Two recent releases of double albums by jazz orchestras that give messages in music.
Pianist, composer and lyricist Mike Holober brings together a large ensemble of musicians and voices to delivera “meditation on the beauty of nature and the fate of the planet”. The ensemble, which includes the likes of Chris Potter/ts, Nir Gelder/g, John Patitucci/b amongst the cast, features recitations from Jams Shipp and Jamile Staevie Ayres interspersed betweens solemn passages, and impassioned solos. Potter takes hold of “Lay of the Land”, joins Felder o “Tower Pulse” and Felder going on his own on “Erosion”. Pattitucci gives an intimate feature on “Dirt Lover’s Almanac” , with the opus delivering dire warnings of the earth’s future, as if man could be audacious as to think he could destroy the world. Environmental musical apocalypse?
In a similarly dire tone, alto saxist Benjamin Koppel brings together a two disc that “ depicts the cruelty of man” via views of wars from WWI to today’s Ukraine. With Frederikke Vedel/voc, Randy B reckr/tp, Hendrik Thomsen/cel, Soren Moller/p-key, Johnny Aman/b and Ferenc Nemeth/dr a musical themes of agony and darkness hover around the harrowing lyrics from Bedel. Brecker gasps through “I Don’t Believe”and gets abstract with Moller on “Therefore I Am” while Koppel brings a somber hover on “Noux Dimes” and the apocalyptic title track. Anyone up for an opera version of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?