Category Archives: Old & New Masters

Terje Rypdal: Odyssey – In Studio & In Concert (ECM 2136-38)

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Terje Rypdal
Odyssey – In Studio & In Concert

Terje Rypdal electric guitar, synthesizer, soprano saxophone
Torbjørn Sunde trombone
Brynjulf Blix organ
Sveinung Hovensjø bass guitar
Svein Christiansen drums
Swedish Radio Jazz Group

Odyssey (ECM 1067/68)
Recorded August 1975 at Arne Bendiksen Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

My first encounter with Odyssey came in the late nineties. Still young in my ECM explorations and having just barely crossed over into Jan Garbarek’s Visible World, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the journey that label stalwart Terje Rypdal (a name as yet unfamiliar) had just taken me on. The CD fell out of rotation quickly, I’m afraid to say, buried under the pile of New Series albums then dominating my attention. Years later, and well into my own listening odyssey, I returned to it, only to find that it had never left me.

Rypdal has, of course, been under the ECM umbrella since almost the very beginning. The release of his self-titled debut in 1971 sparked an intrepid flame that continues to burn through a wide spectrum of colors. As the informative liner notes from John Kelman tell us, the band that was to define Odyssey was the product of circumstance. Drawing on a pool of musicians from previous sessions, including bassist Sveinung Hovensjø from 1973’s What Comes After, he also welcomed unexpected talents into the fold, such as drummer Svein Christiansen and organist Brynjulf Blix, the latter of whom contributed heavily to the album’s well-aged luster. The resulting sound proved a defining one, as inescapable bass lines danced touch-and-go with the guitarist’s unbridled narratives. We hear this most in the solid underpinnings of “Midnite.” Hovensjø lays down the rules for all of its 17 minutes, leaving Rypdal to stretch them to the pathos of his progressive solitude. Those carefully pedaled strings and alluring soprano sax (played by Rypdal himself) careen through its nocturnal billows with humble ferocity as Torbjørn Sunde brings comparable light to the sky with muted trombone. If the plangent cry of “Darkness Falls” that precedes this and opens the album tells us anything, it is that here is a terrain of emotional clarity and immediacy. The magic of this rendering lies in its continual flux, in its refusal to settle into one topographic pattern. The following “Adagio” plunges the album to new depths, even as it raises the bar from which it hangs. Solina strings owe their thickness to the charcoal yet discernible picture into which Rypdal’s guitar spills ether: a shout of autonomy in its coolest disguise. “Better Off Without You” walks in organic circles, occasionally poking its head above the watery depths of Blix’s ostinato haze, keeping an eye trained “Over Birkerot.” In this punchier setting, Rypdal keeps his feet planted amid a chain of horn blasts (think Hans Zimmer’s Inception soundtrack on a smaller scale). His cathartic rock-out midway through is a chance to let hair fly and pulls open the ribbon of “Fare Well.” Along with the final “Ballade,” it finds the musicians in languid suspension, crossing vibraphone-like paths toward elegiac destinations. It may feel blinding, but we can be sure this light comes to us by the force of a distant hope.

Rypdal has an incisive way of building anticipation, of dropping his solos at the most carefully thought-out points, his guitar an endless book of codas. Like the photo that graces its cover, Odyssey captures the life of a nomadic musician in candid monochrome. And while the album had been reissued on CD prior to this New & Old Masters set, the 24-minute “Rolling Stone” sadly did not survive that first digital makeover. An organ-infused underwater symphony of legendary status, its primal bass line and whammy bar ornaments flow like a meeting between Bill Laswell and Robin Guthrie before bringing on the album’s most rock-oriented developments. It also charts Rypdal in a pivotal moment of self-discovery where his tone began to coalesce into the sound for which he has come to be known. What a treasure to have in restored form.

As if this weren’t already enough to celebrate, ECM has gone above and beyond with another gem from the archives:

Unfinished Highballs
Recorded June 1976 by Swedish Radio, Estrad, Södertälje
Recording producer: Bosse Broberg
Engineer: Ola Kejving

This commissioned radio performance from 1976 features a streamlined Odyssey band (sans Sunde) fronting the 15-piece Swedish Radio Jazz Group. At under four minutes, the title track might blow by like the foreword to a novel were it not for its sheer theatricality. Rypdal’s vision cuts the darkness with a film projector’s eye, and blends into the Matterhorn bass of “The Golden Eye.” Icy synths challenge the thaw of Blix’s electric piano as fiery horns uncurl their tongues from the firmament and lick the snowcapped mountains of an unbridled story. Rypdal lifts this image skyward on waxen wings, which, unlike those of Icarus, are impervious to the light on which they feed. Next on this spacy ride is “Scarlet Mistress.” At once sharpened by muted trumpet and rounded by swinging textures, it gives wide relief to Rypdal’s laser etchings. One feels in its background the kick of eras when music’s enervation thrived in proportion to the harshness of its sociopolitical climate, such that the clubs of the 20s and 30s resurrect themselves and dance their ghostly dance. The soprano returns for a spell, for all a moonbeam peeking out from the clouds into a well of chords that pull us into “Dawn.” Melodies unwind, each a snake wrapped around the wrist of a god who whips it free into the glittering sky. Some enticing bass work dances amid Rypdal’s shimmers of water-harp enchantment, lowering us on a fishhook into the depths of “Dine And Dance To The Music Of The Waves,” in which sitar-like sounds pave a Nazca runway for the soprano’s grand coverage of worldly joy. Christiansen is the contortionist’s backbone of “Talking Back.” Sporting also high-flying reeds from Lennart Åberg and Ulf Andersson, its attunement is downright symbiotic. A real highlight. And speaking of which, where else to end but in “Bright Lights – Big City,” closing out the set on a signature dronescape.

With such a full sense of architecture to explore, it’s no wonder this newly unearthed companion has held its shape. In elevating the big band to a level of orchestral aliveness so rarely achieved, Rypdal has left a mark that is not only indelible, but also inimitable. With a nostalgic sound that distinguishes so much of ECM’s output from the decade, Odyssey – In Studio & In Concert shares the pedestal with Keith Jarrett’s Sleeper as release event of the year.

Gidon Kremer: Edition Lockenhaus (ECM New Series 2190-94)

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Gidon Kremer
Edition Lockenhaus

The Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival is the brainchild of violinist Gidon Kremer. Once called an “anti-festival,” it is more a gathering of friends bound by a love of all things chamber and a certain haphazard brilliance: its constant cancellations, rescheduling, and daunting thematic choices somehow coalesce into a coherent yearly event. And an event, it most certainly is. As Peter Cossé writes in his liner notes: “In Lockenhaus, awareness, the casualness of a holiday atmosphere, a creative commitment bordering on musical revolution, and even instrumental mishaps that result from nightly round-the-clock socializing induce a shimmering acoustic ‘painting’ that the totally immersed chamber music fan views in alternating states of torpor and enlightenment.” This potent energy and the communal spirit that animates it abound in every note. For this five-disc Lockenhaus Edition, Kremer and coproducer Manfred Eicher have chosen from out of literally hundreds of recordings these highlights from the festival’s 30-year history.

Disc 1

Shedryk Children’s Choir, Kiev
Markus Bellheim piano
Christine Rohan ondes Martenot
Khatia Buniatishvili celesta
Andrei Pushkarev vibraphone
Dmytro Marchenko
Igor Krasovsky percussion
Kremerata Baltica
Simon Rattle conductor
Roman Kofman conductor
Recorded 2001 and 2008 at Lockenhaus Festival
Engineer: Peter Laenger

The Metamorphosen of Richard Strauss (1864-1949) make for a formidable opener. This study in strings was dedicated to the great Paul Sacher and penned as the doors of the Second World War were closing. In light of its circumstances, one can hardly resist reading an almost Wagnerian shade of grey into its opening gestures, tinged as they are with a certain disillusionment with reality. The music is constantly finding itself through a blurring of conflict and resolution. It is a hall of mirrors where self-awareness is an understatement, in which every vague pizzicato turns the mirrors to new angles. The solo instruments don’t so much arise out of this swirling mass as glint off them. The double bass lines are especially overwhelming, while the violin becomes a looping sentiment curled ever so gently around the throat of trauma. It is as if a single molten thread were running through it, our vision of it but one of countless beads strung along its path. It finds its peace in little dissonances, casting a critical eye on platitudes, and in that way one finds perhaps only in Schubert recedes into the foreground. It is the flow not of water, but of the algae that visualizes the current’s direction. Lovingly played by the Kremerata Baltica and conducted by Simon Rattle, this performance shows Rattle’s eclectic talents in the raw, turning over as he does the sweltering underbelly of this piece. He is an ideal choice, for he knows how to make the lush feel like a drop in the bucket. He sees what the music nests itself in and works his baton around and through every twig. One of ECM’s finest live recordings.

