Is it OK to credit “Geir Lysne” (a person) as “Geir Lysne Listening Ensemble” (a 20-piece big band)?
Excluding collaboration albums there are 6 albums by Geir Lysne. The first 4 are performed by the Geir Lysne Listening Ensemble, but the second, a live album, has album artist Geir Lysne alone. So there are reasons to list them all under the main artist.
2000 Geir Lysne Listening Ensemble – Aurora Borealis (Suite for Big Band) [currently not in MB]
2002 Geir Lysne – Aurora Borealis - Nordic Lights (Suite for Jazz Orchestra) (live)
2003 Geir Lysne Listening Ensemble – Korall
2006 Geir Lysne Listening Ensemble – Boahjenásti - The North Star
2009 Geir Lysne Ensemble – The Grieg Code [separate artist]
2013 Geir Lysne – New Circle
But then there’s no reason to have a separate Geir Lysne Ensemble. In fact the 5th album is more like the last one (smaller band, fewer instruments).
Jazz musicians often perform only once as trio, quartet, quintet, etc. only once as it only means, n other musicians performing with the main artist. I recently added the Karl Ratzer Septet, which only appeared in 2017 for an album and a few shows. It wasn’t dissolved formally, Karl Ratzer only played with other musicians after this.
So it makes sense to keep it like this, but I wonder if it conforms to the Guidelines. I haven’t found a line saying it’s forbidden, but of course it would stretch the “Use of artist credits” considerably.
And it would be an easier task to merge Ensemble with main artist, compared to Creating a new artist Listening Ensemble, creating the releases and merging the other releases into them WITHOUT loosing all credits. (I’ve done so successfully on test.musicbrainz.org)
As I see it, a separate artist for the Listening Ensemble should be created.