Available Jelly
Michael Moore – alto sax and clarinets
Eric Boeren – cornet
Wolter Wierbos – trombone
Oren Marshall or Gregg Moore – tuba
Michael Vatcher – percussion
“Available Jelly offers a startling, wondrous vision for the future of jazz in general and European jazz in particular.”
Thom Jurek, AllMusic.com
“The music is direct, attractive and accessible. Available Jelly moves between blues numbers, Ellington tunes, folk melodies and Moore’s compositional interest in the centuries-old technique of counterpoint. It’s simply great jazz played with immaculate precision and no small amount of passion.”
The Georgia Straight
Biography
Expect the unexpected. That’s the best advice for someone attending an Available Jelly concert. Through the years, the line-up and the repertoire have changed many times. But there’s one thing that you can be sure of: there’ll be some strong melodies. The music can be wild, dense, smooth, empty, swinging or pointillistic, but it’s always interesting.
Available Jelly emerged from the Great Salt Lake Mime Troupe when this American group of clowns, dancers, mimes and musicians visited Amsterdam in the mid-seventies to perform at the ‘Festival of Fools’. The musicians stayed on, and a number of line-up changes later the group has developed into a constant feature of the Dutch improvised music scene. The music has maintained the theatricality and eclecticism associated with the theatre but has gradually moved toward a more personal improvisational style. The current Available Jelly has been together since 1995 and brings together an all-star line-up.
The influences on Available Jelly’s music range from New Orleans jazz via Ellington to contemporary composition techniques, and from ethnic music (worldwide from the Balkan to Madagascar) to popular music, such as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and the Beach Boys. The compositions and arrangements come from Moore and Boeren.
The “simple” musical ideas in Moore’s compositions show great variety: they can be baroque-like arrangements for the wind instruments, elaborate hymns or plain sweet melodies reminiscent of chamber music miniatures. With his rampant eclecticism, he incorporates anything from European folk traditions and Nino Rota themes to pop songs.
Eric Boeren’s compositions give an important place to improvisation, allowing the individual members of the group to put their stamp on the music. He is influenced by many musical and non-musical ideas, whether a figure from the cartoonist Kamagurka, a favourite one-eyed pet dog, or South-American rhythms. But influence does not equal imitation: in Boeren’s hands, it is the attitude of the original that shows up in his work.
REVIEWS
“…As the years go by, this sextet has in fact only gotten stronger and better. Wolter Wierbos is still as uncontrollably fiery on the trombone, while Eric Boeren sings loveliness and sweetness on his cornet. All the while, rhythm section of bassist Ernst Glerum and percussionist Michael Vatcher keep things amazingly tight. Add to this the passion and fury of the wind section and you’ve got yourself a wicked time out.”
Tom Sekowski, GAZ-ETA NR 39
“…Moore’s ensemble concept–the way he expertly balances order and disorder, his attention to detail, his overall vision–is the star of this show. A beautiful, poetic work.”
Chris Kelsey, Jazz Times
“There is something beautifully quirky about this music that I find charming but hard to describe. Perhaps you could explain it to everyone else who is not convinced of how wonderful this is. Me? I’m already touched by this.”
Downtown Music Gallery, New York
“The group have a broad stylistic range, and Moore has that rare balance between Apollonian and Dionysian – and between the composed and the improvised – that enables him to draw on tradition In exploring radical new directions. This fabulous disc illustrates that those who see furthest into the future are those who can see furthest Into the past.”
Andy Hamilton, The Wire
“It was an eventful, well-written and smartly-executed set, packed with enough good ideas to carry any other band through a performance two or three times as long… Altogether as an ensemble, they were neither too tight nor too loose – too exact or too casual. That’s a fine line to walk, but Available Jelly walked it quickly and walked it easily.”
Mark Miller, Toronto Globe and Mail
“The band gives the impression that improvising is as normal and easy as breathing…”
Mark Miller, Toronto Globe and Mail
“Trombonist Wolter Wierbos’s wicked mute work deserves special mention, as does percussionist Michael Vatcher, who can swing like mad, insert homemade instruments with precision and delicacy, and thrash the hell out of everything.”
The Wire
