Category Archives: Jazz

Agnes Buen Garnås/Jan Garbarek: Rosensfole – Medieval Songs from Norway (ECM 1402)

Posted on by
Reply

Agnes Buen Garnås
Jan Garbarek
Rosensfole: Medieval Songs from Norway

Agnes Buen Garnås vocal
Jan Garbarek synthesizers, percussion instruments, soprano and tenor saxophones
Recorded Autumn 1988 at Bel Studio, Oslo
Engineers: Ingar Helgesen and Ulf Holland
Produced by Jan Garbarek and Manfred Eicher

One can hardly overstate the innovativeness of saxophonist Jan Garbarek. Having started as a strong arm of free jazz impressionism, Garbarek quickly turned to the future by mining the past, regaling the world of recorded music with an historical dimension. The crowning achievement of these efforts remains Rosensfole, for which we put the spotlight on folk singer Agnes Buen Garnås in lush settings of synthesizer, percussion, and tenor and soprano saxophones. These two complementary forces touch their cool torches to a tincture of medieval songs from their native Norway, making for an album that could exist nowhere but on ECM, a label ever at the forefront of vivacious interpretations of antiquities with the languages of the here and now.

Such explorations had by then already manifested themselves in Garbarek’s work, but with Garnås his vision was deepened in an entirely new direction. It is also because of her that we have the current program, which reads like a catalog of her work in the field. The scope of her commitment is clearest in “Innferd,” which comes from none other than the singer’s mother. Her bright calls to power blend the word into image and both into air, filling the listener with countless narrative possibilities. (On that note, one needs hardly a translated word within reach in order to appreciate the evocativeness thereof.) The title song carries forth an especially potent vibe, which is heightened by Garbarek’s attentive percussion and synth dulcimer strains. Like many of the tracks thereafter, its spell breaks all too quickly, leaving us still and in dire need of the nourishment that comes in the 16-minute “Margjit Og Targjei Risvollo.” Here the music heaves with the weight of legend, bringing the freshness of its wounds to bear upon the unsuspecting listener with unwavering drama.

In the wake of this epic statement, “Maalfri Mi Fruve” peaks above the mounting waves in an intimate call and response. This stunner sits at the edge of a towering abyss of life (and a love of the same), segueing us into sonic flowers like “Venelite” and “Signe Lita” that morph into drum-heavy expositions of the plains. The latter, along with the droning “Grisilla,” unlocks its secrets one string at a time, floating freely and with the tinge of a lullaby—its sweetness veneered by a hint of mortality—before riding into the sunset on a steed of light and poetry. “Stolt Øli” gives us an even bolder taste of the salty air, furthering that ride through a cloud-shadowed landscape of crumbling stone castles and widening vistas, while “Lillebroer Og Storebroer” diffuses its gallop with electronic voices surrounding a blacksmith’s beat.

Garnås ends this timeless date with “Utferd,” which yodels across the skies with the surety of a shepherd folding into pasture and melts into Garbarek’s plaintive whale song. The latter’s reeds are similarly understated throughout, providing nary a leading line but thickly drawn chords and ephemeral appendages.

Although Rosensfole may not have caught on so noticeably stateside, it proved to be an eye-opener in Norway, where generations of up-and-coming jazz musicians took it as a window into the neglected corners of their craft. One can still hear its influence in the work of Steve Tibbetts and in crossover acts like Vas. A fitting companion to Trio Mediaeval’s Folk Songs, Rosensfole shows a side of Garbarek’s evocative abilities heard only on his solo albums and, more importantly, has in Garnås introduced many to a voice for the ages.