Although Olivier Messiaen (1909-1992) composed his Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine not long before Strauss’s Metamorphosen, its register could hardly be more different. Where the latter is a meditation on memorial, Messiaen’s aural triptych is an unfolding flower of light. The synaesthetic Frenchman has brought a profound imagination into palpable dimensions here. A wistful combination of piano, strings, and women’s voices opens the first liturgy, each the side to a nebulous triangle of forces. The agitations at the keyboard are like a broken crystal, drawing its light from vocal lamentations. The violin seems to rise with a spindly charm that is as alluring as it is self-destructive. We get the internal musings of an ondes Martenot, as well as various percussive accents falling like stardust in the religious imagination. In the second liturgy, jubilation quickly turns into a discomforting beauty, the piano jumping from a subterranean crawl to unmarked flight in but a fluttering of the keys. The third unravels a chant into its constituent lines, each an iridescent tether to sentiments performed rather than spoken. Passages of transcendence sit somehow comfortably alongside dips into magma, ending in a brushstroke of heavenly choirs.

Discs 2/3 (originally Edition Lockenhaus Vols. 1 & 2, ECM New Series 1304/05)

Gidon Kremer violin
Eduard Brunner clarinet
Oleg Maisenberg piano
Irena Grafenauer harp
Christine Whittlesey soprano
Ursula Holliger harp
Hagen Quartett
Kammerorchester der Jungen Deutschen Philharmonie
Heinz Holliger conductor
Recorded 1984, 1981, and 1982 by Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF)
Engineers: Roland Pulzer and Martin Frobeen
Remix and editing: Martin Wieland

If the first disc was an introduction, then the Quintet in f minor for piano and strings by César Franck (1822-1890) is a rich first chapter. From the opening violin proclamation we are plunged headfirst into the depths of Romanticism proper: the piano as heartbeat, the strings as lifeblood. It is a plaintive world, at once cloudy and broken by light, unnamable except through sound. The piano vies for constant resolution, knowingly situated at the center of an unsolvable debate, sometimes leaping and sometimes falling back into the despair that first gave it meaning. As we tread softly into the distance of the second movement, the young Lukas Hagen displays profound versatility with his clarity of tone and burrowing vibrato. As the central melody emerges into arid light, our ears come into focus as might a pair of eyes. The piano’s high note phrases are like droplets laddering down leaves on a solitary tree. The third movement lays down an almost Philip Glassean ostinato in the strings develops with fractured intensity. The piano promises hope, but settles altruistically into shadow, where pizzicati lurk like a guitar in Death’s hands.

So begins a lush pairing of French and Slavonic works, which offers dramaturgical insight into the festival’s vibrant mentality. The former side of things continues with a curious piece by André Caplet (1878-1925), a composer whose orchestrations of the works of Claude Debussy outshone his own musical visibility. Based on Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” Conte phantastique sounds like Maurice Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé turned into an opera, stripped of voices, and condensed into a string quartet. Add to this the aquatic brilliance of Ursula Holliger on harp, and you get a truly distinct experience. Holliger plays pianistically and extracts a profound power from her instrument. The music vacillates between the programmatic and the omniscient. Strings jumble together as the masquerade intensifies, the harp descending like Prospero in gracious intervention. A knock interrupts the action, prompting glassine whispers from the violins. Agitation mounts, only to flutter its eyelids for the last time.

Two songs from “Fiançailles pour rire” make for a fine entry from Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). These somber settings grab our attention with their potency. With empathetic effect, soprano Christine Whittlesey shapes every note with locative color. Her dynamics fall like ripe fruit from a tree of implication, caught in the capable hands of pianist Robert Levin. Every last shred of hope is laced with painterly melancholy, leaving only scars to show for its passing.

Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) was an intensely confessional composer, and nowhere more so than in his string quartets, of which we get his first. From the urgent suggestions and biting interjections of the opening movement to the enigmatic veil of the fourth, we are pulled through a diorama of illusory scenery. Clemens Hagen is especially brilliant here, his cello lighting the way through a fog of folk tales, while second violinist Annette Bik provides moments of rhythmic brilliance. The Quartet No. 1 is a blind spot in the Janáček oeuvre. We accept its disorienting illusions without fear of what lies behind them. We hear carriages drawn by spooked horses, the cries of a forlorn father, the hunting calls of an aristocracy in decline. Thus populated by our imaginations, the music brings us closer to our own internal dramas.

After such inescapable opacities, the neoclassical clarity of Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) comes as a pleasant surprise. Scored for violin, clarinet and piano, these three dances from L’Histoire de Soldat show the composer at an evocative peak. Kremer brings characteristic fire to every nuance. His sonorous gypsy acrobatics are a joy to behold. Clarinetist Eduard Brunner peeks in for the opening Tango, offering constructive support. The beautifully syncopated Waltz holds to its core with enthusiasm, Aloys Kontarsky’s occasional high notes adding confectionary flavor. The final Ragtime brings a mounting complexity to these brief but vivacious utterances.

An enthralling performance of Stravinsky’s Concerto in D follows. Under the passionate direction of Heinz Holliger, the Kammerorchester der Jungen Deutschen Philharmonie springs to life with the opening pizzicato. Noticeable idiosyncrasies abound, such as a strikingly textured moment when the inside of piano is plucked for added effect during the Vivace. The flexibility of the second movement is intensified in hands of such bright young musicians, dancing lithely between pathos and fleeting awareness. Plunked double bass accents punctuate every moment of this graceful interlude. The final movement displays an astute sense of division, especially in the solo cello and its immediate refraction. These musicians bring an almost manic sense of multiplicity to music that is already beyond alive.

Who better to end this portion with than Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)? A far cry from the monochromatic intensities of his quartets, the wonderfully Mozartean waltzes for flute, clarinet, and piano glisten with salon-like ebullience. The interplay between Brunner and flutist Irena Grafenauer makes for a clever listening experience. The second waltz is especially alluring in its ascending harmonies, its last flutters eliciting audible smiles from the audience.

The Two pieces for String Octet op. 11 comprise a more complicated diptych. After a dense opening statement in the Prelude, the lower strings spread out as violins dissolve like mist in the dawn. We get a hint of later Shostakovich in the Più mosso. Its mature balance of aggression and delicacy betrays a forward-looking mind. The final passages writhe in agitated beauty. A solo cello draws a long energetic line, accompanied by pizzicati and distant calls. More dissonant pairings and threats of a fall that never materializes draw us into a tensely mystical finish.

I prefer the old vinyl edition of this particular recording, if only for the candid photos of its participants, for they show us so much of the festival spirit:


Original cover

Edition Lockenhaus Vol. 3 is strangely excluded from this set (you can see my full review of it here).

