Globe Unity Orchestra 40th Anniversary

last year’s 40th Anniversary concert of the Globe Unity Orchestra gets reviewed.

Four decades ago a band hit the stage of the Berlin Jazz Festival and caused a sensation. Alexander von Schlippenbach’s composition, Globe Unity, was the first time the precepts of free jazz had been applied in an orchestral setting. The name of the composition became the name of an orchestra, and in Novermber 2006, the Berlin Jazz Festival presented the 40th anniversary concert of the Globe Unity Orchestra to a sold-out house.

Globe Unity’s concerts, typically seventy-five minute non-stop continua of high-intensity musics, invariably leave no room for neutral reactions. Their Berlin 1966 and Chicago 1987 concerts left press opinion divided into either love or perplexity tempered with active dislike. During the two concerts this commentator has heard (Lisbon 2005 and Berlin 2006), the initial audience reserve was rendered into palpably engaged enthusiasm as the music evolved. It seems to take a while for an audience to get into the variegated swing of things but the Globe Unity Orchestra possesses a transcendent stage personality that draws listeners into the musical experience.