Bobo Stenson Trio: Serenity (ECM 1740/41)

Posted on by
2

Bobo Stenson Trio
Serenity

Bobo Stenson piano
Anders Jormin double-bass
Jon Christensen drums
Recorded April 1999, HageGården Music Center, Brunskog, Sweden
Engineer: Åke Linton
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Serenity is the Bobo Stenson Trio’s night and day. With bassist Anders Jormin and drummer Jon Christensen, pianist Stenson has not only carved a niche for himself but has also redefined the tools with which he carves. With this date the Trio takes itself to yet another level, fashioning anew the very material to which those tools are laid. Something in the opening harmonics of “T.” tells us so. Blossoming against percussive footfalls, Jormin dances a tango of shadow and light into cool slumber, the dreams of which are mapped by the cardinal points of the next four tracks (“West Print,” “North Print,” “East Print,” “South Print”), each a magnetic improvisation which draws its directionality not only from the earth but also from the gravity of our emotions. The surest of these attractions brings us into the exigencies of the “Polska of Despair (II).” This chromatic twist never winds into the legs it needs to stand but only dissolves even as it hoists itself up on crumbling melodic crutches. In “Golden Rain” Jormin’s bass emotes as if a tree might sing, dropping fruit to the tune of Christensen’s cymbals as Stenson’s keys take in their surroundings like chlorophyll to sunlight. The nod to Wayne Shorter (“Swee Pea”) that follows sounds more like the rain that precedes it in title, falling as it does with the rhythm of a weeping cloud. And by the time Jormin redraws those paths with a recognizable surety, we accept it not as a resolution but as an amendment to its scattered beginnings in the piano’s fertile soil. “Simple & Sweet” begins with a protracted intro from Jormin, which after two and a half minutes of brilliance guides Stenson into view against an organic flow from Christensen. This is followed by Hanns Eisler’s “Die Pflaumenbaum,” one of the most reflective turns in the album’s passage. Christensen is brilliant on cymbals along the way, with nary a drum in earshot. “El Mayor” (Silvio Rodriguez) smoothes us out into the comforts of another rainy afternoon, threading itself through every droplet with a grace of a prayer and the immediacy of its answering. Jormin stands out yet again, playing almost pianistically, while Stenson proves that in the sometimes mountainous terrain of the ballad he is our most reliable Sherpa. The haunting group improvisation “Fader V (Father World)” is deep to the last drop, beginning inside the piano (as if in the heart) and drawing from it an array of ribbons around the maypole of memory. Yet the pace is contemplative, filled with bittersweet joy. Jormin’s bass rings true like the voice of the past, at once domineering and loving. “More Cymbals” might as well be Christensen’s middle name, though its results forefront only whispering rolls along with Jormin’s pained arco trails. “Die Nachtigall” (Hanns Eisler) is another foray into smoother territories. It brushes its way through space and time like a street sweeper in the mind, quarantining all the refuse of a varicolored life into the sewers—only we follow it through those corroded pipes, past families of rats and dim reflections and out into the ocean where they are reborn along the waves. The rubato smattering of sticks and strings that is “Rimbaud Gedicht” brings us at last to the most awesome track on the record: “Polska of Despair (I)” embodies the perfect combination of propulsive drumming, buoyant bass work (Jormin even pays brief homage to Andersen’s “305 W 18 St” in his solo), and soaring pianism that every trio aspires to. Finally, “Tonus” is classic Stenson. Around a bass line for the ages he weaves vivacious improvisational lines into a braid from which we may wish never to detangle ourselves.

The topography of Serenity is as varied as that of life, speaking to and from the heart of what this outfit is capable of. This record is first and foremost about clarity, second about a distant storm whose image is its soundtrack. In balancing these two forces—circumstance and memory—Stenson and company forge a shining star whose light illuminates everything that we are. It’s easy to let the spell of its lyricism wash over you like a song, but we are reminded that the Trio speaks as much as it sings, bringing life to a vocabulary that can only be uttered at the keyboard, fingerboard, and drum, each traipsing at the edge where words fail.