Discs 4/5 (originally Vols. 4 & 5, ECM New Series 1347/48)

Gidon Kremer violin
Thomas Zehetmair violin
Yuzuko Horigome violin
Philip Hirschhorn violin
Kim Kashkashian viola
Nobuko Imai viola
Veronika Hagen viola
Boris Pergamentschikow violoncello
David Geringas violoncello
Julius Berger violoncello
Thomas Demenga violoncello
James Tocco piano
Recorded Lockenhaus Festival 1985 and 1986
Engineers: Peter Laenger, Andreas Neubronner, and Stephan Schellmann

Although one is wont to paint a morose picture of Shostakovich, continues our melodic bridge into the final portion of the set, I think we can hear in these late string quartets especially that within him beat a vibrant heart of passion. Music cannot have been for him so much of an escape as it was simply a voice. We need only cast a careful ear toward the String Quartet No. 14 op. 142 to hear its vibrancy. The distorted jig that works out of the opening crawl is something of an achievement on paper and at the bow. David Geringas at the cello proves to be the ever-present anchor, guiding the quartet as a whole through a variety of registers—from gentle to ecstatic and back again. In the Adagio, his strings throb like ventricles. The more we listen to its words, the less we know of their origins. It is as if they have reached us only light years later, like a star long dead yet still visible. The cello cuts these shadows into a string of glassy shards in the final Allegretto, of which the violins are ecstatic reflections. This movement is more porous and waves its gossamer threads as might a plant to attract insects. Its intimate yet vast cross-pollination achieves something close to transcendence before taking its unnoticed leap into fantasies.

The String Quartet No. 13 op. 138, on the other hand, is a single-movement opus in twenty-two and a half minutes. Its gorgeous beginning unrolls a flat landscape along which a violin comes hopping, not unlike a creature from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Others take up the call in a widening circle of light, launching into a spiral of percussive attacks (which in this performance never come across as declamatory but as clarity incarnate). The congregation disperses as quickly as it came together, leaving solitary voices, though distant, to unknowingly harmonize. And the landscape of mourning through which we have slogged opens itself to a beam of light in the violins,  reminding us that sometimes music matters only where it ends.

The Two Movements for String Quartet add yet another hue. These are more majestic and deftly spun through a slow-motion slalom course of light and dark. The higher and lower strings achieve delicate mutuality, seesawing on a fulcrum of potent stillness.

Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), a forgotten ideologue-in-arms of Shostokovich, was an intensely dynamic composer. His music lies somewhere between the Russian and Górecki, and provides a fitting cap to an altogether fascinating Lockenhaus portrait. After an exultant introduction, his opus 45 Sextet wanders varicose paths with trembling caution. The violins shimmer like the surface of a moonlit pond in the second movement, under which glide the cello and viola, each an electric eel that lights up the night. In the chambers of this heart, the only blood is a silence that hangs from the trees, gripped like a branch beneath an owl’s talons. Some stellar pizzicato passages in the third movement add hope to our dreams, puncturing the backdrop until it resembles an artificial sky. The final movement is a fractured look back on the first three, a heavy and romantic flower whose weight barely bends the stem, its desires never spoken louder than a whisper.

A high energy and passionate execution make the Duo for Violin and Cello a true highlight of the entire set. Philip Hirschhorn, along with Geringas, navigates a landscape of varying tensions, moving from the snaking opening lines to crunchier motives for a broad, almost orchestral palette. The piece is always flowing in spite of its sometimes-abrupt movements, and is a testament to Schulhoff’s effervescent spirit. Yet it is in the slower passages where we most hear Shostakovich, lingering like a spirit overcoming limitations of time and space.

Pianist James Tocco turns out another star performance the Cinq Études de Jazz op. 58. These inventive pieces draw more upon the rhythmic than melodic colors of the genre. The result is an exposition that is not only delightful fun, but also one that provides foiled insight (especially in the second etude) into composers like Satie and Poulenc who were keyed into popular music idioms. The third etude has the majesty of a Gershwin yet the bleeding colors of the French impressionists, while the fourth is a romp and a cascade rolled into one, leaving the fifth to return full circle with the verve of the first, drawing a lively signature on which to end.


Original cover

In an interview, Kremer remarks on the difficulties that inevitably arise in putting together such a festival. Quintessential are the tense circumstances surrounding the Franck Quintet, which apparently failed to come together to the musicians’ satisfaction during rehearsals. In spite of this, they managed to pull off one of the most lauded performances of that year (1984). Such is the spontaneity that Lockenhaus creates, encourages, and promotes. This is an exciting limited edition for reasons too numerous to list in full. Not least among them is the fact that the original recordings marked the debut of New Series stars Eduard Brunner, Thomas Zehetmair, Heinz Holliger, and Robert Levin. It is a stream-of-consciousness narrative linked in the fluidity of real-time recollection, the immediacy of which is only heightened by the superb musicianship and live recording. This treasure trove belongs on your shelf.

Keith Jarrett Trio: Setting Standards – New York Sessions (ECM 2030-32)

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Keith Jarrett Trio
Setting Standards – New York Sessions

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded January 1983 at Power Station, New York City
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“I feel we are an underground band that has, just by accident, a large public.”
–Keith Jarrett, on his trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette

The piano is considered by some to be a “complete” instrument. On it, one can compose anything from a simple etude to the grandest of symphonies, and its most adored practitioners may be said to be whole at the keyboard. The beauty of a player like Keith Jarrett is that he makes the piano sound so gorgeously incomplete, emphasizing as he does the unfathomable volume of sentiments he would convey through it if given the time. As it is, we get the barest taste of immortality. Jarrett carries the entire weight of any composition in even the most linear of melodic lines. In doing so, he opens doors that few could step through unharmed.

And yet, step through them the rare soul has, and perhaps none so ingenious as bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette. When listening to the bliss that rolls off Jazz’s proverbial tongue throughout Setting Standards, however, we must constantly remind ourselves that the three albums collected therein represent the first time Jarrett, Peacock, and DeJohnette had ever stepped into the studio as a bona fide trio. The three men were, of course, far from strangers, but produced such unreal synergy in these unrehearsed sessions that they might as well have been cut from the same cloth. The trio would also prove in a way cathartic for Jarrett, who was already beginning to buckle under the pressures of an increasingly demanding listenership. For this, he turned to the tried and true, if not to the plied and blue, for solace.

With Standards, Vol. 1 (ECM 1255) Jarrett and company set things straight from the get-go by showing us the “Meaning Of The Blues.” This swath of melodious rain is the trio form at its best and never lets up until the very end. DeJohnette’s charcoal sketches in background add a quiet boldness. “All The Things You Are” is a more lighthearted, though no less intense, construction, and haunts Peacock’s nimble fingerwork with a visceral chord progression. Smoothness abounds in “It Never Entered My Mind,” a gentle tune that puts a new twist on the pessimism of balladry by resolving itself at moments into a hopeful groove. A hefty splash of freedom awaits us in “The Masquerade Is Over.” Peacock is on fire here, giving just the sort of fuel that Jarrett sets to such glorious conflagration. The latter’s soloing proves that not only is the masquerade over, but also that these musicians never hid behind masks in the first place. If any single facet of this jewel can be singled out, it is the stunning fifteen-and-a-half-minute rendition of “God Bless The Child” that concludes it. Peacock excels, taking the swing around the bar and back again.


Original cover

Standards, Vol. 2 (ECM 1289) is a shaded glen in Volume One’s verdant forest. Its mood is summed up perfectly in the title of the opening “So Tender,” which after a slow intro falls into the unity that so distinguishes this trio. Jarrett dances not on air but on fire in his pointillist lines, while Peacock and DeJohnette both captivate with their subtle, popping sound. “Moon And Sand” is an equally smooth ride through less traveled territories and finds Jarrett in a gentler mood. DeJohnette is also at his most delicate here, drawing circles in the sand with his brush. For “In Love In Vain” Jarrett spins from thematic threads a twin self, who for all his similarities breathes a different sort of politics in one of the set’s finest tunes. With every grunt, Jarrett voices only the tip of his creative iceberg. Peacock delights with a very elastic solo, which no matter how far it stretches stays locked to its theme as if by finger trap. Jarrett is at his lyrical best in “Never Let Me Go,” and skips to his Lou in “If I Should Lose You” before laying down the poetry of “I Fall In Love Too Easily” with a thick, tangible power.


