Uri Caine Ensemble Plays Mozart

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Pianist-composer Uri Caine is acclaimed for his jazz adaptations of classical heavyweights such as Mahler, Bach and Beethoven. For Mozart's 250th birthday, Anne Delecole and Sergio Mela from the University of Mexico City commissioned Uri Caine to adapt Mozart's works. Caine accepts, and chooses movements for Uri Caine Ensemble Plays Mozart (Winter & Winter) from celebrated instrumental works such as Symphonies 40 and 41, the Clarinet Quintet, the Sinfonia concert ante, the Rondo alla turca & arias and a duet from Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute.

Just as a theatre director takes on Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" or Goethe's "Faust" so as to create a new, personal staging, so Uri Caine engages with Mozart - without any ambition to rediscover the original sound. In his staging, improvisation plays the lead role, and he gives his musicians (Joyce Hammann: violin; Chris Speed: clarinet; Ralph Alessi: trumpet; Nguyn L: electric guitar; DJ Olive: turntables; Drew Gress: double bass; Jim Black: drums) who are perfectly attuned to one other, lots of space to develop on their own. He knows all the ensemble members from important collaborations in previous years, reworking Wagner (with Joyce Hammann), and Mahler (with Chris Speed, Ralph Alessi, DJ Olive and Jim Black), up to the Jazz Trio Live at the Village Vanguard (with Drew Gress); only the French guitarist Nguyn Le (of Vietnamese origin) is making his debut with Caine on this album.

"I like musicians who think of themselves as improvisers, " Caine says. "I want there to be a certain feeling coming out of the music, connecting it to other cultures. Most musicians today don't want to be constricted."

He may well be on to something. Uri Caine has shaken off literalism and restored to ordinary musicians the rights of improvisation and interpretation that they enjoyed in Mozart's time. Most may be too timid to grasp the challenge, but those who do will be rewarded with the broadening of horizons that, in both classics and jazz, have been narrowing for decades. At last, an artist dares to adapt classical music, interpreting and improvising on it in a personal way, without any danger of compliance, but extracting what had seemed hidden, projecting it, and putting it a new context.

On January 27, 2007 in honor of Mozart's birthday, renegade pianist Uri Caine will premiere his Mozart Project featuring forward-thinking musicians dually proficient in classical and jazz styles. The prodigious Matt Haimovitz (cello), Chris Speed (clarinet) and Drew Gress (bass) will join Uri Caine in exploring new strategies to adapt the maestro's music. In addition, on January 30th, 2007 The University of Chicago Presidential Fellows in the Arts Program present Uri Caine in a concert featuring his own extraordinary arrangements and reimaginings of music by Mozart and Mahler, with Joyce Hammann on violin, Moran Katz on clarinet, Ralph Alessi on trumpet, Drew Gress on bass, and Ben Perowski on drums.

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