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| Swinging Europe - EYJO on tour to China in May 2007 by Ib Jensen  What the world needs now is more swinging and less skirmishing; long live Swinging Europe and the EYJO! With these words of praise Jack Bowers, writing for the webmag All about Jazz pays tribute to the EYJO in his review of their latest CD from last year and continues: What a great (one is almost tempted to say civilized) idea: an orchestra composed of young musicians from European countries, touring the Continent for three weeks and presenting a series of concerts under the aegis of the Danish-based organization Swinging Europe and the European Broadcasting Union. Each year, new musicians, composers and conductors are singled out as mentors." title="Swinging Europe - EYJO on tour to China in May 2007">Lars Möller fronts this years EYJO on a 3-week tour which will include China."What the world needs now is more swinging and less skirmishing; long live Swinging Europe and the EYJO!" With these words of praise Jack Bowers, writing for the webmag "All about Jazz" pays tribute to the EYJO in his review of their latest CD from last year and continues: "What a great (one is almost tempted to say "civilized") idea: an orchestra composed of young musicians from European countries, touring the Continent for three weeks and presenting a series of concerts under the aegis of the Danish-based organization Swinging Europe and the European Broadcasting Union. Each year, new musicians, composers and conductors are singled out as mentors." On the 7th of May - 18 professional musicians, all under the age of 30, will meet together in Jutland for an intensive 4 days of rehearsing. The compositions are written solely by the Danish bandleader Lars Möller and will be performed on a 3-week tour that will take them through Denmark, Germany, Sweden and China. The tour will end in Brande on the 26th of May and will be recorded by the Danish Radio (DR) to be used for broadcasting worldwide and eventually a CD. Whilst the band rehearses, 30 EBU jazz producers will hold their annual meeting to assess the bands accomplishments and to discuss new plans. DR is this year's co-producer and therefore it falls to DR's jazz editors and the jazz producer- representative in the EBU, Morten Vilhelm, to describe the year's conductor and composer: "Lars Möller (tenor saxophonist, composer and band leader) is 40 years old. His education encompasses, amongst others, studying under Dave Liebman, the BFA Jazz New School in New York, studying abroad in India and taking compositional studies under Bob Brookemyer. For the last 20 years he has played an active roll on the Danish jazz scene leading his own groups, and as a member of i.e. Sound of Choice Ensemble, Katrine Madsen Quintet, "Composer in residence" with the Danish Radio Big Band and is Artistic Director of The Orchestra. Möller is regarded as one of the most all-round musicians of his generation, which is reflected in his compositions for a wide range of ensembles. He has recorded under his own name since 1988 and in 2006 received the prestigious three year work grant from the Danish Arts Foundation for, among other things music he composed for the singer, Jomi Massage, for the CD: "Skandinaviske Klagesange" commissioned by the DR Big Band." The two people behind the whole project are Erik Moseholm and Birgit Vinge. This will be the 10th time that they have organized the "Swinging Europe" concept. In 1998 they commissioned Pierre Dorge from Denmark to conduct, followed by Francois Théberge (France), Helge Albin (Sweden), Benjamin Herman (The Netherlands), Django Bates (UK), Bruno Tomasso (Italy) and Pedro Moreira (Portugal). Then in 2005 the EBU Big Band and "Swinging Europe" were merged, forming what is now known as the EBU-European Youth Jazz Orchestra (EBU-EYJO). Since then the EBU's jazz producers have taken turns in choosing the composers and conductors – Vic Vogel (Canada) 2005 and Barrie Forgie (UK) 2006. The project is supported partly by the EU-commission, Central Jutland Region, Ministry of Culture and the Ikast-Brande Municipality and, on top of which, this year, we will be collaborating with the Danish Cultural Institute who is the co-producer of the China tour. The European Youth Jazz Orchestra 07: Composer and conductor Lars Möller. Line-Up: Trumpets: Antonio Gecek/Croatian, Jean-Paul Estiévenart/Belgian, Novak Mijovic/Serbian, Lukas Thöni/Swiss, Brice Moscardini/French. Trombones: Magnus Wiklund/Swedish, Colm O'Hara/Irish, Scott Annison/UK, Ivan Platner/Serbian. Saxophones: Jaka Kopac/Slovenian, Maria Faust/Estonian, Chet Doxas/Canadian, Jørgen Mathisen/Norwegian, Robert Mitrega/Czech. Guitar: Durk Hijma/Dutch, Piano: Aki Rissanen/Finnish, Double bass: Stanislavs Judins/Latvian, Drums: Jonas Burgwinkel/German. The tour: 11. May: General Rehearsal at the Klovborg Kino 1-2-3, Ikast-Brande, Denmark; 12. May: Debut Concert at NIRAS, Århus, Denmark; 13. May: Flensborghus, Flensborg, Germany; 14. May: NIRAS in Allerød (+The Django d´Or awards ceremony), Denmark; 18. May: Star Live, Beijing, China; 19. May: Zhongshan Culture & Arts Center, China; 20. May: Foshan Theater, China; 23. May: Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden; 24. May: Copenhagen JazzHouse, Denmark; 25. May: Musikskolen, Herning, Denmark; 26. May: RemisenBrande, Ikast-Brande, Denmark write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Jazz News :: home page |