Original cover

Prior to the release of Setting Standards, I hadn’t yet encountered the free play session that is Changes (ECM 1276) and what a joyful surprise it turned out to be, for never has the trio emoted in such a blissful mode. “Flying” is a heavenly diptych honed in delicacy and abandon. Here the band describes a decidedly aquatic territory, each tattered thread of melody flowing like the tendrils of a throbbing deep-sea creature whose eyes are its hearts. Jarrett spreads and shoots straight like an octopus, every pad suctioning to a new and exciting motif. Peacock, meanwhile, threads his fingers through a vast oceanic harp, stretching his emotive capacity to its limits. DeJohnette surfaces with a deeply digging solo before we end with Jarrett alone in a quiet, dissipating reflection. Peacock trails his starfish of a bass line through the pianistic coral reef of Part 2, he and DeJohnette inking their solos before hollering their way into an inescapable passion. The set ends in the refractions of “Prism.” And indeed the trio as a unit is not unlike a prism, separating every ray of light into its composite colors, likewise every ray of darkness into its whispered secrets. Jarrett’s expulsions heighten every inarticulable word that he writes, the breath of an energy that cannot be contained. The farther these reveries drift, the more life experience they carry back into the fold when they return.


Original cover

In a society gone astray from musical immediacy, it’s safe to point out Jarrett’s nexus as one of the more reliable vestiges where melody still blooms. With an average track length of nine minutes, these are quiet and endlessly interesting epics. Say what you will about Jarrett’s singing, which has sadly turned not a few off from these recordings, but I believe Peter Rüedi puts it best in his insightful liner notes when he says, “His groans and vocal outbursts, considered by many to be a quirk, are in fact nothing but a form of suffering at the thought that the abyss between the piano and sung melody can ultimately never be bridged, not even by Jarrett himself.” To these ears, Jarrett’s voice welcomes us into the intimacy of his creative spirit, so unfathomably expanded in the company of two fine musicians (and even finer spirits) whose talents can’t help but sing in their own complementary registers. And on that note, we mustn’t forget the contributions of Jarrett’s band mates, who constitute far more than anything the mere rubric of “rhythm section” might ever imply. How can we, for example, not shake our heads in wonder at DeJohnette’s consistent inventiveness, which singlehandedly reshaped the idioms at hand. And then there is Peacock, who for me is the bread and butter of the first two sessions. So carefully negotiating his path through various leaps and bounds, he seems to anticipate everything Jarrett throws his way. Just listen to his soloing on “It Never Entered My Mind” and “God Bless The Child,” and these words will mean nothing.

Through the two standards albums, Jarrett put the “Song” back into the Great American Songbook, and in Changes enlarged it with “Prism.” Now given the proper archival treatment in this 3-disc Old & New Masters edition commemorating 25 years of music-making, this unassuming surge of sonic bliss is now ours to cherish at will.

The camaraderie expressed in the booklet’s final session photo speaks for itself:

The CODONA Trilogy (ECM 2033-35)

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Don Cherry
Nana Vasconcelos
Collin Walcott
The CODONA Trilogy

Don Cherry trumpet, doussn’gouni, flutes, organ, melodica, voice
Nana Vasconcelos berimbau, cuica, talking drum, percussion, voice
Collin Walcott sitar, tabla, hammered dulcimer, sanza, timpani, voice

When my mother had gone to Canton market to shop, her wallet had unfolded like wings…. She had hunted out the seed shops to taste their lichees, various as wines…. She had dug to the bottom of fabric piles and explored the shadows underneath awnings. She gave beggars rice and letter-writers coins so that they would talk-story (“Sometimes what I gave was all they had, and stories.”)
–Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

The music of CODONA, ECM’s most emblematic creation, invariably puts me in mind of the above passage from Kingston’s classic “memoir.” It describes the author’s mother as, having just received her diploma, she celebrates by spreading what little monetary resources she has. The word that always stands out for me, and which is a theme of the book as a whole, is “talk-story,” for it describes with no uncertain brevity exactly what CODONA enacted in the studio (and on the stage) throughout the four-year span represented on this Old & New Masters trilogy. CODONA’s name—a portmanteau derived from its members’ firsts: COllin Walcott, DOn Cherry, NAna Vasconcelos—melds minds and hearts in the deepest crucible of music-making.

With their unique brand of pan-culturalism, CODONA developed an entire sonic landscape without needing to throw itself under the next promising classification to come along. These self-titled gems each plot a unique transition in ECM’s graphic and sonic development, reaching both beyond jazz and more deeply into it for hints of origins and possible futures. The improvisational spirit is very much alive at every turn, while also recognizing the pulse of its own maudlin journeys. There is always a sense that one has arrived at a truth, which through CODONA’s collective spirit(ualism) has transcended the misnomer of “universal” into a far more nuanced and selfless understanding of the relationship of sound to all creation.

Whenever we speak of “universal truths,” we delineate quite the opposite. Rather than tapping into a concept, an energy, or state of being that binds all life in however arbitrary a way, the only purpose of universalism is in fact to make us feel better about ourselves. It treats the human experience as primary target, the standard by which all else comes to be measured. The base concept of universalism implies, through its very anthropocentrism, self-obsession as the only path to connectivity. The music of CODONA remains an invaluable corrective to this assumptive attitude toward human experience. Rather than hide, it transcends its own sense of self into a disembodied sonority.

CODONA (ECM 1132)
Recorded September 1978 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

CODONA’s first album is particularly dear to my heart, for it is the only in the ECM catalog to have been recorded during the month and year of my birth. As such, it lends itself well to my imagination, where it plays as soundtrack to my emergence into this mortal coil. Careful arrangements, spontaneous though they may be, flavor our first taste of CODONA blood in “Like That Of Sky.” From the opening gong, this album enchants with its dramaturgy, in which time and space are one and the same. Against clicks and whistles, a subterranean sitar appears. In it, we hear the grumbling of voices. Cherry fills the vast emptiness with his sung trumpeting, such that the emptiness can only weep in return. Walcott’s sitar is respectfully articulated, ever so subtle in its reverberant twang, providing a gelatinous backbone, such as it is, for Cherry’s more immediate interpretations. From this, we get the tinny call of a clay drum and a flute hooked into every loophole, pulled to expose a more regular core. [This track reminds me very much of the work of the enigmatic duo known as Voice of Eye (especially their 1994 album Vespers), who achieve similarly evocative density from purely acoustic means.] Walcott’s tabla signals the phenomenological urgency with which divine creation takes form, as if finding amid the contact of fluttering fingers along pulled skin the key to unspeakable life. The second track takes the group’s name, and further slackens the threads that keep them bound to this mortal coil. Through an intriguing blend of wooden flute, hammered dulcimer, and some scattered percussive footsteps, the musicians manage to evoke a wide range of special effects from clear and present means. And as the rhythmic rope ladder unrolls itself step by step, we are enticed by its gentle sway into the enlightened space it has drawn for us of wood, metal, and touch. “Colemanwonder” deftly combines Ornette Coleman’s “Race Face” and “Sortie” with Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” in an auditory hodgepodge that is as delightful as it is singular. Given Cherry’s formative history with Coleman back in the late 1950s, this is an important swath of light to note in the album’s otherwise stark shade, made all the more vivid by the grunts, barks, poundings, and knocks issuing from Vasconcelos’s Brazilian cuica drum. “Mumakata” (apparently a favorite of the group’s live shows) features Vasconcelos on berimbau, Walcott on sanza, and Cherry on doussn’gouni. Voices sing, as if evoking the past for past’s sake. Against this tapestry, Cherry breaks out his trumpet for some gorgeous legato phrasings. “New Light” begins with the tinkling of bells and an awakening sitar. We arise from a gentle coma even as we settle into another: from the beauty of awareness to the awareness of beauty. Cherry launches higher flights of virtuosity, underscoring all the more the humility that has led him to this point in the album. Shells hiss like the raspy leaves of a giant palm thrashing in the wind. The dulcimer returns with maraca as Cherry spreads thicker melodies with clarity of tone and posture. A track so nocturnal that it almost glows. Every telepathic moment sparkles before Cherry cracks open a box of blissful high notes and fluttering half-sung hymns, leading us out as dulcimer strings are brushed like a harp by breath without source.

