French-Japanese violist Frantz Loriot use to keep a little notebook with him, in which he writes all the musical ideas coming to his mind. One day, he noticed there was sufficient material to work with. He had a conversation with Swiss arranger and composer for big bands Manuel Perovic and the decision of founding an ensemble capable to play jazz with the pop song format and an experimental approach was made. And here it is the Notebook Large Ensemble, formed by musicians of five different countries with very distinct backgrounds. Why the combination of multiple genres and styles, you may ask. Well, why not? Even Iannis Xenakis said that putting boundaries between music idioms «makes no sense». Himself with a long experience in orchestras (lead by David S. Ware, Anthony Braxton, Barre Phillips, Joelle Léandre, Joachim Badenhorst, Pascal Niggenkemper and others), Loriot wanted to explore two old, but also always new, challenges: how to improvise when there’s a large number of musicians involved (10 in this case), and how to write and arrange music for improvisers? The answers are in “Urban Furrow” and they’re much, much more than convincing…

All compositions by Frantz Loriot except To HR by Frantz Loriot & Manuel Perovic and lyrics by Yuko Oshima

Recorded live at Moods (Zurich, CH) on April 15th 2014 by Björn Müller / Mixed at Bunker Studio (Brooklyn, NY, USA) by Aaron Nevezie and mastered at Park West Studios (Brooklyn , NY, USA) by Jim Clouse / All field-recodings by Frantz Loriot
Produced by Frantz Loriot / Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul / Design by Travassos / Band picture by Zsofia Kovacs