Jazz Articles about Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble

Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble: Proverbs for Sam

by Dan McClenaghan
August 9, 2008

Bill Cole has such a typical American name that those unfamiliar with his music could be forgiven for expecting to hear quintessential American jazz on his recorded offerings. Cole, a rare breed of jazz artist who has focused his efforts on uniting Eastern sounds with the American art form, is a musical seeker who has, over the better part of four decades, mastered an array of non-traditional, non-Western instruments: the Chinese Sona, Australian Digeridoo, Indian Shenai, Ghanaian flute, and Indian ...

Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble: Seasoning the Greens

by Dan McClenaghan
October 14, 2002

Jazz fans may be less prone to musical ethnocentricities and preconceived ideas about song than, say, those folks who go out and buy Madonna CDs, but that restrictive mindset lingers.Bill Cole is out to shake things up a bit. Cole has been studying and playing a number of eastern double reed instruments for over forty years, and what he is offering up on his Seasoning of the Greens is something of a sonic world tour, with a solid ...

Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble: Live in Greenfield, Massachusets November 20, 1999

by Michael A. Parker
November 1, 2001

It takes a while to get a grip on a recording like this. After having spent such “a while” absorbing this sprawling 2CD set, I’m willing to claim that this is one of the most important documents of Jazz in the past ten years. It represents a virtuosic synthesis of composition and improvisation, and of conventional and unconventional timbres. Each of the participants is a seasoned improviser comfortable with a range of Jazz aesthetics, from the accessible to the abstract. ...

Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble: 11/20/99

by Micah Holmquist
September 1, 2000

11/20/99 sounds strange. The music utilizes influences from not only the jazz tradition but also from the music of Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania to tell at least part of the story of the African American experience. Bill Cole and his Untempered Ensemble never resolve this incongruity but they don’t really need to. The music speaks for itself with its wonderful and hopeful tones that outbursts of violence and moments of uncertainty occasionally break through.

11/20/99 is a two ...