 


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CODONA 2 (ECM 1177)
Recorded May 1980 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

CODONA 2 drops us immediately into a groovier pool with “Que Faser.” Over tabla and sitar, Vasconcelos exchanges tender thoughts with Cherry’s trumpet, traveling from the majestic to the falsettic in one fell swoop. This leads into “Godumaduma,” the briefest track of the collection, and also its most enchanting. What sounds like three overdubbed sitars in a gorgeous transitory interlude configure something akin to Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint had it been written for Walcott and not electric guitar. Switching colors from the sandy and windblown to the gravid and architectural, “Malinye” features Cherry on melodica and Walcott on timpani. As the latter tumble over a highly cinematic terrain, a ring of spirits whispers, cackles, and wails. This haunting piece ends in a sanza-led chorus that stretches far beyond the final vibration and into another state of mind. At the halfway point, we find ourselves feeling “Drip-Dry.” Sitar and voice creep around our circle of light, reaching with shadowy hands to grasp the trumpet’s song within. The buoyant “Walking On Eggs” that follows sounds, like all of CODONA’s work, simultaneously composed and improvised. A buoyant piece, it is also as tentative as its title suggests. “Again and Again, Again,” on which we end, might as well be our listening instructions for this most underrated album of the set. Sitar and trumpet provide some vivid runes, of which Vasconcelos makes a sonic rubbing with a string of sounds not unlike a tape in fast forward, if not a dreaming bird. Add to this the plurivocity of a melodica, and one begins to see subtle density and “vocal” qualities that make this one of the group’s most inward-looking statements.

 


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CODONA 3 (ECM 1243)
Recorded September 1982 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The traditional Japanese “Goshakabuchi” that begins the final leg of this triumvirate turns the mirror just so, flashing a glint into our eyes from a distance. Cherry’s brassy ether drips with sympathetic effect; hammered dulcimer hurls its delicate, insectile hiccups; untold lives tease us with their possibilities. This is perhaps the most haunting and coalescent track in the collection and shows the trio at the height of its signature synergy. Sanza and doussn’gouni back the chant-heavy “Hey Da Ba Boom,” which will adhere to your mind far more than any words I might use to describe it here. “Travel By Night” trailmarks its path with berimbau, sitar, and muted trumpet. Walcott’s arcing tones make for quiet narration. Hooded by the darkened firmament, it practically floats with the practiced steps of a modest caravan fleeing from its own histories. A trio of shorter rest stops follows, of which “Lullaby,” the only moment with Walcott alone, gives us a heartening glimpse into the mind of group’s creative nerve center. “Clicky Clacky” provides a dash of whimsy, a bluesy gem from the mind and mouth of Cherry, complete with train whistle. The final gasp comes from the “Inner Organs,” where the echoes of trumpet and, not surprisingly, organ move in concert like a jellyfish and its tendrils toward open closure.

 


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The music world lost one of its most innovative figures when Collin Walcott perished in a car accident while on a European tour with Oregon in 1984, and the CODONA trilogy is but a flash of what this inimitable project might have further accomplished had he lived on. As rooted as the music is, the edge of time has severed its earthly ties. If jazz had developed from one mystical seed (and who’s to say it didn’t?), then certainly its originary tales would sound very much like the elder’s musings preserved here. Through their own brand of talk-story, these attuned sages brought forth truths of fragmentation, permeability of mind and body, and of the knowledge that nothing matters anymore once sound opens your ears.

Want to see ECM at its finest hour? Then set your clocks to CODONA time.

Steve Kuhn: Life’s Backward Glances – Solo and Quartet (ECM 2090-92)

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Steve Kuhn
Life’s Backward Glances: Solo and Quartet

Steve Kuhn piano
Sheila Jordan voice
Steve Slagle soprano and alto saxophones, flute
Harvie Swartz double-bass
Michael Smith drums
Bob Moses drums

In an open boat at sea,
lights are darkened by a tree.
All the world is all I see.

Brooklyn-born pianist Steve Kuhn is one of the savviest interpreters of our time. On ECM, we have also been fortunate enough to know him as an equally engaging composer. For this entry in its Old & New Masters series, the label gathers another fine trio of out-of-print treasures, of which Motility and Playground make their digital debuts (ECSTASY having been made limitedly available in Japan).

Motility (ECM 1094)
Recorded January 1977 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Entering Kuhn’s world is indeed like stepping into “The Rain Forest,” the first track on this phenomenal quartet recording. Not only is it visually resplendent and rich with life, but it also boasts distinct melodic qualities. Every last molecule has its role to play in the symphonic superstructure. Kuhn’s fingers navigate the forest’s ever-changing paths, arching lithely through overgrowth while Steve Slagle’s flute sings like an avian guide flitting from branch to branch: a thread of cognitive continuity between listener and the listened. The band’s sound really opens up in “Oceans In The Sky.” Like a waterfall in reverse, it returns to the cloud from which it was born, closing its eyes in a promise of clearer days. The private trajectories of “Catherine” intersect only briefly with our own, even as Harvie S.’s tenderest of bass solos pulls at the heart in muted song. “Bittersweet Passages” is a two-part journey, beginning in a swell of anticipation before fading into solemnity. The slightest movement becomes infinitely magnified, so that when the quartet returns in tutti, it bustles like a crowd of zealots flocking to their monument of worship. “Deep Tango” is driven by a braid of martial snare, bass, and soprano sax, beneath which Kuhn spreads carpet of fallen leaves. “Motility/The Child Is Gone” changes from elegy to ode in a blink. Kuhn lays on the expressivity, at once van Gogh and Monet, before delighting us with “A Danse For One,” in which one can almost hear his band mates lingering like a ghostly presence. Lastly is “Places I’ve Never Been,” another exciting tune replete with infectious grooves. Superb soloing from all, particularly in the diving flute, make this one a winner.

 


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Playground (ECM 1159)
Recorded July 1979 at Columbia Recording Studios, New York
Engineer: David Baker
Produced by Robert Hurwitz

In this album, we get an enlivening dose of Kuhn’s other brand of lyricism in the form of actual words. We had a taste of these in “Life’s Backward Glance” on 1974’s Trance. That selfsame tune makes a cameo here, also as a closer, only this time transformed by the throaty contralto of Sheila Jordan Kuhn, who turns everything she touches to melancholic gold. This is a markedly different album, not least because it is the latest of the three, and one that seems to have been consciously sandwiched between the others.

As Jordan turns verses in her lips in “Tomorrow’s Son,” she traces the undulations of bass and brushed drums, setting off the piano into a string of footnotes. Two adjacent pieces, “Gentle Thoughts” and “Poem For No. 15,” appear as the diptych “Thoughts of a Gentleman – The Sage of Harrison Crabfeathers” on ECSTASY. In their present incarnations, Kuhn’s pianism scintillates, his right hand so full that when his left hand comes in it sounds like another instrument entirely. The rhythm section is never enough to weigh him down. Rather, it seems to inspire him to ever-ecstatic heights. A personal favorite on this disc is “The Zoo,” a fantastic little slice of whimsy about communication, self-sufficiency, and delight in discovery. And one can hardly escape the allure of “Deep Tango,” which in this vocal version unfolds with even greater narrative potency.

Jordan’s voice strolls down memory lane as if it actually were a physical path to be strolled upon. Her constant vibrato lends a vulnerable sadness to the proceedings. The musicians feed off her presence tenfold, as evidenced in Kuhn’s transformation throughout from intimacy to fantasy.

 


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ECSTASY (ECM 1058)
Recorded November 1974 at Arne Bendiksen Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

This album was recorded one day following the Trance session, and revisits some of that same material in a solo setting. In spite of the density in which his playing often clothes itself, here he adopts a decidedly porous sound, breathing in and out like an organism that finds its invisible nourishment in notecraft alone. The present rendition of “Silver” is three times its original length on Trance, honed in reflections rather than shadows. An unexpected roll from the piano’s nether regions rises like oil from the ground, but never materializes into a full-blown breach, lapsing instead into a gentle trickle into the valley of resolution. Unique entries on this album include the entirely improvised “Prelude in G,” in which an increasingly frantic lead runs over a brooding ostinato, and “Ulla,” an emotional journey marked by careful pauses. Some insistent statements in the right hand lead one to believe there is far more to be said than what is being articulated in both. Kuhn ends again with “Life’s Backward Glance,” something of an iconic piece for him, here more erratic than its vocal counterpart. It reads like a critical self-assessment, born from years of improvisatory living, finding in the moment those truths with which we build an ever-changing concept of the self.

