John Hol­len­beck – The Clau­dia Quin­tet

Formed in 1997 by com­poser, drum­mer and four-time GRAMMY nom­i­nee John Hol­len­beck, The Clau­dia Quin­tet is one of the most in­no­v­a­tive groups to spring from the cre­ativ­ity of New York’s down­town music scene. Hol­len­beck named the band for an ef­fu­sive au­di­ence mem­ber at an early show who vowed to re­turn for fu­ture per­for­mances and never did – an act which sparked the imag­i­na­tion of the drum­mer and gave him a moniker to fit the col­lec­tive en­sem­ble he en­vi­sioned. The band boasts unique in­stru­men­ta­tion and a lineup com­posed of some of the finest ex­ploratory in­stru­men­tal­ists in mod­ern jazz. The Clau­dia Quin­tet has re­mained true to its orig­i­nal mis­sion of cre­at­ing dis­tinc­tive im­pro­vi­sa­tional cham­ber music that de­fies cat­e­go­riza­tion. Over the course of eight crit­i­cally ac­claimed al­bums, the en­sem­ble has been a highly ef­fec­tive, ex­cep­tion­ally var­ied ve­hi­cle for Hol­len­beck’s music, which re­flects in­flu­ences rang­ing from jazz to cham­ber music to var­ied folk forms and Brazil­ian rhythms. The Clau­dia Quin­tet will be per­form­ing new works in cel­e­bra­tion of their lat­est re­lease “Super Pe­tite” on Cuneiform Records.

In the Clau­dia Quin­tet, Hol­len­beck has as­sem­bled a group of the fore­most in­no­va­tors in this new sound to cre­ate a pow­er­house band. They are: Matt Moran – vi­bra­phone (Slavic Soul Party, Mat Maneri, Nate Woo­ley);  Red Wierenga – ac­cor­dion (Re­spect Quar­tet, Sig­nal, Brad Lub­man); On this tour, Je­remy Viner (Steve Lehman, Tyshawn Sorey) ; Adam Hop­kins (Christo­pher Hoff­man, Matt Mitchell, Ideal Bread)

“Rig­or­ously ex­e­cuted but earth­ily groov­ing, daunt­ingly pre­cise but flecked with hearty and in­trigu­ing im­pro­vised solos, the quin­tet’s set buzzed with fresh­ness and vi­tal­ity from start to fin­ish. … For all the ob­vi­ous ef­fort and in­tel­li­gence to Hol­len­beck’s work, his songs could ul­ti­mately be straight­for­wardly emo­tional and mov­ing.”

– Peter Hum, Ot­tawa Cit­i­zen

“Super Pe­tite is like sa­vor­ing a long and lin­ger­ing feast. There is much to enjoy, con­cen­trate on, un­cover and sam­ple. The ten tracks each offer a morsel, and the full repast is oh so de­li­cious.”

–Doug Simp­son, Au­dio­phile Au­di­tion

“The bot­tom line? Every mem­ber of Clau­dia Quin­tet is a vir­tu­oso; and while that may be true, the beauty of Clau­dia Quin­tet is that it’s a col­lec­tion of five out­stand­ing play­ers whose focus is on the music, not un­nec­es­sary dis­plays of py­rotech­nics…though there was cer­tainly more than a few sparks fly­ing dur­ing their Back Stage ap­pear­ance.”

–John Kel­man, All About Jazz