# CD review: Anders Koppel – Mulberry Street Symphony 2022: Video, CD cover

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2022/07/06/cd-review-anders-koppel-mulberry-street-symphony-2022-video-cd-cover/
- Published: 2022-07-06T09:14:06+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Danish immigrant Jacob Riis’s photojournalism book “How the Other Half Lives” 
published in 1890 documents the squalid life in New York City’s teeming Lower East
Side slums crowded with Irish, Jewish, Italian, Chinese and other newly arrived 
immigrants. The muckraking book made an immediate impression upon New York’s upper
classes and led to many reforms.**

Suburban Baby Boomer adolescents may have heard the stories from their immigrant
parents and grandparents but reading the book and seeing the photos put the experience
in sharp focus. “How the Other Half Lives” was required reading in many high schools
and colleges throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s and today may very well still be.

75 year old Danish composer Anders Koppel—himself descended from immigrant grandparents
who fled in 1907 to Denmark from Russian controlled Poland—was moved by a recent
exhibition of Riis photographs in Copenhagen to compose the 7 movement, 90 minute
long “Mulberry Street Symphony”, his 32nd symphonic work for soloists and orchestra,
each movement based on a different Riis photograph (Mr. Koppel’s name will be familiar
to fans of the late ‘60s era psychedelic rock group The Savage Rose).

Koppel composed and orchestrated the sprawling, cinematic piece but left wide open
for improvisation the trio’s input. With a rhythm section consisting of his American
friends jazz greats drummer Brian Blade and bassist Scott Colley plus his son Benjamin
on alto saxophone, why not? Plus, according to the composer’s notes Colley and his
friend Ben originally hatched the idea.

Could there be a more appropriate time than right _now_ for a cinematic musical 
work reflecting the hardships, dreams, grace and especially the courage of immigrants?

Composer Koppel uses the old, still evocative photos to paint evocative musical 
pictures in swirling soundscapes produced by the Odense Symphony Orchestra’s strings
over which the trio improvises, adding narrative structure and rhythmic solidity
to the orchestral moodscapes.

The composers son on alto sax carries and punctuates the narrative thread, often
producing a light, airy clarinet-like “eastern European” sound as it flutters and
sways over the enveloping orchestral cushion.

The 7 pieces in the order in which they are played are “Stranded in the Strange 
City”, “Minding the Baby”, “Tommy the Shoeshine Boy”, “Blind Man”, “The Last Mulberry”,“
Bandit’s Roost” and “The New House”.

The highly evocative music is fleeting, impressionistic, not locked to melody and
it never stands still. “Stranded in the Strange City” is meant to (and does) create
an overwhelming rush of sensations—awe, confusion, terror, relief— that must have
been felt by the “just off the boat” immigrants. If “Stranded in the City” is at
first too much, consider starting on side “C” with “Blind Man” (the cover image 
of the man selling pencils) and “The Last Mulberry” (a bluesy elegy to a failing
tree, finally cut down).

Each play of this “lights out is best” production amplifies the improvisational 
genius of the trio as it alternates between echoing and clearing a musical path 
for meticulously scripted orchestral underpinnings written by the older Koppel and
performed by the Odense Symphony conducted by the composer’s long time collaborator
Martin Yates. The recording occurred the day following a live performance so everyone
was well-prepared.

This project would not work as a recorded piece worthy of repeated listening were
it not superbly recorded. The sound, recorded at Carl Nielsen Hall, Odense Concert
House October 13th, 2017 is IMAX or Cinerama great.

The performance was captured to DXD audio (Digital eXtreme Definition), 352.8kHz/
32 bit on a Pyramid DAW system with Horus preamps/converters and monitored on B&
W 802D speakers. Of equal if not greater importance is the microphone configuration
used to record the orchestra: a main “Decca Tree” using 3 Danish DPA 4006 microphones
plus a pair of DPA “spot mics” for the hall. The younger Koppel’s saxophone was 
recorded with a Neumann U89 and a DPA 4011, while a U89 picked up Colley’s bass.
Blade’s drum kit was mic’d with a pair of AKG414s and DPA 4011 and 4006 microphones.

As you might imagine, the sonic picture is grand, sweeping, cinematically splendiferous,
dynamic, spacious and transportive. The Nordsø Records pressing was silent, flat
and concentric.

Two small complaints: according to the liner notes there was a “bonus track” that
must only be on a digital disc, of a “foyer performance” with the trio joined by
the composer on Hammond organ recorded following one of the live concerts. It would
have been nice to have it on a bonus 45! The other small quibble is it reads as 
if Bill Milkowski’s annotation got mangled in a few spots in the English-Danish-
English editing and translation process. No big deal though. A bigger deal is that
I’m not sure where the double vinyl gatefold set is available for purchase, but 
it’s well worth looking for and buying. It’s a piece of music made for these times.

[**New CD – 2022 – Buy from here**](https://orcd.co/qb0eebz)

![Mulberry Street Symphony - Album by Anders Koppel, Benjamin Koppel, Brian Blade,
Scott Colley, Martin Yates, Odense Symphony Orchestra | Spotify](https://i.scdn.
co/image/ab67616d0000b273b1927038712fe061863cc5bf)

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