Keith Jarrett: Paris Concert (ECM 1401)

Posted on by
Reply

Keith Jarrett
Paris Concert

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded October 17, 1988 at Salle Pleyel, Paris
Engineer: Peter Laenger, Andreas Neubronner
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Arguably the most stunning live recording in Keith Jarrett’s solo archive, the Paris Concert may just surpass its Köln predecessor in the sheer naturalness of its unfolding. The recording consists of three tracks, the first of which is simply dated “October 17, 1988” and clocks in at nearly 40 minutes. The music finds depth in its power to spin a self-contained mythology, in its being a window through which one stares to see bits of self. Over a plodding low F he culls handfuls of nebulae, building towering structures of stone and song, and throwing from them streamers of melodies into the vales below until one of those melodies takes wing by the feathers of sunset. It is soft and pale, able to navigate entire continents with barely a flap, and writes across the sky a message for all: Just listen, and you will see. From a thick octave chain Jarrett hangs heavier and heavier ornaments. The development thereof is rigorous yet caged, seeming to run in place not because it cannot move forward but because it cannot look behind, and blossoms into a sustain-pedaled passage so ineffable that it transcends the boundaries of the concert hall, whispers light into our minds, and holds a finger to the lips of thought—a swansong that begins another life.

Jarrett spins his tapestries as might a skilled filmmaker, at once letting the actors bring their own experience to the project while at the same time guiding their story arc from somewhere off screen. The two epilogues are thus like alternate endings. “The Wind,” by jazz pianist Russ Freeman, opens with a Steve Reichian flourish and glides into a slow and bluesy love affair with shadows. This slow-motion tumble down the rabbit hole of the night ends with the patter of rainfall and leaves us to contemplate what we have just heard. The simply titled “Blues,” on the other hand, takes a standard progression and draws from it colors we never knew it had. It glows at Jarrett’s fingertips, distills the purity of his expressive vision, and gives us the resolution we crave.

A Keith Jarrett solo improvisation is, at its most selfless, a drop into an ocean of feeling far outside the realm of articulation. One feels it in the bones, in the brain, and most importantly in the heart, but always as one part of a thread stretching as far as listeners can see into both the past and the future. We encounter that thread as one might a rainbow: the closer we run toward it, the farther it travels away from us. Only when we look inward do we discover where it begins and ends.

Charles Lloyd Quartet: Mirror (ECM 2176)

Posted on by
Reply

Charles Lloyd Quartet
Mirror

Charles Lloyd tenor, alto saxophone, voice
Jason Moran piano
Reuben Rogers double bass
Eric Harland drums
Recorded December 2009 at Santa Barbara Sound Design
Engineer: Dominic Camardella
Produced by Charles Lloyd, Dorothy Darr, and Manfred Eicher

Charles Lloyd is that rare artist who one can say truly grows with every recording, and I would venture that Mirror finds him at one of many pinnacles in a career that thankfully shows no signs of abating. As part of the same quartet that wowed us on the live recording Rabo de Nube, Lloyd is joined by Jason Moran on piano, Rueben Rogers on double bass, and Eric Harland on drums for the outfit’s first studio session.

The title of this latest studio effort is no accident. As Lloyd himself once said in an interview with Greg Burk of his musical break between 1969 and 1989, “I went to work on myself, so that I would be more equipped to serve the Creator and music and mankind, and I had to face the mirror of my own inadequacies.” And indeed on this date we hear him contemplating his own reflection, the ways in which it speaks back to him with the unmistakable voice of that Tennessee tenor.

As has become increasingly clear through the years, Lloyd’s heart lies in tradition. We hear this not only in the affect of his presence, but also in his interpretation of standard repertoire. Beyond the obvious technical abilities required to pull this off with the consistency that he does, he also posses the uncanny talent to compress every tune into his marrow and live it before ever putting reed to lips. And through this handful of traditions he carries us from the mosaic of beautiful fragments in “Lift Every Voice And Sing,” where Moran’s stained glass solo glows by Harland’s feathered light, and into “The Water Is Wide,” where Moran shines again in a fully loaded groove: the exuberance of a gospel singer with head thrown back in glory, stitching the pathos of faith one patch at a time. Lloyd’s delicacy in “Go Down Moses” is duly inspiring and leaps into well-trodden arenas of stratospheric wisdom as the quartet achieves an enviable coalescence, the percussion especially colorful. Yet for me the session’s jewel drops into our hands in “La Llorona,” a stepwise lament in which Lloyd allows himself to falter at carefully placed expectorations, cracking like a tear-ridden voice in prayer. Stunning.

