If I play something over and over again, my performance gets worse and worse. This statement by Cor Fuhler, the pianist of Monitor, describes a way of dealing with written material which goes back to Dylan and Davis, but still produces fresh, contemporary music. Last year, clarinetist and alto saxophonist Michael Moore released a CD with an almost identical cast of musicians. Bering with Fred Hersch on piano and Mark Helias on bass, a tranquil mix of standards and compositions of his own reminiscent of Jimmy Guiffres trio. Monitor, which Moore recorded with musicians from his adopted hometown, Amsterdam, with Tristan Honsinger on cello and Cor Fuhler on piano, organ and the self-made keyolin, could be the successor of Bering and starts with similiar calm, with Moores muted, precise clarinet over the mellifluous strings. Then, and this is where Monitor gets exciting, things start to take on a different pace. The cello ceases to sound the way it should and becomes rasping and capricious, an organ emerges from the dark as if commanded by Sun Ra and a completely different breed of sounds flock out from Moores clarinet. Finally, after almost an hour of pleasurable wandering between composition and anarchy, the journey ends with the sweet sounds of the composed piece Barium. Monitor contains many references to Moores other projects, to Clusone 3, which has meanwhile ceased to exist, to the ICP Orchestra, to the groups of Maarten Altena and Gerry Hemingway. The central element of the CD is certainly the interaction with his fellow performers: Cor Fuhler, the born agitator (Whitehead) permanently provides new impulses, Hossinger, who has worked with many musicians from the world of improvisation, from Derek Bailey to Cecil Taylor, can make his cello do the most astonishing things, but always to serve the spirit of the music, never out of self-indulgence. And then there is Michael Moore, whose sound is so evocative of Paul Desmond and Jimmy Guiffre. Pitting the mellow timbre of the clarinet against two whimsical string instruments, that was the basic idea of the Monitor group. A further idea was to fix one melody line and have the other two instruments improvise along. The musicians dont see that idea as a dogma, however. They play together to make music in which the listening experience is more important than anything else.