LASSE LINDGREN - Lasse Lindgren
Sleepy Night Records SNRCD014
Lasse Lindgren (trumpet) with The L. L. Big Constellation, The Latvian Radio Big Band, and The HRT Croatian Radio & TV Jazz Orchestra.
Lasse Lindgren , now aged 58 is a Swedish freelance lead trumpet player from Gothenburg who has graced the ranks of many European big bands, as well as leading his own aggregations from time to time. Very much in the Manard Ferguson style of playing, he has been regularly in demand, but for the past few years, has confined himself to a life pairing his musical ambitions with a more conventional style of employment. This album is a retrospective of his considerable career highlights to date, well suited to his mission statement of "Big Band Power Jazz".
Working with his friend and close associate, the British promoter Ernie Garside, they have selected a cross section of major jazz standards, show tunes, pop songs plus a couple of originals, all carefully arranged for the Big Band setting. There is a very bluesy and melancholy version of the Eden Ahbez standard Nature Boy that opens the album and finds the trumpet man in an elegant and retrained mode before things take off with up tempo renderings of the very contrasting Sonny Rollins tune Airegin and the Abba hit Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. Such are the contrasts throughout the disc that we soon come to the leader's excellent take on Maria from West Side Story, shortly before a popish Watermelon Man and a couple of songs from the Carol King songbook. While the standard of playing on the album is generally high and the arrangements often excellent, there is a rather dated feel about much of the music and perhaps just a little too much of the very high trumpet riffs for some ears. However, we do come to a pair of highly engaging pieces near the end of the disc. The Serpent is an original chart by composer and arranger Keith Mansfield. Here we catch the leader opening on didgeridoo in an exotic excursion into this superb composition aided by contrasting sounds of the valve trombone and an enhanced percussion choir. The Beatles Eleanor Rigby has always availed itself to jazz interpretation, and so it does here on a superb low key arrangement by Adrian Driver, originally put together for Maynard Ferguson in 1971. In summary, this is an album ideal for those who love the roaring big band sound, and perhaps will help to bring the name of trumpet player and leader Lasse Lindgren back into the forefront of jazz listeners minds.
Reviewed by Jim Burlong
Sleepy Night Records SNRCD014
Lasse Lindgren (trumpet) with The L. L. Big Constellation, The Latvian Radio Big Band, and The HRT Croatian Radio & TV Jazz Orchestra.
Lasse Lindgren , now aged 58 is a Swedish freelance lead trumpet player from Gothenburg who has graced the ranks of many European big bands, as well as leading his own aggregations from time to time. Very much in the Manard Ferguson style of playing, he has been regularly in demand, but for the past few years, has confined himself to a life pairing his musical ambitions with a more conventional style of employment. This album is a retrospective of his considerable career highlights to date, well suited to his mission statement of "Big Band Power Jazz".
Working with his friend and close associate, the British promoter Ernie Garside, they have selected a cross section of major jazz standards, show tunes, pop songs plus a couple of originals, all carefully arranged for the Big Band setting. There is a very bluesy and melancholy version of the Eden Ahbez standard Nature Boy that opens the album and finds the trumpet man in an elegant and retrained mode before things take off with up tempo renderings of the very contrasting Sonny Rollins tune Airegin and the Abba hit Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. Such are the contrasts throughout the disc that we soon come to the leader's excellent take on Maria from West Side Story, shortly before a popish Watermelon Man and a couple of songs from the Carol King songbook. While the standard of playing on the album is generally high and the arrangements often excellent, there is a rather dated feel about much of the music and perhaps just a little too much of the very high trumpet riffs for some ears. However, we do come to a pair of highly engaging pieces near the end of the disc. The Serpent is an original chart by composer and arranger Keith Mansfield. Here we catch the leader opening on didgeridoo in an exotic excursion into this superb composition aided by contrasting sounds of the valve trombone and an enhanced percussion choir. The Beatles Eleanor Rigby has always availed itself to jazz interpretation, and so it does here on a superb low key arrangement by Adrian Driver, originally put together for Maynard Ferguson in 1971. In summary, this is an album ideal for those who love the roaring big band sound, and perhaps will help to bring the name of trumpet player and leader Lasse Lindgren back into the forefront of jazz listeners minds.
Reviewed by Jim Burlong
