Music for Large & Small Ensembles

The singular trumpeter and flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler defies lots and lots of musical rules. Consider Music for Large and Small Ensembles, where he uses an all-star band primarily for nuance, depth, and color at all points. This bucks a trend. After Duke Ellington and Count Basie fine-tuned the big band tradition, the form often meant musical bombast--Woody Herman's Thundering Herd, Maynard Ferguson's big band, etc. The notable exceptions to such a rule include Gil Evans, Maria Schneider, and, emphatically, Kenny Wheeler. The weighting of Wheeler's large ensemble here toward trumpets and trombones more often recalls a classical brass choir than a swing showdown, and the operative word here is "ensemble." From "Opening," where Norma Winstone's wordless vocal and John Abercrombie's guitar lines interact and blend beautifully with the other 17 band members, to the last tune of disc two, where the core group of Wheeler, Abercrombie, John Taylor, Peter Erskine, and Dave Holland deconstruct the standard, "By Myself," Music for Large and Small Ensembles delivers magnificent music played by magnificent musicians working together with verve, power, sensitivity, and daring, but never, ever, bombast. --Michael Ross