John Hollenbeck & Jazz Bigband Graz

John Hollenbeck & Jazz Bigband Graz: Joys & Desires

by Chris May
December 31, 2005

Because of their sheer physical bulk and lethal defensive firepower, big bands have remained fundamentally immune to the jazz revolutions of the last sixty years. Bop, hard bop, cool, free, fusion, funked up, rocked out, astral, groove, and ecstatic... all the major reinventions have been created by smaller lineups. (Miles Davis's Birth Of The Cool band is the sole vanguard outfit to have been bigger than a sextet, and itself was only a nine-piece.)

So when radicals like ...