… but cool jazz was not dead

With his base in Amsterdan, bass player Thomas Winther Andersen has headed the multinational band Line Up -a well-orchestrated and four year old jazz quintet which has thrown its attentions on cool jazz, first of all directed towards the pianist and trendsetter Lennie Tristano.

Even if Tristano and the group of musicians around him (Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh) are notoriously an obvious source of inspiration and references for Winther Andersen, drummer John Engels, New York saxophonist Jimmy Halperin and Oslo musicians Torgrim Sollid (trumpet) and Håkon Storm-Mathisen (guitar), the five skilled musicians have equally managed to characterize this album through their own way of attacking it.

Alongside a bunch of elegantly processed standard numbers, it is the band’s leader with performances from Halperin and Sollid who show their muscles in the composer role. It all flows lightly and playfully with a nuanced and mellowed atmosphere as the framework around the cunning melody patterns. Crammed with neat movements, transparent sound pictures step forward like a collection of richly detailed layers of notes, all presented with sensitivity and with an underlying perfunctory nerve. It is true that the musical disposition is not as blue and cool as Tristano’s, but this group has nevertheless a firm and solid grasp of the cool jazz concept.

Even if one is flooded by packed chord patterns with this coordinated gang, there is still refreshingly, free scope in the well-arranged cosmos of sound. Here there is no shortage of individual and collective sanctuaries, and the opportunities for small improvised digressions on the way, are seized eagerly by an inspired team of musicians who have a calling.

Winther Andersen & Co have made a solid and sure-footed jazz album which, rooted in one of jazz’s most exciting expressional styles, offers a particularly tasteful listening experience.

Geir Dahle
Bergens Tidende – Thursday 18 February 1999

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Two new CDs confirm last year’s impression that talents stand in line to renew and enrich Norwegian jazz.

Bass player Thomas Winther Andersen resides in Amsterdam, but is gradually ensuring that he is becoming more noticeable also in his native country. At any rate, his internationally made up quintet Line Up will not be less in demand, neither here nor there, when the group now has also their CD debut.The album offers 11 different themes, and the undersigned must just ascertain that one and all of the tracks are fascinating. A “declaration of loyalty” to cool jazz and one of this music form’s foremost representatives, the pianist Lennie Tristano, must not scare away those who feel that this style represented a sterile jazz digression. As cool jazz is just the starting point for the quintet’s tour of a rich and varied repertoire.

In addition to the orchestra conductor the quintet consists of the American tenor saxophonist Jimmy Halperin, the drummer John Engels, the trumpeter Torgrim Sollid and the guitarist Håkon Storm-Mathisen. The group is so co-ordinated at such a high level that it would be unnatural to emphasize anything in particular amongst the musicians. We are content to state that Thomas Winther Andersen, in addition to having the honour for the actual project, ensures that a warm pulse runs through the album, also in the trucks with reference to USA’s west coast in the 1950s. In the duo with Engels, “No 2″, Andersen also expresses roots even further back in jazz history. Many listeners will feel themselves tempted to hum the refrain of “My Melancholy Baby”.

Stein Kagge
Aftenposten – Thursday 21 January 1999

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With a bag full of jazz’s cooling elements, the Norwegian based Line Up delivers a solid album with rare musical experiences.

From their base in Amsterdam the Norwegian bass player, Thomas Winther Andersen has mixed together an international jazz team, who deliver rare goods: a cool album, with more than a hint of warmth and nearness. Very listenable it is too, this product which has contributors from the Netherlands, America and Norway. If you like improvisational music which lets itself go, without you having any idea of where the journey wi

ll end, then Line Up is the ultimate detection. At the same time, the band adds a clear lyrical dimension to their playing which is elegant and playful. These boys allow themselves actually a lot more colour in their music, read: feelings, than some of cool jazz’s grandfathers allowed, and it definitely sounds like a step in the right direction.

Cool ancestors. But the lines going back into the past are clear. There is little doubt that the gentlemen who are Line Up, have musical preferences resembling the group which Lennie Tristano picked out for his famous sixtet in 1948. But noone must think that Line Up has entirely adopted the detached coolness and rather abstract approach which the blind keyboard master Tristano swore to, towards the end of his cool jazz life. Much more warmth can be found here than the genius would have ever accepted.

When Tristano became a success around 1950, he had with him the saxophonist players Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh as pillars in the band. And the very man, Warne Marsh has surely given Line Up’s musicians considerable nourishment over the years. In the 80′s the trumpeter in Line Up, Torgrim Sollid, collaborated closely with Marsh. The collaboration resulted in two albums, “Warne Marsh in Norway” and “For the Time Being”. This last album which came in 1987 was the absolutely last album the cool jazz player released. The album was recorded three months before he died that same year. The saxophonist in Line Up, Jimmy Halperin, recorded the album “Back Home” together with Marsh in 1986. He is also clearly influenced by Marsh’s sound, his lively and technically very demanding playing.

Improvisations. The collaboration between the Norwegian Sollid and the American Halperin is one of Line Up’s greates merits. Lennie Tristano was the very first player who gave his musicians the message to let themselves go, in the course of both parallel and triple improvisations. Indeed the musicians in Line Up do not discredit this tradition. It is intensely gripping to hear how Sollid and Halperin set out in different directions while they manage to complement each other. Just listen to how these two in Irving Berlin’s standard “How deep is the ocean”. It becomes even cooler when the group’s leader and bass player, Thomas Winther Andersen, creeps stealthily in on lithe basefeet with guitarist Håkon Storm-Mathisen on his heals. Neither does the very recognized Dutch drummer John Engels, discredit the tradition with his minimalistic and very precise playing. But he is also given much more freedom to contribute than for example Tristano would have permitted.

On the whole, Line Up embraces a large spectrum with their highly varied playing. From Halperin’s “An odd eel”, which is cool jazz at its most jagged and abstract to the lovely and dreamy version of Bobb Haggard and Johnny Burke’s standard “What’s new” where the wind guys give once again a good performance. Cool jazz is evidently not an unambiguous term. Fortunately.

Bjørn Olav Nordahl
” Dagens Næringsliv – Lørdag”
No. 7 – year 110 – Week 19 January 1999

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In this style, the album opens with Winther Andersen’s arrangement of Jerome Kern’s “Long Ago And Far Away”. The underlying number behind the harmony patterns is not always so up to date as here, something which will trace the sounds to small guessing games, and a particular titbit is “An Odd Lee”, which is a back to front version of one of bepop’s final apprentice examinations, here performed by the trio Halperin, Winther Andersen and Engels. The project is carried out in grand style, with eminent solo performances. Not least I liked the fine, round, steady bass sounds of the band’s leader, and Storm-Mathisen has some really perfect guitar solos, to be judged in a number you certainly (?) will discover builds on patterns of the good old “Sweet Georgia Brown”.

With that we are once more in “the music’s cycle”, the question is what actually is “new”, or if the new profoundly seen is a cultural recycling of something old. In my eyes it is the quality of the result which is crucial, whatever label you attach to it. The year’s first two jazz albums illustrate this in their own eminent ways.

Roald Helgheim

Dagsavisen – Sunday 10 January 1999
Jazz on Sunday

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