“I Fall in Love Too Easily” opens the doors widest to a field planted by Moran’s petal-by-petal profusion, and leaves us well primed for two Thelonious Monk joints. Where Lloyd flits like a butterfly possessed in “Monk’s Mood” (against the smoothest pianism of the set, no less), he turns like an oblong waterwheel through a river of affection in “Ruby, My Dear,” a more rubato affair in which Moran’s octave splits ring heartfelt and true. “Caroline, No” gives us a taste of the Beach Boys years, drawing its motif at an angle while Lloyd soliloquizes on the pleasures of contortion. And let us not forget the wellspring of his own pen. From the depths of “Desolation Sound” to the magic of “Being And Becoming, Road To Dakshineswar With Sangeeta,” Lloyd the composer regales us with wordless incantations—that is, until the the nine-minute “Tagi,” for which he blesses the studio with a retelling of Bhagavad Gita scripture (the title is “Gita” reversed and means “sacrifice”) before tracing a line up to the sun.

Lloyd always begins and ends with the breath, tracing a circle of life. His is energy classic, wood-grained yet with a fine metallic sheen. Like the cover photograph, this is music that has nothing to hide regarding the means of its creation, lays it all out in the oneness of things, where light and shadow share a thematic dance. Let this album be your mirror, and your story will begin the moment you open your soul and look.

Bobo Stenson Trio: Reflections (ECM 1516)

Posted on by
2

Bobo Stenson Trio
Reflections

Bobo Stenson piano
Anders Jormin bass
Jon Christensen drums
Recorded May 1993 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

While not every cover photo necessarily gives insight into its album proper, the sleeve of the Bobo Stenson Trio’s Reflections reveals something at the heart of this music: light. The first time I laid eyes upon it, I swore I was looking at a flock of birds in the clouds. Closer inspection revealed, of course, one of the title’s more obvious meanings. If this little guessing game revealed anything to me, it was that what I was about to hear would feel the same: at once sky below and earth above.

And where better to begin than in the leader-penned “The Enlightener,” which paints an aerial view of territories he will soon explore with long-lost brothers Anders Jormin (bass) and Jon Christensen (drums). Stenson keeps his left hand entrenched in a haunting monotone here, giving ample ground for the right’s erratic yet ever-purposeful flights, achieving somewhere along the way a transcendence one hears perhaps only in the Keith Jarrett Trio at its best.

George Gershwin’s “My Man’s Gone Now” provides our first dip into the pool of standards. Like a bird jumping from branch to branch before finally settling where it will make its nest, Stenson binds drumsticks with bass strings and makes a home. His playing can thus be very dense at times, and to ensure that we don’t get pulled under, Jormin gives us a refreshing change of bass in two compositions. “NOT” opens with a lyrical gesture from Jormin against mere tracings of piano and cymbals before locking into a lumbering groove, which is mixed to bold consistency by a wider pianistic embrace. The agitated reverie of “Q,” however, sports the finest moment in the set in Jormin’s flowering solo.

After the frothy runs of Stenson’s “Dörrmattan,” we are treated to a breathtaking rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Reflections in D.” Stenson treads almost stealthily here down a path of Tord Gustavsen-like balance, taking the tune to a cosmic level before closing with two more of his own: “12 Tones Old” (another bass vehicle in which notes crawl like spiders content in their webs) and “Mindiatyr.” This last is one of his most impressionistic, beginning in cascades supported by some lovely arco bass, which then hones itself into the buzzing exuberance of a spirit setting out on its first journey. Christensen’s enviable rhythm work plays us out alongside a Byzantine flourish from the keys. 

Listening to Stenson’s navigations is, I imagine, what a magician feels when fooled by another magician—which is to say that just when you think you know all the ins and outs of the craft, someone comes along and brings you back to the youthful joy that first lured you into it. One feels so much in everyone’s playing on Reflections, as if it were already living inside us and needed only six hands to give it voice.

This date is a dream come true. Thank your lucky stars you can hear while awake.

