Album Description
Colin Towns work for the NDR Bigband has been performed worldwide from China to the Chicago Jazz Festival where they were hailed by audience and critics as the outstanding success. This partnership shows the results of a unique and powerful collaboration spanning 13 years. The unique and highly treasured NDR Bigband from Hamburg have worked with many great musicians including Wayne Shorter, Chet Baker, Albert Mangelsdorff and Vince Mendoza. The band is packed with soloists such as Nils Landgren, Christof Lauer, Claus Stötter and Vladyslav Sendecki and were recently referred to as the jazz equivalent of the Ensemble Modern. Lend Me Your Ears features the whole band and covers a huge variety of contemporary writing (all original compositions by Colin Towns) for a large group: from middle eastern (Storyman) through to electronics (Lend Me Your Ears) to chamber pieces (Voyage Around Vladyslav, a suite to highlight the incredible talents of pianist Vladyslav Sendecki); fun (Franks Big Boogie Machine); elegant beauty (A Kiss For Eternity); dance (Tango Teaser) and wild (Ghost Train Through The Chaos Theory). Always with melodic twists and hooks and never alienating.