Kenny Wheeler :

‘Deer Wan’

(Kenny Wheeler, trumpet, flugelhorn; Jan Garbarek, tenor, soprano; John Abercrombie, guitar, mandolin; Dave Holland, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums)

Deer Wan, Kenny Wheeler, 1977

IC: Kenny Wheeler, with Jan Gabarek, John Abercrombie, from the record 'Deer Wan' which is one of my favourite records. The feeling on 'Deer Wan' is phenomenal: there's a track in 6/4 where the feeling is simply amazing. What can I say? Kenny is one of the great original trumpeters playing today; he's like Art Farmer, he cannot help being himself, and he's so completely different from any other self, he's a complete original. He's a giant of the trumpet technically as well as emotionally. People said of Miles that he made a virtue out of his shortcomings and became very original - I don't know whether that's true actually! - and with Kenny, there are certain things he can't do very well; he can't really play bebop, which is a string of even quavers when you're soloing. He doesn't do that so well, so he does it in a different way; they're not even, they're uneven, and out of this comes his originality. But he's one of the greatest trumpeters playing today, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most original. The emotional range of his work may be narrow but it's very deep, and actually it's better to be narrow and deep than wide and shallow...