AM 4: …and she answered: (ECM 1394)

Posted on by
Reply

AM 4
…and she answered:

Wolfgang Puschnig alto saxophone, alto flute, hojak, shakuhachi
Linda Sharrock vocals
Uli Scherer piano, prepared piano, keyboards
Recorded April 1989 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Four years before stepping into the studio to record the Korean crossover project Then Comes The White Tiger alongside the influential SamulNori, saxophonist and flutist Wolgang Puschnig and vocalist Linda Sharrock stepped into ECM’s Rainbow Studio with pianist Uli Scherer as AM 4 for an equally unusual project. Blending poetry and Nordic folk roots with jazz and subtle instrumentation, …and she answered: is as open-ended as the colon of its title. Sharrock captivates wherever she is featured in this project, though perhaps nowhere more so than in the opening “Streets And Rivers” (am I the only one who is reminded of Ani DiFranco’s “Buildings and Bridges”?), which parallels the pathos of life and the literatures through which we seek to divide it. Its synthesizer undercurrent and Jon Hassell-like blips unfurl a pathway for Pushcnig’s breathy alto, both matched by Sharrock’s languorous diction. The following track is as haunting as its title. “And She Answered: ‘When You Return To Me, I will Open Quick The Cage Door, I Will Let The Red Bird Flee’” paints a wide landscape populated with Puschnig’s animal cries. Through these horns a muted piano string drops its heavy footfalls and spins from its wool a yarn of darkness. All of this time in the field, as it were, leaves us open to a wrenching interpretation of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” Here Sharrock is like a catalyst for instrumental change, leaving Puschnig and Scherer to navigate the channels of her words with a cartographer’s exactitude (the two likewise shine in the duo cut “Bhagavad” and in “Far Horizon”). This is one of two standards to creep into the mix, the other being a pointillist rendition of “Over The Rainbow,” which enchants with wisps of the familiar in an otherwise distant wash of flute and echo. Puschnig turns inward with “The Sadness Of Yuki.” The lipped strains of the shakuhachi thread the piano like time itself. We catch only flashes of imagery: a girl’s face, a bleak and oppressive house, an existence destined for ghostly things, as might be spoken through the aphasia of “Oh!” The latter brings the most rhythmic elements to bear on this eclectic set, and speaks to us through the shawm of its gamelan-encrusted interior. All of which leaves us alone with the intoned question in “One T’une,” of which gongs and air are a way of life.

ECM has thankfully made this overlooked release available through digital download, and it bears seeking out for those wanting to step off the label’s beaten path.

Misha Alperin/Arkady Shilkloper: Wave Of Sorrow (ECM 1396)

Posted on by
Reply

Misha Alperin
Arkady Shilkloper
Wave Of Sorrow

Misha Alperin piano, melodica, voice
Arkady Shilkloper French horn, jagdhorn, fluegelhorn, voice
Recorded July 1989 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With Wave Of Sorrow, Misha (then Mikhail) Alperin began what has proven to be a fruitful relationship with ECM. Though the Ukraine-born pianist has but a modest discography on the label, each recording brims with the folklore of his sensitivity. Since this date he has spun a telepathic relationship with trumpeter Arkady Shilkloper, and the results on this duo album are as unique as their players. Alperin offers a set of ten original compositions, each, in spite of the intimate arrangement, a grand and sweeping thing. Not unlike label mate Richie Beirach, his architecture is ambitious in its scope and clarity yet rarely deviates from the warm embrace that births it. One hears this in the opening “Song,” to which Shilkloper adds the bay of a hunting horn. Like many of the pieces that follow, it smacks of tradition even as it shines with modern interpretation. Yet this is also a world of shadows, for in the title piece (one of the most affecting melodica solos you will ever hear) we can intuit a web of tortured histories and only hints of the happiness that may unravel it. Shilkloper arrives toward the end bathed in ECM’s plush reverb, seeming to hang from the tail of Alperin’s breathy comet like a child of the night. Still, this date is not without its fun. “Unisons,” for example, casts the two musicians in a decidedly vocal mold as they rap and tap their way through a cathartic romp. “Poem” similarly allows Shilkloper to come out of his lyrical shell into a full-blown dance. Alperin also offers up a few piano solos, of which “Prelude in Bb minor” is the most evocative—a shaft of moonlight through which the dust of a wanderer’s journey casts its sparkle. Other highlights include the simple yet ingenious motivic arcs of “Short Story” and Shilkloper’s distant mutes in “Miniature.”

