“A Nordic Sound-Against All Odds” quote’s
Great Review from Italy 😊
Jens Wendelboe “Against All Odds” (Losen Records).
Sophisticated arrangements, fresh swing and elegant jazz in the creative album of Jens Wendelboe (trombone, Norwegian composer, music organizer and orchestra director, known for collaboration with artists such as Slide Hamptone Phil Woods) He accompanies us together with his trusted musicians, including Keith Gurland (high saxophone), Joel A. Martin, Kris Yunker (keys), Ryan Parrino (guitar), Michael Nunno (bass), Tyger MacNeal (drums), on this ‘lonely’ musical adventure. As a conductor the sounds of Bobby Watson, Gil Evans, the cultural identity of African American music and the funk groove. Twelve well-defined tracks (the great After the Snow and Return From Forever) with intelligent, sensitive and well-constructed soundities of modern jazz, showcasing a rotating cast of musicians, many of them, ambitious and engaging. Jens Wendelboe from life to a new way of narrating and playing black reality and collective improvisation sections.
Contemporary Jazz/ hard bop.
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Quote from a Slovakia Review.
Patrick Spanko at SKJAZZ, Slovakia with a review of Jens Wendelboe Big Band Google translated into English:
A Nordic Sound – An American Jazz Orchestra. The album also features songs, sung by Stephanie Harrison, to lyrics by Kari Iveland. Project boss Jens Wendelboe has a few solos on trombone. Don’t expect any Nordic sound with a gloomy atmosphere or a winding wind, but a fresh big band swing, firmly anchored in tradition, with sleek arrangements. Everything is nicely composed, arranged and balanced, hand in hand, it’s a singing and soloing party. The result is simply a great American production for orchestral swing lovers!
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All About Jazz
The Persistence Of Big Bands
BY GENO THACKARA
December 4, 2021
It’s a milieu that still enjoys plenty of devotion, and musicians (especially jazz players) are no strangers to realizing ideas that seem practically impossible.
It’s faintly amazing to be able to talk at all about big-band recordings—plural—emerging during an ongoing pandemic with no end in sight. Nonetheless it’s a milieu that still enjoys plenty of devotion, and musicians (especially jazz players) are no strangers to realizing ideas that seem practically impossible. Here we have scores of them willing to keep the tradition alive, whatever the difficulties.
Jens Wendelboe
Against All Odds
2021
You’ll be disappointed if you’re hoping for a brisk swinging Phil Collins cover or two, but the hearty party of Against All Odds still offers plenty to like. While a casual listener could easily believe Jens Wendelboe had simply booked a studio for nineteen players and a vocalist, this is a collage that took months to come together. The rhythm section set down the basic tracks just before 2020’s first shutdown, and so there was an organic foundation to follow. The horn players were then able to do their thing in groups of four weeks apart, with various others recording more bits and pieces at home.
Logistics aside, the finished product bounces as brightly as it was always meant to in person. Wendelboe’s compositions show as much soul as you’d expect from someone whose R&B pedigree includes Donna Summer and Earth, Wind & Fire. The collective breezes through brisk- paced Latin dance, cheerful march and urban funk jam with equal aplomb. If “Chasing Rainbows” feels out of place because it really belongs in an animated Disney film instead, it’s still rendered with the wide-eyed sincerity it deserves. Likewise, this whole hour makes it easy to simply enjoy the results and forget the “odds.”
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jazz-fun.de says: If you take into account the conditions under whichthis music was created, you can say that we are dealing with some kind of masterpiece. There is excellently implemented music for big band, there are vocal parts and solo parts. Everything is balanced and, above all, composed and arranged in such a way that this music can be compared to great American productions. Great album! Beautiful, emotional music!
All the best, Jacek. jazz-fun.de Online Magazin für Jazz Musik
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Review by: Tor Hammerø
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
No matter which side of the Atlantic we meet Jens Wendelboe on, he appears as a big band composer, conductor and soloist of a very high standard. His recent business card from the United States is further proof of that.
Jens Wendelboe (65) is not the type to be stopped. We know this from his time here at home in Norway with both large and small bands, as a composer, arranger, conductor and soloist. What Wendelboe sets out to do, he does, period.
One might think that continuing in the same vein after he moved across the pond about 20 years ago, could be a bit difficult. Those who know Jens Wendelboe more than expected that it would go just fine and it has done so. Wendelboe has had a fair amount of irons in the fire, including being the musical director for Donna Summer and a trombonist in Blood Sweat & Tears for a number of years. But the “big band Jens” is also brought back periodically to Norway to participate both as an adjudicator and conductor in “The Ultimate Entertainer”(Stjernekamp) live TV show. Thankfully.
