ICP Orchestra
Wednesday, March 19, 8pm
Seattle Asian Art Museum

The Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra,
long one of the world’s most startling
and ear-stretching jazz ensembles –
and also one of the most amusing and diverting
– makes a return visit to these
shores, with a lineup of ten stellar musicians.

Any U.S. tour by the superb ensemble
is a rare, not-to-miss event. At the helm is
one of the true originals of the art form,
pianist Misha Mengelberg. He and drummer
Han Bennink formed the group in
Amsterdam in 1967 in the full throes of
the free-jazz movement. It was then, and
remains now, a refuge for playing in the
spirit of those times but, in its performances
and recordings, the band opts not
for fully free improvisation, but for near-
anarchy contained within recognizable
musical forms, from swing rave-ups to
twisted tangos.

For the successful implementation of
its approach, it depends on an evolving
cast of always-topflight musicians. The
“instant composition” that drives the band
is spontaneity and idiosyncrasy. “I welcome
all kinds of personal things, which
depend on the resoluteness of the musicians,”
Mengelberg told the Boston Globe.
That is to say, he seeks to surround himself
with singular jazz musicians, and he
has plenty of those in the current ICP –
beginning with the tireless Bennink, with
whom Mengelberg says he has a love-hate
relationship that should not be discontinued.

At the time of the group’s formation,
Mengelberg and Bennink were still in the
glow of their memorable collaboration
with Eric Dolphy in 1964, just before his
death. That would kick-start their foundational
role in what jazz writer Kevin
Whitehead calls, in his history of modern
Dutch jazz, “New Dutch Swing.”

That is a hybrid that set itself apart from
American models with such components
as a European chamber-music sensibility
and, notably, a heap of pizzazz. The latter
is an inevitable element of any performance
that includes the irrepressible,
hyper-percussive Bennink. For the group’s
edginess, however, Mengelberg is just as
important, and more subtly so. As Sam
Prestianni put it in the San Francisco
Weekly last year: “The pianist’s strong,
stark dissonance, especially in the lower
register, offers a superb foil to the
drummer’s often nutty, octopi rhythms.”

Mengelberg is a master of oblique, unpredictable,
and often just plain playful
composing for this creative orchestra. Wry
humor is one element of his generally eccentric
musical personality, which manifests
itself in surprising tempos and phrasing.

That may bring to mind the zaniness
of the Willem Breuker Kollektief; saxophonist
Willem Breuker was there at the ICP’s founding,
and spent plenty of time in the band before
branching out to form his own ensemble.
But, more than the Kollektief, the ICP
forges humor from musical play, with fewer
stage antics.

The band’s selections are eclectic, drawing
not just from Mengelberg’s vast compositional
pool, but also from free jazz, European
dancehall, parade, and classical
music, and the bag of jazz standards – “Tea
for Two,” “My Funny Valentine,” and
similar curious manifestations of Americanism.
Expect Monkism, too, because Mengelberg
has been a key figure in preserving
and constantly refreshing the
legacy of Thelonious Monk. Similarly, he
has helped revive interest in the less-
vaunted departed pianist/composer
Herbie Nichols.

Always sure to provide both propulsion
and zaniness is drummer Han Bennink,
who has long been one of the most in-
demand drummers in Europe, and who
has performed and recorded with jazz musicians
like Dexter Gordon and Sonny
Rollins. Both he and Mengelberg have also
teamed up often with the most vaunted
Europe-based jazzmen, such as John
Tchicai and Steve Lacy, and improvisers
like Peter Brötzmann and Derek Bailey.

Bringing all this to life with Mengelberg
and Bennink is a lineup of top-flight, maverick
contributors. The line-up also includes
Wolter Wierbos (trombone; Gerry
Hemingway Quintet, Peter van Bergen’s
LOOS, Theo Leovendie Quintet, J.C.
Tans Orchestra), Ernst Glerum (bass;
Amsterdam String Trio, Guus Jansen, J.C.
Tans Orchestra, Curtis Clark), Ab Baars
(clarinet/saxophone; Guus Jansen,
Maarten Altena, Loek Dikker, Orkest de
Volharding), and Thomas Heberer (trumpet;
Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra,
European Jazz Ensemble, Pata Orchestra).
All those enjoy high reputations in their
own right. Wierbos, for example, has for
many years been one of his instrument’s
most-advanced and idiosyncratic innovators.


Added to the ICP just before their last
Seattle appearance two years ago, replacing cellist
Ernst Reijseger, is American violist
Mary Oliver. She brings to three the
number of stellar American expats in the
band. Also there is long-time Amsterdam
resident Michael Moore, a multihornman
(Available Jelly, Gerry Hemingway Quintet,
Clusone 3, Maarten Altena ensemble)
who has impressed audiences here in Seattle
in recent years with the Monitor Trio
and the Clusone Trio, and longtime Vermonter-
in-Amsterdam, cellist Tristan
Honsinger, whose collaborations include
a vaunted one with Cecil Taylor, and others
with Derek Bailey and Irene Schweitzer,
and who has also led his own string quartet
with Ernst Glerum, as well as the ensemble
This, That, and The Other.

Tenor saxophonist Tobias Delius has
joined the band. He has stood in in recent
months as a replacement for the ill
Tristan Honsinger, playing the cellist’s
charts, transcribed for saxophone. That
exercise went so well that he remained with
the band upon Honsinger’s return. A
member of Michael Moore’s Available Jelly
and Honsinger’s This, That, and The Other,
among many other projects, Delius also
leads his own quartet with Honsinger, Joe
Williamson (bass) and Bennink.

Mengelberg loosely directs the whole
swirling show – with startling musical gestures
at the keyboard rather than ostensive
conducting. He told Kevin Whitehead
that he liked “to put sticks into the spokes

of all wheels.” Similarly, the band’s members
are at liberty to inject a “virus” into
the mix – a written snippet that will disrupt
a tune, forcing the ensemble to renew
its instant composition.

Of the results, Bill Shoemaker wrote in
Jazz Times: “Compelling open improvisations
and pungent thematic materials
function like spark-shooting flints
throughout the program.”

The approach produces results that
many jazz big bands should note, Lloyd
Sachs suggested in the Chicago Sun-
Times. Making reference to a moment in
the ICP’s rendition of “Caravan,” he
wrote: “With one exhilirating stroke – a
unison horn climax that was as brief as it
was sudden – the rendition left you thinking
how thoroughly this band could kick
the rears of countless mainstream repertory
orchestras with its expressiveness and
power.”

– Peter Monaghan