Terje Rypdal

CD of the Week:  Crime SceneECM   * * * *

Composer and guitarist Terje Rypdal premiered this suite for the 17-piece Bergen Big Band and a quartet of himself, Palle Mikkelborg (trumpet), Ståle Storløkken (Hammond organ) and Paolo Vinaccia (drums) at Bergen’s Nattjazz festival, where I heard it last May.

The sepulchral gloom of the converted canning factory that was the festival's main venue was perfect for the dark-hued, turbulent music, an atmosphere memorably captured in this recording of the hour-long concert. The individual elements of the unbroken suite – the freely improvised passages, the strong jazz-rock flavours, Rypdal's Hendrix-like guitar, Mikkelborg's superb, Milesian trumpet, the Coltrane- influenced tenors of the BBB's Ole Jakob Hystad and Zoltan Vincze, the collages of film-noirsoundbites – are not in themselves innovative, but Rypdal's appreciation of how to use them together is compelling and imaginative.

What he has written (or specified) is indivisible from the way it is performed; it's a living piece that must surely alter in each performance – the essence of jazz. Even as the chaos of the free episodes is brilliantly structured, his gifts as an orchestrator are equally impressive. Especially memorable are the beautiful voicings he achieves in the rubato movements of Vinaccia's Parli con me?, and his own Is That a Fact, One of Those, It's Not Been Written Yetand the closing Crime Solved.

The BBB, precise, powerful and passionate, is one of the great contemporary big bands, whether playing rubato or grooving jazz-rock. Rypdal's quartet works seamlessly with the BBB, with Rypdal and Mikkelborg arresting at times. The film soundbites, from such as the first Godfathermovie; Taxi Driver; Silence of the Lambs; Goodfellas; American Gangster; The Good, the Bad and the Uglyand (rather oddly) Back to the Future, reinforce the overall dark tone of the music. ecmrecords.com