Search - Mark-Anthony Turnage, John Scofield, Fsr :: Mark-Anthony Turnage / John Scofield: Scorched

Is anybody ever completely comfortable in these sessions?

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 01/30/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"What we have here is an attempt to blend jazz and classical music. And I thought the Third Stream was dead. It seems that contemporary composer Mark-Anthony Turnage has been taken by the music of John Scofield for quite some time and decided to write some material based on it for orchestra and big band, incorporating Sco + bass and drums into the soundscape. Does it work? Not very well, to these ears.There are, it must be admitted, a few moments when things sound pretty natural, both from the orchestra/big band side as well as the small-group setting. But Sco certainly has sounded a lot freer and hipper in more natural small-group contexts. Even the audience's responses seem somewhat tentative (this was recorded live in concert).Falls between two stools. Neither fish nor fowl. A Jackalope (not the great jazz improv group, but an amalgam that simply doesn't work).The problem is that you can't make classical orchestras swing. Just doesn't happen. So what you get is some mildly interesting new music-ish orchestral passages punctuated by fairly standard small-group (Sco, guitar; John Patitucci, e-bass; Peter Erskine, drums) playing (not that this group is in any way deficient; it's just that they seem restrained, unable to completely cut loose). Why not just listen to either, say, Ligeti or Nono or Part, or one of Sco's latest discs?You'd be a lot better off."

SMART

Pollo Poulet | New York United States | 07/08/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This may not be the best way to hear Scofield but it has really great moments."

Music in search of a story

Edward Thomas | Venezuela | 01/18/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Very suggestive music, in a way conveyingly cinematic. One piece is even called "Kubrik"... other is called "Nocturnal Mission"... you can hear a wide rannge of dramatic arrangements that will undoubtely carry you through the scenes of a very interesting imaginary movie."