Claudia Quintet

Biography

Explorers of contemporary creative jazz, avant jazz, and considerably more, the Claudia Quintet were formed in 1997 by drummer/composer John Hollenbeck, who was simply less than wanting to give up a preexisting weekly gig in alt.coffee, an online café in NY City’s East Community. Hollenbeck, accordionist Ted Reichman, and bassist Reuben Radding, executing because the Refuseniks, acquired the gig for approximately per year, but Radding empty ship to go to Montana — therefore, nix over the Refuseniks. Instead of bet adieu to alt.espresso, which had turn into a hot small gathering i’m all over this the brand new York downtown music picture, Hollenbeck recruited many scenester musicians to create a new music group and keep on: reedman Chris Quickness, bassist Drew Gress, and vibraphonist Matt Moran — alongside Reichman (right now a successful empathetic participant with Hollenbeck and the person who all had secured the Refuseniks’ alt.espresso gig to begin with). Hollenbeck called his brand-new music group the Claudia Quintet after an alt.espresso patron who had professed passion for the Refuseniks on the group’s initial present and promised to come back for future shows, but never followed through on her behalf vow. “Claudia” eventually became a working theme cropping up sometimes within the trio people’ discussions; the contours of the life story had been even imagined on her behalf. Hollenbeck also offered other known reasons for naming his fresh group following the enigmatic Claudia instead of selecting a moniker like, state, the John Hollenbeck Quintet; these included emphasizing the group all together and preventing the normal leader-with-sidemen perception, sketching parallels using the naming strategy often utilized by chamber ensembles that play completely scored materials, and providing the music group “a lady quality” — although up to now no Claudia Quintet albums feature real females as either primary bandmembers or guests. The Claudia Quintet quickly became an utterly exclusive outfit and amazing automobile for Hollenbeck’s creativeness like a drummer and composer, and an excellent showcase for another bandmembers aswell, offering an unusual combination of instrumental timbres along with a stylistic mélange sketching from cutting-edge jazz, needless to say, but additionally Hollenbeck’s history in modern structure. The quintet’s eponymous debut recording premiered by CRI/Blueshift in 2001 (simultaneous with two additional Hollenbeck non-Claudia discs), as well as the group quickly attracted attention through the Cuneiform label, that includes a lengthy history of use artists who usually do not fit in quickly categorizable niche categories. Cuneiform released the band’s label debut, I, Claudia, in 2004, and continuing its commitment towards the Claudia Quintet with some releases increasing for another a decade: Semi-Formal (2005); For (2007); Royal Toast (2010), offering special visitor Gary Versace on piano; WHAT’S the stunning? (2011), using the quintet supplemented by pianist Matt Mitchell and offering poetry of Kenneth Patchen sung by vocalists Theo Bleckmann and Kurt Elling; and Sept (2013), where Red Wierenga changed accordionist Reichman (whose family members commitments experienced used him to Boston) as well as the bass responsibilities were break up between Gress (among the busiest bassists in contemporary innovative jazz with several contending commitments) and Chris Tordini.

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