This is the darkest of the three albums, gilded in dissonant color schemes and more visceral reflections.

 


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Kuhn thinks in voices, but speaks in images. His story is a book without pages. Oftentimes, he looks away, but always acknowledges us through its colors. One moment finds him courting Vince Guaraldi on steroids, while the next recalls Bill Evans on a rainy afternoon. With such a full sound, one wonders how other musicians could add anything, but add they do, and beautifully so. The only thing missing now is you, the constant listener.

Arild Andersen: Green In Blue – Early Quartets (ECM 2143-45)

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Arild Andersen
Green In Blue: Early Quartets

Arild Andersen double-bass
Jon Balke piano
Knut Riisnaes tenor and soprano saxophones, flute
Pål Thowsen drums
Juhani Aaltonen tenor and soprano saxophones, flutes, percussion
Lars Jansson piano, Moog-synthesizer, string ensemble

I used to hear jazz through a diurnal lens: it was either night or day. I saw this reflected in many album covers, which could be bright (Milt Jackson’s Sunflower comes to mind) or deeply nocturnal (which pegs a good portion of the Blue Note catalogue). ECM has been unique in charting the in-between, those crepuscular moments of the genre in which transitions abound, and in fact define the parameters of the music. This fabulous collection of long out-of-print label efforts by Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen brings those transitions most clearly into focus. His music is firmly earthbound, yet at the same time so far beyond the stratosphere that seasons and times of day cease to matter. Such an approach allows us to come to the music as we are, absorbing it with the same spontaneity in which it is produced.

Clouds In My Head (ECM 1059)
Recorded February 1975 at Arne Bendiksen Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“305 W 18 St” is a breath of fresh air in even the freshest climate. The title refers to the bassist’s onetime home base, a New York apartment belonging to singer Sheila Jordan (who can be heard on Steve Kuhn’s Playground). I suspect these kinds of autobiographical details lie behind almost every title, some more inferable than others. Either way, Andersen’s gravid bass line and the lilting flute of Knut Riisnaes usher us into the album’s optimistic world, setting the pace for an exemplary thematic journey. There are plenty of breathtaking stops along the way, including the piano-driven “Outhouse,” with fine soloing to be had by all over a tight rhythm section headed by Pål Thowsen on drums; the sympathetic embrace of “Song For A Sad Day,” in which Riisnaes’s bone-tickling tenor tears our inhibitions to shreds; and the uplifting promises of the title cut. Neither can we pass up “The Sword Under His Wings,” a closer to end all closers. Lightning fast fingerwork from Andersen brings a live dynamism that practically begs for applause at every given opportunity. Not to be outdone, Jon Balke shows his chops as well, intimating what would become his own flowering career beyond the band. The album’s finest sax solo sparks a flare of virtuosity, snuffed too soon. A groove-oriented aesthetic dominates Clouds, but with enough downtempo diversions to soften the blow. Each theme is a springboard to fantastic leaps of intuition. Those of Riisnaes, whose resemblance to the early Garbarek is uncanny, are the farthest-reaching, variously filled with glorious hesitations and catharses.

 


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Shimri (ECM 1082)
Recorded October 1976 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In its second outing, the Arild Andersen Quartet saw the replacement of Balke and Rissnæs with saxophonist Juhani Aaltonen (already heard to mind-blowing effect on Edward Vesala’s Nan Madol and soon to appear on Satu of the same) and pianist Lars Jansson (whose trio, of which Anders Jormin was an original member, remains one of Sweden’s great jazz outfits). Here, Andersen dons more overtly compositional clothing, and lays his heart bare. The mood is a little more relaxed, its sound more porous, its gestures more internal. Starting with some chromatic pianism and Aaltonen’s winged soprano in the title track, and working through the timeless beauties of “No Tears” and “Ways Of Days,” we encounter deeper mysteries in “Wood Song.” On the surface, its wooden flute and colorful percussion evoke an arid landscape populated by rattlesnakes and desert winds, yet on deeper inspection seeks to reveal the improvisational in the mundane. “Vaggvisa För Hanna” is a multifaceted little number that plays like Red Lanta with an added rhythm section. Tenor sax makes its triumphant return in “Dedication.” Jansson wanders into some incredibly lyrical asides, singing like Keith Jarrett (who was among his formative influences as a music student), but led back to the main path by Aaltonen every time. While it is unclear who or what this concluding track is a dedication to, I like to think it was made for the listener, whose very existence animates the creative process at hand. For as Andersen recedes, leaving Aaltonen alone, we are drawn into that final gasp of cymbals and toms like an acolyte into selflessness.

 


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Green Shading Into Blue (ECM 1127)
Recorded April 1978 at Talent Studio
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The final album of this set changes gears yet again, working itself into a highly refined configuration. Jansson expands his contributions with added electronics. Their presence, subtle as it is, unpacks the music’s histories with far greater visibility. From the laid-back groove of “Sole” to the staccato backing of “Radka’s Samba,” we are treated to a colorful array of songs without words. Stories are the primary driving forces here, such that “The Guitarist” is not about the instrument but about the trembling hands that cradle it. Like an intro that never materializes into a full-blown swing, it has more than enough to sustain itself. “Anima” is another smooth joint that offers some of Andersen’s most understated brilliance. Aaltonen’s legato tenor lends an illusory impermanence. The album’s remainder is like a garden of quiet beauty. The cultivated panache of the sax-heavy “Terhi” and the “organic” backing of the title track wander into Eberhard Weber territory with every step. “Jana” closes in all the lushness this quartet has to offer in a synth-infused groove, finishing with the exuberance of Aaltonen’s soprano flourishes.

 


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Andersen is about as straightforward a musician as you are likely to encounter. His motivic acuity is engagingly bipolar, easily straddling funk and elegy in a single breath. His notes are powerful, sustained, and binding like glue. And in such fine company, the cumulative effects are unfathomable. Though his presence was vividly felt in a handful of early ECM releases, including Afric Pepperbird, Sart, and Triptykon, it was with these three albums that Andersen left his first inedible marks. What a joy it is to finally have them in the digital archive.

Crystal Silence: The ECM Recordings 1972-79 (ECM 2036-39)

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Gary Burton
Chick Corea
Crystal Silence: The ECM Recordings 1972-79

Gary Burton vibraphone
Chick Corea piano

The vibraphone and piano combine to make one of jazz’s most potent instrumental combinations, and nowhere so invigorating than at the hands of Gary Burton and Chick Corea. To say that the possibilities between them are limitless is to ignore the immediacy of their abilities, in which we may now bask to the utmost content in this timely reissue. Jazz’s most singular duo in a set of three albums on four CDs. Now those are some positive integers.

Crystal Silence (ECM 1024)
Recorded November 6, 1972 at Arne Bendiksen Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

It all begins here, with Crystal Silence. The title says it all: silence crystallized into dazzling melodic gems, each its own prismatic doorway into improvisatory translucence. Corea offers a fine set of five compositions (the most notable being the slick opener “Señor Mouse”), along with three beautifully realized tunes by bassist Steve Swallow (“Arise, Her Eyes” being a personal favorite), and another by Mike Gibbs (the somber “Feelings And Things”). In spite of the variety of voices represented here, the album grows like one long, extended story, a dynamic that seems to shadow the musicians wherever they set foot. The title track, reprised and extended since its inaugural appearance on Return to Forever, is a subdued tour de force in style, presentation, and content. “Falling Grace” (Swallow) is one of the shorter pieces on tap, but what it lacks in time it makes up for in exhilaration. We end with an instrumental version of another Return classic, “What Game Shall We Play Today.” Each piece is rendered with such dynamic sensitivity that one can immediately recognize the effect Crystal Silence must have had when originally released, and no doubt continues to have to this day. Connected as they are by the same mellow fuse, these tunes need hardly a spark to set them to glowing.