The plans to make a record with newly written big band music were more than ready when Covid-19 made its brutal arrival in the USA. That did not stop Wendelboe even if everything had to be done in an alternative way. It was completely impossible to meet for rehearsals and recordings. Solutions were hard to find, but they existed. The rhythm section was fortunately recorded before the big explosion of COVID, but eventually the wind sections could meet, albeit separately and at a reverent distance. Somethings were also recorded in home studios and skilled people made sure to screw it all together into a big band recording of a very solid caliber.
Wendelboe breaks no boundaries compositionally but he has full control of the entire history of jazz and uses it in a front-line way – and my goodness he makes music that swings and grooves within a relatively traditional, modern big band setting.
The band consists of completely unknown musicians – for me – but my world, what great quality on all the chairs. Not surprisingly, there are “some” also over there in the promised land who have their craft at their fingertips and soloistically keep everyone on the same level as the boss – right up there.
It is specifically amusing that Wendelboe has invited his good friend Kari Iveland from Norway to write a couple of lyrics that Stephanie Harrison interprets in an excellent way.
Jens Wendelboe has thus, against most odds, managed to put together a very good big band album in these very special times. It does not surprise us who have followed his career from long before he set course across the pond.
@critical Jazz. Published April 17 , 2012
…Space literally prohibits me from expounding further on what is for my money – one of the two best big band records made in the last decade”
by Don Lerman 2012
…Wendelboe’s superior writing skills are everywhere apparent, providing substantial and interesting musical development and strong ensemble passages throughout the program
by Jack Bowers. Published: August 7, 2012
…Wendelboe earned top honors in the Barga Jazz competition for his stylish arrangement of Steve Swallow’s lyrical “Falling Grace”
by Edward Blanco. Published: May 3, 2012
…Wendelboe-who grew up listening to energetic sounds of the pop group Blood Sweat & Tears (of which he is now a member), Chicago, and Tower of Power- became a convert to the brassy side of music, a sensibility influencing his arrangements and producing the “snappy, fresh and hot” contemporary sounds on this burner of an album.
Artslink.co.za by Don Albert. Published: June 27, 2012
…The Jens Wendelboe Big Band is incendiary on the album “Fresh Heat”
Musicmatch by John M. Peters
…As a Big Band album go “Fresh Heat” is a beauty, loud and proud and lots of fun to listen to – highly recommended.
Jazz International (German magazin)
…a brilliant big band delighted so many listeners hearts
Jazz Scan by Ric Bang. Published September 6, 2012
…for those who still yearn for the Big Band days of yore, this album will satisfy your soul.
Jazz Society of Oregon by Georg Fendel. Published June 2012
Fasten your seat belts. It may be 2012, but there’s still an invigorating Big Band to be heard now and then.
New York Times Company, Music reviews. Published March 18, 2010
…Inspirations is a big sweeping epic of a record and Wendelboe’s group lets it all hang out on nine high – spirited tracks that refuse to be tied down by field or tradition.
Sea of Tranquility by Ryan Sparks. Published April 27, 2010
…If you’re into sophisticated, Big Band jazz then I’d definitely recommend checking out “Inspirations” because it’s a winner from start to finish.
Grego Applegate Edwards. Published February 19, 2010
…It’s the fullness and tightness of the band and its arrangements that make this program a pleasure to hear. If you like straight – ahead modern Big Band music, this one is for you.
Jazziz. Published April 2010
…and clearly there’s a lot of talent on hand, as well, not the least of which is displayed by Wendelboe, whose work here places him among the best of modern jazz’s Big Band leaders.
All About Jazz . By Jakob Baekgaard Published 2010
…Whenever Norwegian – born trombonist, composer and arranger Jens Wendelboe starts working with his Big Crazy Energy New York Band, there’s a rock – solid guarantee that it won’t be boring.
Midwest Recording published January 26, 2010
…this is a cat that it’s time you got to know. On the money through out. 6******
Rotcod Zzaj 2010
…there is only one expression you’ll use when you pop this CD in the player – WOW!
Jazz Scene August 2010
…How can you resist a band with this nutty a name? Funny enough, the group lives up to it with high – powered energy from the start. Led by trombonist and composer Jens Wendelboe, this Big Band has serious chops, a sense of sophistication and, oh yes, big crazy energy.
Dagsavisen, Helgheim. Published February 1, 2010
…with his numerous irons in the music business, Jens Wendelboe is also one of the most experienced in the subject of Big Bands