The contradiction of the album’s title is that so much of the music springs to its feet, all the while harboring a matrix of oppression and exile. We hear this especially in the solo “Epilogue.” The atmosphere is dim yet also sparkling, as if it were a harsh present slumbering behind the illusory veil of a memory, fond and forever lost.

Charles Lloyd: Fish Out Of Water (ECM 1398)

Posted on by
Reply

Charles Lloyd
Fish Out Of Water

Charles Lloyd tenor saxophone, flute
Bobo Stenson piano
Palle Danielsson bass
Jon Christensen drums
Recorded July 1989 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Tennessean saxophonist Charles Lloyd jumped indeed like a fish out of water into the spotlight with this seminal ECM debut. For his first major release after a reclusive period, Lloyd was joined by the great Bobo Stenson on piano and Keith Jarrett’s European quartet rhythm section (bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen). Lloyd’s signature tenor, smoky and viscous, floats through Stenson’s smooth action at the keys in the nine-minute title cut, which opens a program of seven originals. The delicacy of these two melody makers is the album’s bread and butter, intensely apparent from the beginning. Stenson draws freshly honed memories from Lloyd’s comforts, while the reedman takes pause and feeds back into the loop with even darker expressions. The unwrapping of lyrical presents continues under this Christmas tree in “Mirror,” throughout which brushed drums and a resonant bass provide a plain of fulcrums on which Lloyd balances smooth hits and fluttering asides alike, only to diversify things with flute in the contemplative “Haghia Sophia.” Again, from this Stenson manages to emote so complementarily that we almost get lost in the swirling oceanic foam from which arises a tenored Aphrodite. “The Dirge” is another pure, heavy drop into a limpid pool of soul that is reason enough to at least hear this album, if not have it with you as you grow. Two grooves await us in “Bharati” and “Eyes Of Love.” The former is seek, refined, and oh so moving. Lloyd speaks mostly in half-whispers, never louder than a private declaration, while the latter unfolds some of his most buttery soft playing on record. A buoyant yet introspective solo from Danielsson trips us into the rejoinder, which keeps the cool, blue fires stoked well into the flute-driven “Tellaro” which ends the set. Here, Lloyd releases Stenson adrift as if a flower upon a river, returning as a fish swimming beneath him into a forest where we cannot follow.

Lloyd mythology paints his hiatus prior to this album as a period of soul searching, during which he is said to have nearly abandoned music, only to return refreshed and pouring his all into the art form that so defines him (if not the other way around). And yet we clearly see that in the recordings since his soul searching has never stopped, for it continues to inhabit every breath that passes his reed. Even when Lloyd isn’t playing, there always seems to be a thin line connecting every stretch of silence. In this respect, we find here a spiritual level of jazz from artists all the more prodigious for their humility. In spite of their incendiary potential, they choose to cook rather than flare, each bringing his sensitivity to bear upon these insightful forays into melody and surrender. Tender to the utmost.

First House: Cantilena (ECM 1393)

