This live outing, recorded by the Euro jazz supergroup Available Jelly, took place at the esteemed Bimhuis in Amsterdam in June 1996. The band, featuring Wolter Weirbos, Michael Moore, Eric Boeren, Tobias Delius, Ernst Glerum, and Michael Vatcher, is one of the tightest ensembles on the European circuit and this date offers evidence of that in spades. In a program composed mostly of Moore originals with a Madagascar folk song and an Ellington/Bobby Troup number (The Feeling of Jazz) tossed in for both emotional and humorous effect, Available Jelly offers a view of the new European arrangement and harmony. Moore is first and foremost a modern formalist musician for whom the elements of free improv, jazz eclecticism, traditionalism, and vanguard classical music are equal informants on his compositional vision. Jazz's swing and rhythmic cadences color everything here, as when things get looser and wilder as they do on Boppard, with a contrapuntal front line between Weirbos and Moore's clarinet playing, accompanied only by the strident percussive mischievousness of Vatcher. As the rest of the band enters, a more elegant bop front line augmented by Delius and Boeren enters the fray and brings to bear not only a kind of striated harmonic convergence of brass and reeds in the contrapuntal exchanges, but a rhythmic swing and sway that evokes everything from Benny Carter to George Lewis -- not bad architecture if you can build it. The program continues with the outrageous of absurdist humor being offset by gloriously tight playing, racy harmonics, and spirited soloing and melodic invention -- Elmo, Big Piece, and Boeren's Cowboy Henk, are brilliant examples. This is a live date that is tighter than most studio sessions and contains the warmth and spontaneity that signifies such affairs. Once again, despite the ridiculousness of its name, Available Jelly offers a startling, wondrous vision for the future of jazz in general and European jazz in particular. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi

1		Nilentika/Tazana Kely
2		The Feeling of Jazz
3		Boppard
4		Uninhabited Island
5		Elmo
6		Putto
7		Big Piece
8		Cowboy Henk
9		The Village of the Virgins
10		Happy Camp

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