SONGS YOU’LL LIKE A LOT | John Hollenbeck

These words have been brought to you by Jacques Swartz, Chronicler of John. Jacques would like to reaffirm for all interested parties that he is not, in fact, Mr. John Hollenbeck, nor is he Mr. Hollenbeck’s imaginary alter-ego, but rather a fully discrete being in his own right.All queries, complaints, kind remarks and general feedback regarding this blog may be directed to Jacques at johnhollenwebpr@gmail.com

Dear friends and lovers: The time is now. John Hollenbeck’s latest record, _Songs I Like A Lot_, has at last been released into the wild. John’s latest mad creation contains covers of songs by everyone from Ornette Coleman to Imogen Heap, and costars Theo Bleckmann, Kate McGarry, Gary Versace, and The Frankfurt Radio Big Band, all stewing and steeping together as they chase down new angles on old favorites. You can buy it as a compact disc via BANDCAMP or as a very compact indeed digital-only download via iTUNES. The choice, power, and delight, are all yours!

Still reading, yet somehow still undecided? Luckily a few kind fellows have taken it upon themselves to vet the record on your behalf.

Cliff Belamy at the Herald Sun has already pre-Liked It Alot, as did Dan Deluca of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, who remarked that it was “another display of his great work with a large ensemble.” Meanwhile Jeff Simon at the Buffalo News unabashedly Loves It Alot; his review calls it, “quite simply, the most beautiful jazz disc I have heard in months.” He also deigns to call John a “percussionist and brilliant, wildly eclectic jazz composer and orchestra leader,” the last part of which conjured delightful images of John in white tie, tails and kid gloves, mugging like Bernstein and flailing drumstick-batons in arrhythmic time. For a true Extended Analysis you can read this article from John Kelman at AllAboutJazz, praising John’s “unerring ability to find good music in any corner, nook or cranny, turning it into something personal without ever losing what made it so good in the first place.”

The day is here, the time has come; the record can, nay, SHOULD be yours. Get down with Jimmy Webb like you’ve never got down with him before. Revisit the land of Pop with some drastically revisited Queen. Join the chorus of love and generally just have a ball. SONGS I LIKE A LOT awaits your ears eagerly.

THE FUTURE

With album in hand and appetite once again re-whet, you will inevitably wonder when next you can see the man himself. Well, wonder no more, and peep the following dates on the horizon:

Friday, February 1st at 8:00 PM

at Petit Faucheux in Tours, France

with JASS — Alban Darche, Samuel Blaser, Sebastien Boisseau and John Hollenbeck

Saturday, February 2nd at 7:30pm

Orchestre National de Jazz performing the program “Shut Up and Dance”

at the WDR 3 JazzFest in Cologne, Germany

WDR Funkhaus, Klaus-von-Bismarck-Saal

Details ici

Sunday, February 3rd at 8pm

at “Kulturzentrum Dieselstrasse,” Esslingen, Germany

It’s time for Junk Box, feat.

Natsuki Tamura on trumpet,

Satoko Fujii at the piano, and

John Hollenbeck on the hide-n’-metal beat bins

Details here

Thursday, February 14th at 7:30pm

at the GRAND THÉÂTRE in Lorient, France

ONJ is back performing SUAD

Detailles.

On a more extracurricular note, John joins old friends uptown in New York; to wit—

Mar 2, 2013, 8:00 PM-10:00 PM

Columbia University, Miller Theatre in New York City

Fred Hersch‘s My Coma Dreams

Check it.

Tickets here.

…looking a bit further down the road, we see John, Kate, Theo, and JHLE Take Ohio to perform SONGS I LIKE A LOT live!

Wednesday, April 3rd

Oberlin College

and

Thursday, April 4th

at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University!

IT’S BEAT TIME IT’S HOP TIME IT’S MONK TIME

Last week Meredith Monk’s ecstatic new musical-theatre work, “On Behalf of Nature,” had its premiere at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA, and it looks deeply, entrancingly rad. Get thee to this glowing and enrapt review by Mark Swed of the LA Times, which, as a bonus, features a rare FULL BODY PHOTO of John mid-sway with his fellow Monk-ites. The verdict: “Mature and magnificent Monk.” We in the East and elsewhere await her new cuckoo eagerly.