Renderings – Chuck Owen and The WDR Big Band
Label: MAMA Records
Release date: July '23
Catalog number: M1060All charts conducted & arranged by multi-Grammy nominated Chuck Owen – Performed by the multi-Grammy winning WDR Big Band, Cologne!
Critically acclaimed, seven-time-Grammy nominated, Chuck Owen rediscovered the joy (and challenge!) of being an arranger – or re-interpreter – rather than the principal composer, if you will. More importantly, it was the immediacy, imagination, sensitivity, and musical vision of the band’s “rendering” of Chuck’s lifeless notes on a page, while most of the world was still in Covid hibernation, that defines this recording.
In a sense, the idea for “Renderings” was born when Karolina Strassmayer, WDR’s alto saxophonist asked if Chuck would arrange one of her compositions for an upcoming feature project. He was quite honored; but he quickly became aware that it had been a long time since he had taken on arranging anyone else’s music. Owen found himself invigorated by the exploration of the new “world” she provided through her composition as well as the challenge of fashioning his own home within it.
While working on the chart, Chuck received word that the planned recording date with WDR had been moved up 9 months! With a full teaching load and an international conference to produce later that spring his writing time was limited. So, with no compelling “narrative” for the album project yet in mind, Owen decided to use the opportunity to finally undertake a big band arrangement of the old Sinatra/Tommy Dorsey classic “This Love of Mine” based on a small group chart he had written some 20 years earlier. Chuck also thought that revising an earlier arrangement he had done of Chick Corea’s “Arabian Nights” specifically for the WDR group (and to feature Sara Caswell on violin) might be fun and a great foil to the other charts. …the concept was emerging!
The answer came with absolute clarity. He could expand on and totally embrace the somewhat unplanned focus of writing arrangements – a prospect that, after years of primarily focusing on original works, he found incredibly exhilarating. Owen invited other WDR band members to submit some of their compositions. Incredible Results!
Renderings – Chuck Owen and The WDR BIG BAND
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REVIEW:
Renderings by Chuck Owen — a big band at lavish full throttle
“There’s nothing like the sound of a big band in full flow, and the WDR orchestra, which has been swinging in one form or another since the end of the Second World War, is one of the world’s best. On this lavish album the Cologne radio aliate has joined forces with another keeper of the flame, Chuck Owen. He has led his Florida big band, the Jazz Surge, since 1995, garnering Grammy nominations and working with giants of the genre.
One of those icons was Chick Corea, and a slow-burning version of the pianist’s Arabian Nights is included. On it the sinuous sounds of the souk are engulfed by a sandstorm of funk overpowered by electric guitar. There’s more tension in Owen’s . . . And Your Point Is?, a suspenseful samba with a New Orleans tuba groove, while his Knife’s Edge tests the ensemble’s dexterity with a jittery melody that hurtles into full-throttled swing.
There are also three tunes by members of the WDR, including two ballads that intensify the big band’s forces by holding them back. Karolina Strassmayer makes Of Mystery and Beauty a vehicle for a dance between her saxophone and Sara Caswell’s violin, while John Goldsby’s Fall Calls is a chromatic display of light, colour and shade. Finally, Johan Horlen’s Canoe swings melancholically but slowly builds to a splashy crescendo.”
-The LONDON TIMES
REVIEW:
“Florida jazz educator Chuck Owen uses Renderings and the WDR Jazz Orchestra of Cologne, Germany, mostly to showcase original concert works by himself and band members. The WDR provides a carefully measured balance that is spotlessly captured and mixed: each player with his own mic and isolated in his own headset. It serves Owen’s intent. His arrangements look for subtle challenges to settle as they emphasize a leisurely emotional impressionism in pieces like “Fall Calls,” full of cool pastel color balances. There’s not a lot of heat to rustle the velvety textures. Craft supplants passion.”
-Downbeat Magazine
REVIEW:
“Composer/bandleader Chuck Owen returns with a brilliant new collaboration with Germany’s WDR Big Band on Renderings including his new original composition, “Knife’s Edge.”
-Jazziz Magazine
REVIEW:
“Remarkable and enveloping. . . . it’s easily the finest big band album of the year so far.”
-Marc “JazzWax” Myers
REVIEW:
“…a master class in arranging by Chuck and interpretation by the WDR….Renderings is a fine example of how when the unexpected happens, something exceptional can result.”
– Bob Pomeroy, Ink 19
REVIEW:
“…Owen’s ingenuity as an arranger is especially attractive in bassist John Goldsby’s “Fall Calls,” in which soloists Philipp Braemswig (guitar), Strassmayer, and Hunter peek into and draw away from the ensemble fabric before coalescing as a solo group. Another ensemble member’s composition, “Canoe,” is a gentle swinger, well designed to showcase the composer (alto saxist Johan Hoerlen) and another adept trombonist, Ludwig Nuss, before a gathering of forces dramatically opens a door for Hoerlen to re-enter.
This sort of thing is among the many indications that Owen’s generating involvement is thoroughly supportive of his bands, both in aggregate and in fitting individual displays. His masterly bridging of the Covid crisis is just one of the ways “Renderings” can be recommended.”
-Jay Harvey Upstage
REVIEW:
The term rendering belongs not only to the lexicon of architects and visual artists, but also to the language of music. It is claimed by Chuck Owen, accomplished conductor of The Jazz Surge, an orchestral ensemble alongside which florid soloists such as Chick Corea, Joe Lovano, Bob Brookmeyer, Randy Brecker, John Clayton and Dave Douglas have lined up. The same word is also synonymous with musical performance, an area of natural relevance to the American bandleader, who with the mighty German WDR Big Band lineup and violinist Sara Caswell offers here another spectacular and impeccable essay of his qualities as a composer and arranger. Orchestral music with the proverbial bows.-Elio Bussolino for Rockerilla (Italy)