Posted on by
Reply

First House
Cantilena

Ken Stubbs alto saxophone
Django Bates piano, tenor horn
Mick Hutton bass
Martin France drums
Recorded March 1989 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After a memorable ECM debut with Eréndira, the talented quartet of saxophonist Ken Stubbs, pianist Django Bates, bassist Mike Hutton, and drummer Martin France—a.k.a. First House—followed up with an even more effective chunk of progressive jazz in Cantilena. From the first soulful licks of the title opener, we know we are in for something special and from the heart. The composer’s alto draws us into the night with recumbent charm, thereby opening an ambitious set that delivers everything it promises and more. Like a model posing for a painting, its contours come into representational being only through an artist’s touch. This leads us into the connective tissue of the piano, which seems to blossom, lured by the alto’s return to a place where dreams can be made real. From this we are introduced to the writing of Bates, of whose “Underfelt” the theme is anything but as it sneaks its way through a burrow of circular motives. Stubbs shells out some incredible improvisation here, working his way far beyond the corners of the page. The Bates train continues on through the whimsies of “Dimple,” for which he clashes horns with alto against exemplary and jaunty support from Hutton and France. More of the same energy awaits us the sprightly abstractions of “Low-Down (Toytown),” to which the rubato slice of blues that is “Sweet Williams” (Bates) is indeed a sweet preamble, while the urban sprawl of “Jay-Tee” features the date’s most spirited soloing from our two lead melodicians. The Bates sector rounds out with the vastly energizing “Hollyhocks,” which features rolling harmonies in the pianism and a spate of resplendent energy that grabs us hook, line, and sinker into the contemplative yet all-too-brief tenderness of Eddie Parker’s “Madeleine After Prayer” (the only non-group tune on the record), which is spun through “Shining Brightly” into a horizon backlit by hope. Once again the alto hollows out our bones and fills them with the marrow of sentiment. Some tracings from Bates initiate “Pablo,” thus ending the album where it began: in a dream where music is the only language that remains.

Of the many strengths First House possesses, it is the compositional prowess within that shines above the rest. The group’s robust musical ideas have immense staying power, and in combination with such a smooth blend of the forward-thinking and the classic, one would be as foolish as Oliver to ask for more in a jazz outfit.

Abercrombie/Johnson/Erskine: s/t (ECM 1390)

Posted on by
Reply

John Abercrombie
Marc Johnson
Peter Erskine
s/t

John Abercrombie guitar, guitar synthesizer
Marc Johnson bass
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded April 21, 1988 live at the Nightstage, Boston
Engineer: Tony Romano
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After the resounding success of their two studio albums, Current Events and Getting There (with Michael Brecker), guitarist John Abercrombie teamed up with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Peter Erskine for this wondrous live 1988 recording from the Nightstage in Boston. It’s crystal clear from the groove laid down by Johnson and Erskine in the opener, “Furs On Ice” (think Getting There), that each of these men travels the edges of a constantly shifting yet with-it triangle. Abercrombie spins some Frisell-like chording before emerging with a soaring synclavier line in this, one of two Johnson-penned tunes, the other being a trimmed-down version of his “Samurai Hee-Haw” (see Bass Desires). Replacing Bill Frisell and John Scofield is no small order, yet Abercrombie fills these shoes with plenty of funk to spare. That unmistakable bass line, in fact, courts some of the most electrifying improv heard in a while from Abercrombie, who brings a Hammond organist’s sensibility to the proceedings via his fiery macramé. Erskine is also fantastic here. Abercrombie turns up the heat even more on his own two contributions. “Light Beam” is a particularly well-suited vehicle for synth guitar, and indeed seems focused like a laser splashed through the prism of his rhythm section. This is followed by a drum solo from Erskine, who shows us a nifty thing or two from his skill set, particularly in his dialoguing between bass drum and toms, before Abercrombie’s classic “Four On One” (from his seminal 1984 joint, Night) plies its musings and rounded edges with the record’s crunchiest playing. The three continue to converse beautifully in their group improv piece, “Innerplay.” Notable for Johnson’s delightful string games, it is a lasting testament to the powers of spontaneity.

The rest of the set is filled to bursting with a hefty portion of standards. Between Erskine’s delicate rat-a-tat timekeeping in “Stella By Starlight” and the delicacies of “Alice In Wonderland” (into which the rhythm section eases so carefully one feels more than hears it), there is much to stimulate repeated listening. Yet it is in “Beautiful Love” that we find the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. From the gentlest guitar solo Abercrombie spins a song even as he unravels it into a water-skating journey so gorgeous it almost weeps. The trio’s finest moment and easily one of Abercrombie’s most inspired (and inspiring) improvisatory passages on record. The final “Haunted Heart” almost reaches those same depths, smoothing out an extended guitar intro into a velvety soft ballad that stirs us into a pool of melting chocolate and lets us steep.

A sublime recording from musicians at the top of their game, for a game this most certainly is, played by those who know the rules as well as anyone.