Swiss musician Roland Dahinden is not your typical trombonist. Equally at home in New Music, Jazz and Improvisation, he is a favorite interpreter of Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Christian Wolff and Alvin Lucier, as well as being acclaimed for performances in the trombone/piano duo with Hildegard Kleeb. On disc, Dahinden is well known for his Hat Art recording devoted to Cage and Wolff. This disc is the first release of his own compositions and interpretations of John Coltrane’s classic Naima and Anthony Braxton’s Composition 136.

To quote Kyle Gann’s liner notes for this disc: “This music isn’t a combination of jazz and classical forms, or something in-between, but a true hybrid. The striking roughness of the timbre, the studied casualness of the rhythmic momentum, remove the music from any feeling of classical performance. The ghost of jazz wanders in during the more frenetic trombone and saxophone moments, but never for long. Dahinden offers a kind of frozen vernacular, an offhand, indigenous style of musical speech caught and abstracted on the canvas of time.”

Free Lines, part one (Roland Dahinden) 30:25
Naima (John Coltrane) 7:10
Composition 136 (Anthony Braxton) 16:30
Free Lines, part two (Roland Dahinden) 19:40

Roland Dahinden, tenor and alto trombones
Anthony Braxton, alto and sopranino saxes
Joe Fonda, bass
Art Fuller, drums