This essential album constantly skirts the line between destitution and celebration, rebuilding as many structures as it tears down. The pianism soars, and one could never praise Burton enough for providing the intuitive right hand to Corea’s metronomic left. Above all, this is a masterful exhibition of improvisation around strong thematic material that breaks through its own generic conventions, and is another indispensable example of what ECM has done to enrich and enlarge the landscape of jazz music from day one.

 


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Duet (ECM 1140)
Recorded October 23 – 25, 1978, at Delphian Foundation, Sheridan/Oregon
Engineer: Bernie Kirsh
Produced by Chick Corea and Gary Burton

If Crystal Silence is the Corea/Burton universe writ large, then the “Duet Suite” that opens this follow-up album is its densest galaxy. Buoyant grace, turn-on-a-dime syncopation, and an abiding sense of direction make every moment an experience to savor and relive as many times as a single lifetime will allow. More than a lasting mosaic of what either of these musicians is capable of, the suite overflows with so much energy that it could easily have gone on to fill the entire album. And in many ways, it does, being a meta-statement of all to come. The lovingly arranged selections from Corea’s Children’s Songs that follow expand fourfold the brief glimpse into this masterwork afforded us in the project’s debut. These otherwise intimate excursions sparkle like film stills sped into viable movement. The hip nostalgia of “Radio” (Swallow) plunges us into the past, even as it directs our eyes to the future, reeling through its motifs with head-tilting abandon. Burton’s staggered rhythms make for an ecstatic crosshatching of polyphony. At last, we come to Corea’s seminal “Song To Gayle.” Soon to be a staple in the outfit’s traveling songbook, this fluid conversation is almost blinding in its agreement. Duet is rounded out by the ever so exquisite “Never” (Swallow) and “La Fiesta,” a Corea original that brings the album’s most enthralling moments into focus.

 


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In Concert, Zürich, October 28, 1979 (ECM 1182/83)
Recorded October 28, 1979 at Limmathaus, Zürich
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The Zürich live album is the clear standout of this collection and a real treasure among many in the ECM catalogue. All the classics are here, gloriously reincarnated for new and veteran listeners alike: a sweeping rendition of “Crystal Silence” flows with the power of a river during spring thaw, “Falling Grace” becomes strangely uplifting, “Song To Gayle” sparkles, and Corea’s improvisational turns during a vivacious “Señor Mouse” have all the makings of a hallmark triumph. These actually outdo themselves in live form, plain and simple. But they are only half the fun. Lest we forget the wealth of other material in the set, the duo delights us with “Bud Powell,” Corea’s pitch-perfect tribute to the bebop pioneer. The man at the piano can’t help but sing along as he negotiates one fluid key change after another. We also get some mesmerizing virtuosity from Burton, which makes us want to join in the applause at home. Another high point is “Endless Trouble, Endless Pleasure” (Swallow), which ends the show with a spicy half-step glory. But the real treasures here are the onetime C-Sides making their ECM digital debut at last. Each gives the respective musician his moment alone. Burton’s tender evocations of the Swallow standards “I’m Your Pal” and “Hullo, Bolinas” flit like a ballerina across the stage, while a lush 15-minute interpretation by Corea of his own “Love Castle” pulls his pianism into utterly new territories.

Live energy brings inexpressible wonder to these pieces. With each listen, they show their colors by an increasingly visible logic, extending solos here and shortening graces there, until the whole picture begins to make intuitive sense.

 


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Once in a great while, there are combinations that simply cannot fail. Chick Corea and Gary Burton embody one of them. Their supporting articulations are sometimes so delicately applied that one cannot help but become an extension of the other. They seem to find in each other a new vision of life, which they bring to every note. They also really know how to introduce a piece. Rather than lead us patronizingly into their sound-world, they drop us directly into its liquid center, so that while coming up for air we begin to understand the music from the inside out. These are two wirewalkers at the height of their creative talents, yet who have since forgone their balance bars in favor of more airborne travels. This is quite simply music for the ages.


Eberhard Weber: Colours (ECM 2133-35)

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Eberhard Weber
Colours

Eberhard Weber bass
Charlie Mariano soprano saxophone, shenai, nagaswaram, flutes
Rainer Brüninghaus keyboards, piano, synthesizer
Jon Christensen drums
John Marshall drums, percussion

“I would not be you, El-ahrairah. For Frith has given the fox and the weasel cunning hearts and sharp teeth, and to the cat has given silent feet and eyes that see in the dark, and they are gone awry from Frith’s place to kill and devour all that belongs to El-ahrairah.”
–Richard Adams, Watership Down

For six years, Eberhard Weber’s Colours enthralled the European tour circuit. A unique entry into the growing number of fusion outfits of the seventies, Weber charted a distinctly introspective path into jazz’s most unanswerable questions. The ensemble’s inimitable blend of improvisational and chamber music aesthetics was a perfect fit for ECM, not so much filling a gap as defining one. By the time he had recorded for the label, Weber had already honed a most distinctive skill, brought to its worthiest fruition on his custom electrobass, and was even present in Wolfgang Dauner’s much-neglected Output. Without a doubt, Colours created some of the label’s most mellifluous music. The sound is unmistakable, coiling like a snake around some of the most gorgeous atmospheres to grace your ears.

Yellow Fields (ECM 1066)
Recorded September, 1975 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With “Touch” we are immediately privy to a groove-oriented game between piano and bass. The lush, open sound is heightened by the presence of synth strings, prefiguring Weber’s later orchestral collaborations. Charlie Mariano’s soprano floats with positive energy and unbounded enthusiasm as the strings morph into trembling sirens. Jon Christensen adds backbone to otherwise invertebrate music. Weber is subdued in this first track, leaving Mariano to take the lead with a soulful stride toward a quick fadeout, leaving us wanting more of what could have been.

“Sand-Glass” begins with water droplets and the occasional artfully placed rim shot. High notes on bass provide a constellatory framework. Within these borders, seemingly drawn but only imagined, Mariano solos like a comet, his sentiment flaring against a limpid night. Mariano flaps his wings around the fuselage of Weber’s bass line before being rocked to sleep in an electric piano cradle. Inspirations grow more pronounced as Mariano picks up the shenai, a quadruple-reed North Indian oboe that tunnels into the brain like a shawm. We ride this wave until the drums pick us up and drop us back into a shattered world of aftershocks and quieting energy.

The title track is an auditory hermit. With the theme quickly dispensed with, improvisation turns joyful fancy into gorgeous abandon. All the while, discipline reigns as abstractions build into a more melodic whole in which the sound and the message are one and the same. Weber takes a more supportive tack, allowing Brüninghaus a cosmic solo on electric piano. Statements conveyed and time regained, the band wraps up with a fleeting thematic revival amid an interlacing of rhythms and supportive flourishes.

Lastly, we merge onto the “Left Lane,” which opens with a pensive bass, soon joined by electric piano. Christensen defibrillates, turning this slow drive into a cruise. The piano sings in its higher regions before trickling down like rain on a window. Weber returns to spark a new groove, moving from elegiac to jazzy in a flash. A seemingly tame sax solo quickly turns dramatic, opening our hearts to a visceral farewell.


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Silent Feet (ECM 1107)
Recorded November 1977 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“Seriously Deep” throws a light blanket of tender drones and electric piano, quilted with gorgeous solos on soprano sax and bass. Steady rhythms (hereon provided by ex-Soft Machine drummer John Marshall) turn something otherwise mournful into life-affirming joy. The title is not a pretentious statement of the music’s emotional cache, but rather a description of its physical path as it digs toward the center of the earth. The second, and title, track of the album’s modest three is an ironic one, requiring active hands to evoke silent feet. The helix that is Weber and Brüninghaus spirals in place as cymbals connect like base pairs within, thus leading to one of the latter’s most captivating pianistic passages. It is the kind of balanced exuberance that characterizes Pat Metheny at his most potent stretches of imagination. Stellar breath control from Mariano plays beautifully off Weber’s every move, making for one of the finest cuts in the collection. We end nocturnally, watching with “Eyes That Can See In The Dark.” A smattering of percussion sets off a wooden flute in a floating auditory reverie. While one might think that an electric bass would upset this delicate atmosphere, Weber is one of the few who can pull it off with such fluid precision. From this pool arises a specter of winds, blown like gusts of air from pursed lips across outstretched hands. Again, Mariano turns out some incredible soloing to finish.

