Classical Music

Gibbs' intermittent relationship with Germany's NDR Bigband, one the world's longest-running jazz ensembles, dates back to the early 1970s and has provided a particularly valuable vehicle for his vivid musical imagination. "I feel I know the individual players so well, that I write for them personally, or use how I know them in making orchestrational choices," Gibbs says of the NDR Bigband. "That's a luxury these day, when other projects are written more for the standard instrumentation without knowledge of the personal attributes (stunning as though they might be, and often are)." Born on September 25th, 1937, Gibbs has studied with such noted figures as Gunther Schuller, George Russell J.J. Johnson, Aaron Copland, Iannis Xenakis, and Lukas Foss. By the beginning of the 70s, he was recognized as one of jazz's leading young arrangers and composers, and he developed a personal, thickly textured approach inspired by Gil Evans, Charles Ives and Olivier Messiaen. Gibbs has honed a subtle and highly personal approach to arranging and composition, incorporating driving rock rhythms and asymmetrical phrasing. When first emerging, his work anticipated the jazz/rock movement of the 70s. Although better known as an arranger than a composer, he really is one of the great writers to emerge out of the 'Brit-jazz' scene, and four wonderful, new original pieces are highlighted here. With 'In My View', Gibbs makes an unimpeachable case that this jazz cat in winter hasn't lost a step. Gibbs' View adds up to one of the year's most rewarding and successful big band projects.

As a dauntingly prolific artist, Bill Frisell has recorded in a vast array of settings, but he's never made an album like 'Play A Bill Frisell Set List'. Captured live in concert with the superb NDR Bigband, the guitarist delivers a tour de force performance on a program of ingenious arrangements designed specifically for him and the NDR by Michael Gibbs. Recorded at the Uberjazz Festival with the NDR Bigband on Oct 26, 2013, 'Play A Bill Frisell Set List' captures Frisell interacting with one of the world's great jazz orchestras, exploring sleek, spacious, vividly expressive arrangements of compositions drawn from throughout his career.

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