muzycy:
Dave Douglas: trumpet
Brad Schoeppach: guitar
Jim Black: drums

Editor's info:
Constellations is a new set of songs written and arranged for the trio. It was recorded in mid tour, and so has a different, perhaps more live, character . . . Many thanks go to Brad and Jim for their dedication and commitment to the music. They are two of the finest listeners around, and in our three years as a trio, we've deve loped split-second reaction times and true fluidity be tween roles of soloist and accompanist. The main thing is that we've integrated our own sound into the many materials presented"
Dave Douglas


All About Jazz, 12/2009
When hatOLOGY put it out back in summer 2009, pianist Horace Tapscott's mother lode of groove, The Dark Tree, originally released in 1991, looked like a serious contender for best reissue of the year. It's still a player, but so too is trumpeter Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio's Constellations, which slips under the wire at the eleventh hour.
First released in 1995, Constellations catches Douglas on the cusp of elevation to international downtown fame, and Tiny Bell's guitarist, Brad Shepik (then still known as Brad Schoeppach), and drummer, Jim Black, were close behind on their own trajectories. Constellations was a shared calling card and, 15 years later, it still sounds like a blast of fresh air.

Douglas had formed Tiny Bell as a vehicle for exploring European song forms, and the group's debut, The Tiny Bell Trio (Songlines, 1993), was centered on pieces by French, Hungarian and German composers. By February 1995, when Constellations was recorded in the Radio DRS studio in Zurich, Switzerland mid-way through a European tour, the group was including a greater proportion of originals in its repertoire. Six of the nine tracks on the album are by Douglas, with Herbie Nichols, Georges Brassens and Robert Schumann contributing the rest. Douglas' tunes retain a distinctly European resonance, a non-literalist mix of predominantly Spanish and Balkan infl.......
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To bez wątpienia jeden ważniejszych albumów jazzowych lat 90.
Gdy tez ceniony dzisiaj trębacz w 1991 roku powoływał do zycia The Tiny Bell Trio, nikt nie przypuszczał, że oto rodzi się jedna z najciekawszych jazzowch formacji dekady. Zespół pozostawił po sobie cztery albumy, z których 'Constellations' wydaje sie być ich szczytowym osiągnięciem.
Nagrań dokonano w 1995 roku w studio radiowym DRS w Zurychu.
Własne kompozycje lidera skonfrontowane zostały z utworami Herbie Nicholsa, Georges�a Brassensa i Roberta Schumanna. Efekt jest znakomity, pomimo wydawałoby się niewielkiego, triowego składu [trąbka, elektryczna gitara i perkusja] na płycie słyszymy echa bałkańskich brassowych big bandów i roztańczonych i zadymionych zamtuzów śródziemnomorskich miast portowych.
Wspaniała synteza jazzu i bałkańskiego etno okraszonego iście amerykańskim humorem spod znaku późnego Franka Zappy.
autor: Piotr Szukała