Those who, like me, grew up reading Watership Down will doubly appreciate the occasional references Weber draws from the classic novel. “Silent Feet” and “Eyes That Can See In The Dark” both refer to a central creation myth among the story’s protagonists, a herd of rabbits fleeing in exodus from the warren they once called home. Storytelling becomes a central diversion in these hard times, and the origins narrative is a favorite: At a council of the animals, Frith the creator and sun god gives each its own ability to forever pursue the wily and celeritous rabbit. To the cat, he gives Weber’s cited traits, all the better to seek out its foe under cover of night. Respectfully, Weber takes a more romantic view of the hunt and allows us into the animal mind without malice.


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Little Movements (ECM 1186)
Recorded July 1980 at Studio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The vast drone of “The Last Stage Of A Long Journey” cuts a thick line below the Steve Kuhn-esque intro. Like the silent monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey, it mystifies as it enlightens. Saxophonic clusters punctuate a deep recurring thrum. Brüninghaus introduces a plaintive ostinato behind Weber’s crisp solo over brushed drums. Every gesture therein lifts us into cloudier airspace. “Bali” gives us more drone, until Marshall and Weber lock us into a solid trek to outlying territories. Like a train through the mountains that suddenly part to reveal a lively village, it shows passengers an idyllic vision of life on the margins. The piano keeps us moving forward, however, so that we only get a glimpse. Weber provides the coal, while Mariano lights a fire to feed it. A beautiful arpeggiator opens the door on a transcendent detour before bringing us back on track. The energy and motivic clarity remind one instantly of Steve Reich’s Tehillim. Next, Colours weaves “A Dark Spell” over us. Over a distant cascade of piano, bass and sax congregate in thematic clusters. Mariano outdoes himself, performing back flips in the sky as our speed increases in the last stretch. Engaging harmonies between bass and sax offer an incredible display of dynamic control that recedes like a classical riff. The title track begins with a repeated motif on piano as random sounds—accordion, gongs, and breaking glass—populate the background. From this, we get a thematic highlighting by Mariano against Weber’s delightful counterpart. The smooth and easy ending sweeps up any remaining debris with every repetition. “‘No Trees?’ He Said” is a straightforward track that appears smooth from every angle. From its tight rhythm to its reed doublings, this is simply stunning music. There is nothing little about these movements.


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Though palpable in every amplified note, Weber’s legacy is about more than just assembling a handful of incredibly talented beads and threading them with smooth production. “Telepathic” is hardly the word to describe the sound of Colours, but it steers us in the right direction. The music in this set remains untouched, a sign of its far-reaching clarity of purpose. It is chaos theory epitomized in sound: every note goes where it must, never to be repeated. Weber’s music not only soars, it transcends the atmosphere. I like to think that, somewhere, an extra-terrestrial is glowing with delight at these sounds, pulsing through space-time with the energy of all creation.

Chick Corea: Solo Piano (ECM 2140-42)

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Chick Corea
Solo Piano

Chick Corea piano
Ida Kavafian violin
(Children’s Songs, Track 20)
Fred Sherry cello
(Children’s Songs, Track 20)

Much of the jazz that has come to characterize the “ECM sound” is known for its pellucid solemnity. Conversations between sound and space abound, in which vestiges of their own histories mark the passage of time. To younger listeners like myself, it is sometimes easy to forget that the label remains rooted in the youthful immediacy one finds in these formative efforts from Chick Corea. While his refreshing approach to pianism inhabits the same continent as other formidable players, Corea is very much his own culture. Much of the later material that would come to define the “Corea sound,” however, is in clear evidence throughout these discs, and especially in the improvised efforts.

Piano Improvisations Vol. 1 (ECM 1014)

Recorded April 21 & 22, 1971, Bendiksen Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

From note one, these improvisations abound with the freedom of an artist who is ever at his peak. Their many tender touches and nostalgic leanings are shielded by a powerful optimism. Such exuberance makes them all the more embraceable in their poignancy. Tunes such as “Noon Song” twirl like a skirt in the breeze. Others (“Sometime Ago” and “Song For Sally”) are flirtatious and skip from one thought to another: a love in overdrive. The pièce de résistance, however, is the eight-part suite “Where Are You Now?” In this series of “pictures,” Corea renders for us a film whose soundtrack precedes its images. There are no mysterious titles to ponder; each tells us exactly what we are going to hear. The playing is at once pliant and mechanical, carrying across its feelings with such genuine appreciation for the listener that one cannot help but smile.

 


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Piano Improvisations Vol. 2 (ECM 1020)
Recorded April 21 & 22, 1971, Bendiksen Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

This companion volume of Corea’s improvisations doesn’t merely continue where the first left off, but fleshes out finer details unexplored in its neglected depths. This volume is more nocturnal than the last, a siesta in songs without words. “After Noon Song” starts us off alluringly before the crisper interjections of Thelonius Monk’s “Trinkle Tinkle” and Wayne Shorter’s “Masqualero.” The second act is where the album begins to fray at the edges, and becomes all the more mystical for it. At first, experiments like “Departure From Planet Earth” seem to stray into unnecessarily weighty territory. Yet with each listen, they tell us more about their travels. And while Corea’s often-discussed religious predilections (I dare not invoke the “S” word here) may give us even greater insight into the music’s enigmatic borders, in this instance such forays into biographical details provide little advantage. Either way, Corea reacclimates into “A New Place.” This is polyglot music, of which each melody its own tongue. Though some are more readily interpretable than others, we always know what is trying to be said.

 


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Children’s Songs (ECM 1267)
Recorded July 1983 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

By a similar twist of fate that kept me from The Köln Concert for so many years, I only discovered this album recently, and I must say that it deserves a throne alongside Keith Jarrett’s magnum opus for its unfathomable hidden power. Beneath the album’s contemplative veneer beats a furnace of a heart stoked by creative flames, the heights of which are rarely surpassed in today’s genre-hungry climate. Begun in 1971, and recorded here twelve years later, Children’s Songs gives us Chick Corea at his compositional best. At first, the title is an enigma: Are these songs to be played by children or for children? But as we soon discover, the child has already outgrown itself. Like clouds, these pieces take on whatever shapes we project onto them. On the one hand, their steady obbligatos and carefully chosen points of contact resemble the latent energies of Philip Glass (No. 1) and Steve Reich (No. 9). On the other, they pantomime a range of influences, from ragtime to Satie (No. 19 is like something lifted straight out of Gymnopédies) to Bartók (the Mikrokosmos parallels being almost too obvious to mention). One can also clearly see how influential this music must have been to others. The filmic beauty of No. 4 cannot have been lost, for example, on Michael Nyman. These are also pieces about contrast. Take, for example, the left hand in No. 6, which lays out a triadic darkness, while the right hand insists on spinning light before our very eyes. Corea’s characteristic ornaments, as in the descending trill at end of No. 3, grow richer every time, and the sweeping elegies of No. 10, 12, and 13 allow the Corea we know and love to shine through. Violin and cello add delightful pliancy to the “Addendum,” a classically minded closer that puts a stylish bow on an already crisply wrapped package.

 


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Corea and his legacy blossom at every moment throughout these three seminal albums, with which he singlehandedly revitalized the solo piano program as an art form to be taken seriously in the post-Art Tatum era. He is the reliable narrator, the quiet provocateur, and the entertainer. He is also none of these. He bids us to listen without pretense, knowing that a carefully defined surface is nothing without the depth to support it. At the same time, he wastes no time in trying to intellectualize what lies beneath, secure in the knowledge that his music will carry on the conversation. This is an essential collection that belongs on any ECM fan’s shelf, not to mention a prime candidate for reissue of the century.