Recorded at the historic Bimhuis during the Felix Meritis festival, this was the first meeting of the Felix Quartet featuring frequent collaborators Michael Moore on sax & clarinet and trombonist Wolter Wierbos, with Wilbert de Joode on bass and Michael Vatcher on drums & hammer dulcimer, performing Moore's superb compositions written for this event & for these players.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2016 Country: The Netherlands Packaging: Cardboard Sleeve in Plastic Sleeve Recorded live @ Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on August 22nd, 2014, by Marc Schots.
"If Live in Chicago favors clarinet, the rowdier FELIX Quartet belongs to Moore's alto. That band is a fresh mix of old faces: Vatcher, Wolter Wierbos who's played with Moore in half the bands in Holland, and bassist Wilbert de Joode - oddly enough making his first appearance on a Moore record, after sharing two decades in Eric Boeren's quartet and umpty-zillion Tuesday nights improvising at A'dam institution Zaal 100, where Vatcher is also a regular. Indeed this happy foursome is like a Zaal 100 improvising group dragooned into playing tunes, and relocated to the Felix Meritis, a lovely old theater with woody ambience that the band uses to its advantage. Sounds coalesce and disperse in space.
A few pieces slowly build from a very quiet start, perhaps with Vatcher pursuing some gambit at ant-farm volume; the theme might only emerge midway through. In such a loose and open setting you can't do better than have Wierbos as your second. Nobody shadows quite like him - he doesn't just zero in on (or just off) your pitch, he'll meld (or mess) with your tone and vibrato too. That can make for some undulating two-horn theme statements and effectively grinding voicings. In collective space, if Wierbos hears a hole he'll plug it, swooping out of the background to inject a phrase, and maybe recede just as quickly (to listen for his next opportunity). On "Tis Abay" - with dulcimer as Persian santur again, adding to a Mideastern effect - Wolter rushes pure air through the horn, the way Moore will, a sound like weather coming in: music from and for a rainy town. The trombonist hears sliphorn sonics from country brass bands to Nanton to Mangelsdorff, and can make you hear all that at once (and much else) behind his line.
Moore's tunes shunt them into varied areas; pithy themes will punctuate and subtly shape the blowing. "Lower 40"'s galumphing staccato brings out Wilbert's popcorn-popper pizzicato. With 1001 Zaal 100 nights behind them, the bassist and drummer hook up in myriad effortless ways, and never throw each other off, despite their idiosyncrasies. De Joode isn't much for drawing on blues phraseology, so it's funny to hear him pound a Willie Dixon-ish riff on "Big Day," where Wierbos howls and yelps a like a dog left out in the rain - one suspects, like some very specific dog he's overheard. Michael Moore in his solo quotes the first line of "Summertime," unafraid to go there."-Kevin Whitehead - Point of Departure, June 2016.