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The Jens Wendelboe Big Band: Fresh Heat
by Edward Blanco
A superb follow-up to his well-received Inspirations, Vol. 1 (Rosa, 2010) ensemble excursion, veteran trombonist, band leader, and award-winning Norwegian composer/arranger, Jens Wendelboe unleashes a little Fresh Heat from The Jens Wendleboe Big Band. The disc features contemporary interpretations of classic compositions by trumpeter Clifford Brown, saxophonist Joe Henderson, and bassist Steve Swallow, along with several originals. Wendelboe--who grew up listening to the energetic sounds of the pop group Blood, Sweat & Tears (of which he is now a member), ...
Continue ReadingBig Crazy Energy New York Band: Inspirations Vol. 1
by Raul d'Gama Rose
The key word in the name of trombonist Jens Wendelboe's band for Inspirations, “Big Crazy Energy New York Band," is “energy." If there is one thing that there is a surfeit of--and there is much to cheer about here--it is vim and verve. The other unusual and welcome aspect of the record is that it consists of original charts and charts by other composers that are not heard on big band records, avoiding a tendency to tread the tried and ...
Continue ReadingJens Wendelboe's Big Crazy Energy New York Band: Inspirations, Vol. 1
by Jakob Baekgaard
Whenever Norwegian-born trombonist, composer, and arranger Jens Wendelboe starts working with his Big Crazy Energy New York Band, there's a rock-solid guarantee that it won't be boring. With uncompromising energy and an impeccable flair for picking tunes that will make his band swing like mad cats on the prowl, Wendelboe serves up his very own funkified version of contemporary big band jazz on Inspirations, Vol. 1. Billy Cobham's “Pleasant Pheasant" is an invitation to the dance floor ...
Continue ReadingJens Wendelboe: Crazy Energy Jazz Quartet / Get Crazy
by Jack Bowers
Norwegian trombonist Jens Wendelboe, who loves to “get crazy” by exploring various Jazz formats and sounds from swing to funk, Jazz–rock to fusion, motors straight down the middle of the road on the first of these two discs by his Crazy Energy Quartet, playing, for the most part, songs from the archives of popular and Jazz standards in a sinuously fluent manner that comes closest, perhaps, among his contemporaries to Carl Fontana (or a lower–voiced Bill Watrous, one of whose ...
Continue ReadingJens Wendelboe Big Crazy Energy Band: Volume 1 / Volume 2
by Jack Bowers
These releases by Norwegian trombonist Jens Wendelboe’s appropriately named Big Crazy Energy Band date from 1991–92, and they show again that while Wendelboe is an excellent Jazz composer/arranger, he is never one to take himself or the music too seriously, sprucing up his works with all manner of modern contrivances and conferring on them such highly descriptive names as “Fanfare and Punk (for the Monkey and the Monk).” There is some overlap, as Elisabeth Moberg sings “We Need Us All” ...
Continue ReadingJens Wendelboe Big Band / New York Big Band: Lone Attic / Letter from New York
by Jack Bowers
These discs could well be subtitled “Jens Wendelboe: The Early Years,” as both were recorded in the mid–’80s, the second as the (still relatively youthful) Norwegian–based trombonist/composer was completing work on a master’s degree in composition from the Manhattan School of Music. They may have been intended as LPs (the digital revolution was then in its embryonic stage) which would explain the relatively brief playing times (40:02, 48:36). Wendelboe’s compositions (he wrote and arranged everything on both discs) are good–humored ...
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