
  • GG-CJB: Global Excellence (TCB, 2001)
  • GG-CJB: Renaissance Man (TCB, 2002)
  • GG-CJB: Tiger by The Tail (TCB, 2006)
  • GG-CJB: Live in Lugano (rtsi, 2007)
  • GG-CJB: Pourquoi pas? Why not? (TCB, 2008)
  • GG-CJB: Matterhorn Matters (MGB Jazz 3, 2010)
  • GG-CJB: News Reel Matters (MGB Jazz 11, 2013)

Other musicians from the Concert Jazz Band

Jasper van't Hof 2012; Member of the CJB 1980/81
Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky (2006), member of the CJB 1980–1990
Dexter Gordon and Benny Bailey at the Village Vanguard ; both members of the CJB in 1972

In addition to the musicians mentioned above, the CJB also played:

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from G. Gruntz, p. 87.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Gruntz, p. 87.
  3. ↑ See G. Gruntz, p. 92.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Gruntz, p. 92
  5. ↑ See Gruntz, p. 198.
  6. ↑ See Gruntz, p. 181.
  7. ↑ See Cook / Morton: Gruntz article, 2001.
  8. ↑ See Carr: Gruntz article in the Rough Guide: Jazz.
  9. ↑ cit. after M. Kunzler, 444.
  10. ↑ Quoted from M. Kunzler, p. 444.

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