Celebration puts the double bass of Arild Andersen, part of the sound of ECM for more than four decades, at the front of a big band for the first time. With the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra under Tommy Smith, he plays six pieces associated with the label, each newly arranged for the occasion, recorded live in Glasgow. It is a large-ensemble look back at music by Dave Holland, Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, Trygve Seim, Keith Jarrett and Andersen himself.
The idea came in 2009, when the label's 40th anniversary prompted tributes around the world. Smith, who had founded the orchestra in 1995 and played for years in Andersen's trio, proposed a special concert with the bassist as principal soloist. Andersen chose strongly melodic themes that would sound good on the bass. Behind him he wanted a full rhythm section: a second bassist, Calum Gourlay, drummer Alyn Cosker and pianist Steve Hamilton. The concert was recorded in October 2010 at Stevenson Hall, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, by Mark McKellen. It was mixed with Jan Erik Kongshaug, and Manfred Eicher produced the album.
The arrangers come from the circle around Smith and the orchestra. Christian Jacob opens with Holland's May Dance, from the first Gateway album, a tight chart in odd metres that Andersen says is "right in your face straight away". Makoto Ozone, who played with Smith in Gary Burton's quartet in the 1980s, turns Corea's Crystal Silence into something close to a bass concerto, with quiet passages broken by full-band eruptions. The centrepiece is Independency, Part 4, from the suite first heard on the trio album Live At Belleville. Mike Gibbs arranges it sparsely, leaving Andersen room to move from bowed bass through shifting chords to free exchanges with Smith's tenor and then into swing. Smith himself arranges Part 1 of Garbarek's Molde Canticle, and Geoff Keezer closes the set with Jarrett's My Song, played by Andersen in double-stops close to the melody.
Roger Thomas, in BBC Music Magazine in 2012, heard a programme moving from "elegantly warped swing to upscaled chamber music" and praised the orchestra for avoiding big-band heaviness. In The Jazzmann the same year Ian Mann wrote that "the imaginative arrangements and superb musicianship put a fresh slant on the chosen material". Andersen described the project as developing "like a little history of music on ECM". The charts often move far from the originals: Seim and trombonist Øyvind Brække filled Ulrikas Dans with new counterpoint lines.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2259, first released in May 2012.
