Ensembles » The Sabir Mateen Ensemble

The Sabir Mateen Ensemble

• Sabir Mateen  - Tenor & Alto Saxophones, Flute, Piccolo, Bb & Alto Clarinets
• Raymond A. King - Piano
• Jason Kao Hwang - Violin, Violia
• Shaiu-Shu Yu or Daniel Levin - Cello
• Jane Wang - Bass, Cello
• Michael Wimberly - Drums & Percussion

Formerly known as "The Sabir Quintet" and "The Sabir Mateen Quartet" this band was formed in 1998 and has played all over the U.S. and Canada. The band is looking for the first European Tour and has recorded as a Quintet. This is the only Mateen’s band to feature a Piano.
The Jubilee Ensemble (Big Band) is an expansion of the Sabir Mateen Ensemble (See Jubilee Ensemble).

Vision Festival 2010: Sabir Mateen Ensemble

By John Sharpe, published at AAJ: July 29, 2010
Sabir Mateen’s seven piece group combined strings and percussion in a talented selection capable of formidable firepower. A percussive duet by Warren Smith and Michael Wimberly made for a deceptively understated opening, before expectation was fulfilled as the whole band hit. Splendid as this was it served to accentuate the uncharacteristically muddy sound when the massed ranks opened up in unison. Mateen orchestrated the band from stage left, cueing ensembles, soloists and governing the overall dynamics. Although packing impeccable free jazz credentials, the reedman also brought in composed material, which furnished firm footing amidst the swirling collective maelstrom.

Mateen sought to engineer contrasts, at one point stilling the onslaught to allow a Daniel Levin’s cello solo around which the band’s lines gradually coalesced. He drew a range of textures from the possibilities innate within the group. A double cello section for Daniel Levin and Jane Wang, with Smith on marimba was a prime example of the exotic combinations which could emerge from flow. But the default was the leader going for broke on his arsenal of reeds, with supporting figures erupting from within the ensemble. As one such passage subsided for a Wang bass solo, Mateen again signalled his intended juxtapositions by overlaying a melancholy theme.

The individual components were impressive. Pianist Raymond A. King proved another in the pantheon of the undersung, little known outside his native Philadelphia, but inventive in his freewheeling comping while wildly explosive in his featured spots. Incidentally King’s artistry was not confined to the keyboard, as it was he who also designed the stage set, featuring paired portraits of Festival dedicatees along with other avant icons such as Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor. Jason Kao Hwang plucked and bowed to great effect, while Wang made manifest her facility for extended technique, bouncing a mallet off her strings and even off the bridge itself. As a soloist, Mateen, was peerless, his alto clarinet revelling in nasal honks, while on tenor saxophone, probably his strongest horn, he flowed from the guttural depths up to falsetto register and beyond.

There was an organic quality to the music at its best with a feel of inevitable development, like Mateen’s clarinet excursion with the strings extemporizing a fragmented counterpoint, which belied the more tentative transitions. Finally a mournful air for the leader’s tenor and Levin’s cello morphed into a heartfelt saxophone cushioned by the strings to finish. Sadly the poor sound meant that the promise inherent in the line up was never quite confirmed.