The Claudia Quintet
Semi-Formal

"Semi-serious music by musicians who only take themselves semi-seriously"

AND CLAUDIA?
I confess, the cover did half the work: I liked them even before the record began to spin.
In the booklet and the cardboard strip, other small clues: those stockings and ankles could not betray the expectations.
And then the faces. What characters.
Yes, but Claudia? In the improbable group photo (five outfits on the least cool gang in memory), her hands are visible, intertwined, and a portion of her body in a long black dress.
Yet her name, in addition to that of the group, appears among the credits as a producer alongside leader John Hollenbeck. Who offers her his arm even in the photo.
And it's nice this way, that it remains a mystery.
Whoever Claudia is, I'm sure I would like her too.

SEMI-FORMAL: JUST SO.
Semi-formal is the third album of this atypical quintet.
The previous one, “I”, (2003) I discover was on some USA chart among the top 15 jazz albums.
So I got that one too. But I like this one more.
New York, post-anything.
Jazz? Yes, of course. But also a plausible version of current “chamber” music (how’s Claudia’s chamber?)
And then something that has to do with the nuances of a cross between a modern “progressive” attitude (on the side closer to art rock) and the less overtly hostile and claustrophobic inclinations of certain “contemporary” music.
A mess, you say?
Well, the first surprise is here.
No, really no.
No boiling, deconstructive, pretentious, and disorderly cauldron.
A game of balance, which reveals itself by calmly growing, track by track.
And which gradually abandons the more recognizable forms, becoming something else over time: piece by piece, and then within each piece. Without losing structural coherence. Each piece is an inlay of layers, of atmospheres, a refined game that always includes excellent interaction between the elements.
Oh yes, of course: what do these five gentlemen play?
John Hollenbeck, who signs all the tracks, is a percussionist with numerous projects and collaborations to his name (one among many, that with the adorable Meredith Monk: certain human types sniff each other out) Here he plays drums, percussion, piano, and keyboards.
To support him in this abundant hour of music are the winds (clarinet, tenor sax, baritone horn), an acoustic bass, and guitars, accordion, other keyboards, and a vibraphone.
Handled with skill by the other members, undoubtedly accomplished multi-instrumentalists worthy of the delicate work.
And equipped with that playful attitude that John Hollenbeck openly declares on his site.
Almost intangible at times, yet dense with tiny sounds: so it is, sometimes, the music of The Claudia Quintet.
At other times it tangles up wildly, becomes uneven and frantic, only to veer in other directions.
As I write this line, I'm in “Limp Mint”, a sort of ambient that began with the sinuous dialogue between bass and vibraphone and then, encountering the percussion, turned towards the subtle unease of the winds in a suspension between woodland and urban nocturnal, again lit with intermittent crystalline brightness.

LIGHTNESS AND ELEGANCE. THE SECRET OF AN APPARENT SIMPLICITY.
What captures me at every listening is the development of the tracks, which doesn’t rely on traps or surprises, but is a concatenation of constant, little ongoing surprises.
When it dilutes and makes the sonic texture rarefied, only to traverse it with slight timbral and rhythmic variations. Or when it proceeds by accumulation, in the collision between lines that seem to travel in opposite directions.
Even where it resorts to a nearly minimalist matrix repetition (now I’ve ended inside “Boy With a Bag and His Guardian”, splendid) there is, however, an unusual “melodic” sense crossing its fabric.
Claudia's combo seems to exercise a form of elegant controlled “abstract expressionism,” with an elusive humor that makes the stratification of fragments cohesive in an approach that might otherwise seem almost conceptual.
But let’s immediately close with the references to “contemporary” art.
Because certain references risk constituting an oversized and “heavy” frame for the picture painted by the New York quintet, which remains absolutely enjoyable.
The kind you really replay to discover the delicate yet effective balance, the expressivity that emanates from the refined attention to the sounds, their color, the blend between the electric and the acoustic ones, even in the not rare moments of energetic and restless almost free intersections.
And rediscovering the particular and brilliant writing, which makes all 13 tracks subtly concrete but almost elusive, preventing their unusual, playful and mysterious charm from being exhausted on the first listening.

In short, I really like this album.
A possible declination of that indefinable matter we still call jazz, but which spreads like a liquid assuming the most unexpected forms, in New York, has taken the guise of 5 funny gentlemen carrying a woman's name on their banner.
I'm rooting for them.
That elsewhere other trumpets may clap, other heroes bellow convulsively: here they will not be able to cover the sound of Claudia.