The authors of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings awarded the album 4 stars, stating that it "documents a group with formidable powers," and commenting: "Schweizer is very much the key element, assembling and unpicking a series of small-scale themes and ideas like some intellectual tricoteuse. Maggie Nicols's ability to break down narrative song into its constituent elements, semantic nonsense, and still leave you feeling that you've heard a story and been serenaded as well continues to amaze, as does George Lewis's ability to make even a disassembled trombone sound like the most musical thing on the planet... Sommer is not so much a minimalist as a miniaturist, able to invest tiny ideas with enormous significance... Léandre rumbles away in the background... this represents a wonderful documentation of an important group."[4]
Writing for All About Jazz Glenn Astarita remarked: "The Storming Of The Winter Palace is a showstopper as this writer often thought of the visual aspects; hence, a video of this performance would have been an added treat as the music and overall intensity alludes to one heck of a live performance!"[5]
In an article for Morning Star Online, Chris Searle noted that the album featured "three women - a Swiss pianist, a Scottish singer and a French bassist - and two men, a German drummer and an African American trombonist born in Chicago," and wrote: "Audacity here certainly, and brilliant jazz musicianship too - mostly in a free ensemble setting, stirred up into a relentless excitation by the five revolutionary improvising spirits."[6]
Track listing
"Now And Never" (Schweizer, Léandre) - 26:10
"The Storming Of The Winter Palace" (Nicols, Schweizer) - 10:07
