Fans of big band jazz have three reasons to celebrate: The first two are the double-CD Hiding Out, which marks the return of Mike Holober as composer, arranger, and pianist with the Gotham Jazz Orchestra after a 10-year hiatus. The third is the big band premiere of composer/saxophonist/flutist Remy Le Boeuf on Assembly of Shadows. Both projects offer subtle, sophisticated, and superlative feasts of symphonic jazz.

Mike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra
Hiding Out (ZOHO Music)
A review
My introduction to composer/pianist Mike Holober came a few years ago on Balancing Act, an octet release (reviewed here) that revealed Holober to be a painter of sound and a refined pianist. Those qualities are to be found in spades on Hiding Out, though he is now working with a roster of 20-some musicians, including soloists Billy Drewes, Jon Gordon, Jason Rigby, and Adam Kilker (saxes); Marvin Stamm and Scott Wendholt (trumpets); Steve Cardenas and Jesse Lewis (guitars); and Holober himself (piano and Fender Rhodes).

Each disc features a suite, plus extras. Disc one opens with “Jumble,” music so richly cinematic right from the opening flute, which conjures a bird over water, that you seem to drink it in through your eyes. The four-part suite “Flow,” composed at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, takes the Hudson River as its inspiration. Offering delicious dissonances and explosions of color (“Tear of the Cloud”), a nacreous hymn (“Opalescence”), and an “Interlude” with a gorgeous penny whistle solo from Ben Kono, the suite closes in “Harlem.” The joyful and contagious pride of this final number evolves through several of Harlem’s musical styles and features a scintillating alto solo from Drewes and an assertive trumpet solo from Wendholt.

Disc two opens with the five-part suite “Hiding Out.” Composed on the 20,000-acre Ucross Foundation ranch in Wyoming, the suite, like “Flow,” takes its inspiration from nature, reflecting the composer’s passion for the great outdoors. Unexpected melodic twists in the first movement, “Prelude,” lead to the spacious and relaxed second movement, “Compelled,” whose landscape sparks contemplation and features a lovely solo from Cardenas. Holober manages a lush economy in “Four Haiku” before rendering a solo piano essay on wonder in “Interlude.” The fifth movement, “It Was Just the Wind,” features an exhilarating alto solo (Gordon) against a crescending orchestra before the tenor (Kolker) mellows things out. The track builds into a chest-opening sense of gratitude, stoked by a lovely Rhodes solo from Holober. The orchestra glides on thermals to bring the track and suite to its end. The final two tracks of second disc offer Holober’s take—in full-length and radio versions—on Jobim’s “Caminhos Cruzados,” with a dazzling performance from Stamm on flugelhorn.

Articulate composer and astute arranger, the rhythmically adroit Holober must think in four dimensions to deliver the deeply satisfying development that is a hallmark of every track on the album. Whether it’s the evolution of a musical backdrop over the course of 60 seconds or the architectural sweep of an entire composition, Holober’s development captures your attention from moment to moment and carries you to liberating resolutions. The finely tuned orchestra delivers on his every command, and the soloists shine again and again.

Remy Le Boeuf
Assembly of Shadows (Soundspore Records)
A review
My introduction to saxophonist Remy Le Boeuf as a bandleader came just a few months ago with his release of Light as a Word, his first and exceptionally lyrical outing as a leader, with a top-notch sextet that includes Walter Smith III (tenor sax), Charles Altura (guitar), Aaron Parks (piano and Rhodes), Matt Brewer (acoustic and electric bass), and Peter Kronreif (drums). On November 1, Le Boeuf will follow that success up with Assembly of Shadows, his first album as leader of a big band, and the music on Assembly is as clean, uncluttered, and moving as the previous album’s material—but with more than three times the personnel.

The album opens with two stand-alone pieces: the contrapuntal and exuberant “Strata,” with its Coplandesque horns, its fluid development, and the dancing flute of Anna Weber; and a reimagining of Ornette Coleman’s “Honeymooners,” which shape-shifts its way through a variety textures, pushed forward by a pulse of chords from the massed orchestra.

These two tracks are followed by the five-part “Assembly of Shadows Suite,” which tells the story of a young girl who runs away into a forest, gets lost, and falls asleep. When she awakes, the shadows of the trees, some scary, some kind, come alive and dance with her. They guide her home as the moon sets, and she awakes in her bed, wondering if the experience was a dream or real.

The suite opens with “Introduction,” a musical “Once upon a time” that suggests a touch of danger ahead. The second part, “Assembly of Shadows,” opens dreamily and progresses urgently. The music has a transparency about it that beckons the listener in and opens a window into the story. Alex Goodman adds a notable solo on guitar, backed by excellent commentary from pianist Martha Kato, and trumpeter Philip Dizack enters on a sustained high note that opens into a solo shadowed by a darkness in his rich tone. Dizack is again featured in the next part, “Shapeless Dancer,” whose head, Escher-like, turns back on itself, and John Lowery adds a dancing, dreamy solo on tenor.

Le Boeuf shines on part four, “Transfiguration,” his sensitive and nimble alto in a debate with the dark bari of Carl Maraghi—a conversation between the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other—that closes with Kato’s rippling piano flowing into a peaceful glade. The final part, “A Light through the Trees,” with its hymnlike opening and Coplandesque touches, offers an essay on questioning wonder, with evocative solos from Kato and trumpeter Tony Glausi.

There is a stillness and clarity in Le Boeuf’s music, however urgent or exuberant it might get. It seems to flow from a serene and optimistic center that allows clarified articulation and emotional accuracy that effortlessly hold the listener’s attention. The orchestra, under the direction of Gregory Robbins, responds with a clarity of its own and finely calibrated feeling that help bring the story alive. Three producers are listed: Le Boeuf, Kabir Sehgal, and wouldn’t you know it—Mike Holober.

Assembly of Shadows offers a master class in the delicate and lyrical shadings possible with a large ensemble, and Le Boeuf handles compositions for 20-plus musicians as adroitly as he did for the sextet on Light as a Word. It’s a gorgeous debut.

© 2019 Mel Minter