Label: Intuition
Katalog Nr. INT 36061
Release: 21.02. 2025
UPC: 750447360617
Format: LP
Vertrieb: edel Kultur
LC: 08399

Humus -The Life Exploring Force
Sita Roma Encores
Actions for Free Jazz Orchestra

At last, a memorable and listenable meeting between jazz and new music returns.

At the 1971 Donaueschingen Music Festival, which has become a pioneering meeting not only for new music ever since, Don Cherry and Krzysztof Penderecki performed together with the illustrious personnel of the New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra in a concert that continues to be memorable and well worth a listen. The concert recording was released as a vinyl album by the WERGO label and has been unavailable for many years.

After an extensive technical sound restoration using 24-bit digital remastering, Intuition is now releasing ACTIONS on 180g vinyl.

[from the liner notes:] During the four days prior to the concert in Donaueschingen, Cherry and the other musicians rehearsed 15 themes, of which seven were performed in the concert. Nothing was written down, nor was the order of themes defined. Cherry (or occasionally the Dutch singer Loes Mcgillycutty) led into each subsequent theme, and the musicians simply joined in as soon as they recognised them. Therefore, hesitant beginnings and lead-ins are all part of the „Humus“ concept.

The orchestra for Donaueschingen was gathered together from some of the most renowned musicians on the international jazz scene, including artists from the USA, England, Germany, Holland, Norway and Poland, and gradually developed between 1966 and 1970, gathering experience from experimental projects and performances at the Baden-Baden Free Jazz Meetings. All of it is derived from the two versions of Alexander von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity in Berlin in 1966 and Donaueschingen in 1967, as well as Cherry’s own Eternal Rhythm during the Berlin Jazz Festival of 1968. As Cherry commented, „It all started in Berlin. The Balinese Gamelan percussion which we used there opened everything up. That’s why we called the orchestra ‘The New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra‘.“

The soloists include Manfred Schoof and Kenny Wheeler (playing trumpet duos in Actions), the American Pete Warren and the Norwegian Terje Rypdal with his flexible, elastic guitar figures (also in Actions), Loes Macgillycutty from Holland (in Humus), Peter Brötzmann in both pieces and the Dutch drummer Han Bennink with his arsenal of different instruments – and, of course, Don Cherry on trumpet, exotic flutes and vocals.

These jazz musicians were understandably sceptical with respect to Penderecki, a “serious music composer”, since jazzers regard such jazz concertos as problematic. Thus, it was astonishing to see this scepticism give way to respect, acceptance, and, finally, to eager activity! Actions is the first example of a piece where a classical composer has renounced the hitherto customary (and always unsatisfactory) orchestral jazz „imitations“ in favour of allowing exclusively jazz musicians to play his piece. Penderecki was himself so impressed by the jazzers that he planned two further pieces involving jazz musicians before leaving Donaueschingen – the first of which was written for the same line-up, whilst the second is played by a smaller ensemble.

The New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra:

• Manfred Schoof (tr, co) – Kenny Wheeler (tr, co) – Tomasz Stanko (tr, co) – Paul Rutherford (tb) – Albert Mangelsdorff (tb) – Gerd Dudek (ts, ss) – Peter Brötzmann (ts, bs) – Willem Breuker (ts, cl) – Gunter Hampel (fl, bcl) – Fred van Hove (org, p) – Terje Rypdal (g) – Buschi Niebergall (b) – Peter Warren (b, e-b) – Han Bennink (dr, Chinese woodblocks, tabla, thumb piano, perc)
• on Actions for the Free Jazz Orchestra, The New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra is conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki
• produced by Joachim Ernst Berendt
• recorded and commissioned by Südwestfunk, Germany
• performed live at the Donaueschingen Music Festival on October 17, 1971
• remastered by Dieter Wegner in April and remastered for vinyl by Kai Blankenberg in 2024.

The CD booklet contains extensive liner notes by the producer and jazz expert Joachim Ernst Berendt, and extracts of an interview with Krzysztof Penderecki.