Kathrine Windfeld – Salt Sea Atlas

After two remarkable CDs (reviewed right here), one featuring a big band and the other a smaller ensemble, she now presents four different ensembles: a 17-piece band, an 11-piece band, a septet, and a quintet. Four configurations in which the bandleader does not systematically rely on her economically crystalline piano playing but, here and there, is content to simply conduct.

Windfeld has sometimes been compared to her American predecessor Maria Schneider, but this connection is becoming less and less obvious. On the one hand, because Schneider never performs with her ensembles; on the other, because Windfeld isn’t limited to the big band format and her compositional style could be described as more “European” than Schneider’s. What brings them together, however, is a masterful command of timbre and sonic textures.

Since she has been working with the same Scandinavian and Polish musicians for years, one senses that Windfeld composes with them in mind, and they are indeed fully at the service of the arrangements the bandleader presents to them.

These are lush arrangements in which rhythm plays a central role alongside sounds that are skillfully orchestrated together. Some tracks with a tenderly dreamlike atmosphere alternate with others that are more dynamic, where the big band’s “punch” comes through in a highly compelling way. And while several themes do without solos, those in which a few instrumentalists take turns playing feature inventive and utterly beautiful melodic lines, in perfect harmony with the collective background.

Kathrine Windfeld confirms here that she is one of Europe’s leading voices in composition and arrangement. And we hope that one day she will be able to perform her compositions on French stages—compositions that, as we sense through her studio recordings, must hold unprecedented beauty in live performances, of which this CD offers a remarkably enticing preview.