Chris Speed

Since their founding in the late 1990s, The Claudia Quintet has walked a unique path in contemporary jazz. Unlike most jazz ensembles where the particular musicians may come and go, drummer, composer and leader John Hollenbeck always wanted Claudia to be a 'band' with a sound not only determined by the compositions and the instrumentation, but with the actual players who perform the music.

This CD demonstrates that smartly constructed compositions can have a captivating atmosphere and be a lot of fun at the same time. Henning Sieverts draws on the immense possibilities of the systematic and masterfully exploits these possibilities. With his ear attuned to continual change, Sieverts has made subtle use of symmetric material in the pieces on this CD.

The humorously titled Royal Toast is the fifth album from the Claudia Quintet, percussionist and composer John Hollenbeck's longstanding five-piece that is—in the eternal words of Duke Ellington—a band "beyond category." Eradicating the tenuous boundary lines between idioms, Hollenbeck and company draw on ethnic traditions, free jazz, contemporary composition and progressive rock in their multifac