“(…) It was a musical adventure, as inspiring as one could wish for when alert jazz musicians meet like-minded people who all have enough experience in spontaneously responding to one another. At times, however, also as unfinished and full of holes as it cannot help but be when dispensing with routine musicianship and meticulous elaboration. Yet a refreshingly anarchic spirit prevailed when the ensemble, in extended sessions, stirred together its individual sound conceptions into an absurd stylistic mix in which the chiseled avant-garde arabesques of Wiesbaden pianist Uwe Oberg or the cantankerous melismas of violinist Harald Kimmig rubbed so iridescently against the splintery rhythm & blues phrases of American electric guitarist Eugene Chadbourne and the freely floating percussion patterns of Imogen Gleichauf and her two drumming colleagues Bülent Ates and Uwe Martin.

At times, the unconventional big band shrank in size, for instance for an original solo by Corinna Danzer on Charles Mingus’ famous homage to tenor saxophonist Lester Young: ‘Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat’. One could best swing along lustfully, however, with the four-brothers-and-sisters saxophone sound of Corinna Danzer, Ulrike Schwarz, Jochen Rissler, and Michael Bossong, appropriately supported in bizarre fashion by tuba player Carl Ludwig Hübsch, who transformed David Murray’s subtly primitive street ballad ‘Red Car’ into a vital jump number. One should really have had to dance to that. Perhaps next time, if there is a next time for the Permanent Vacation Orchestra at all.”