Author: Tyran Grillo

Miroslav Vitous Group w/Michel Portal: Remembering Weather Report (ECM 2073)

| Tyran Grillo

Remembering Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous Group
Remembering Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous double-bass
Franco Ambrosetti trumpet
Gary Campbell tenor saxophone
Gerald Cleaver drums
Michel Portal bass clarinet
Recorded fall 2006 and spring 2007 at Universal Syncopation Studios
Recording producer and engineer: Miroslav Vitous
Assistant engineer: Andrea Luciano
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

After the challenging yet ultimately rewarding experimentalism of Universal Syncopations II, Remembering Weather Report comes as a breath of fresh air for bassist Miroslav Vitous, who preens previously undetected feathers in this warped look back. Indeed, similarities to the titular fusion band with which Vitous once played (and which he co-founded with Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul) are glancing at best. Here that original band’s fiercely democratic approach takes on new hues as individual instruments click through the front line like a roulette of alter egos in the form of Americans Gerald Cleaver on drums and Gary Campbell on tenor, and Swiss trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti.

In addition, French clarinetist and new music advocate Michel Porter joins the quartet on half of the album’s six hefty tunes. His involvement unleashes the firmest successes thereof, as in an aching set of variations on Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” (the only track not from the bandleader’s pen) and “Surfing With Michel,” a spirited duet between Vitous and Porter that is the missing capstone to the core quartet’s great pyramid. Another set of variations on Wayne Shorter material finds the bassist shuffling between arco and pizzicato modes, all the while navigating a flurry of drums with a papercutter’s feel for negative space. A surreal and frenetic sense of control reigns, skipping with assurance.

The tripartite “Semina” is Vitous at his most honest, although this time Cleaver divulges heart and soul, inciting as he does calligraphic brilliance from Campbell and, in the concluding “Blues Report,” a swift kick to the stratosphere, where soars the album’s pièce de résistance, “When Dvořák Meets Miles.” Fine arco playing connects blats of muted trumpet, and all with a percussive finish that lingers sweetly on the palate. As ever, the interactions are subtle yet naked, each element brimming with snap, crackle, and pop.

Remembering Weather Report is not for the jazz tourist. Its highly evolved messages comprise a raw manifesto on what it means to be progressive in a regressive climate. Motifs run the gamut from static to ballistic, but quickly dissolve in favor of broader improvisational paths, each a vein to some distant thematic artery. The album is further notable for being recorded in Vitous’s own Italian studio. His direct involvement in not only the elicitation but also the rendering of these sounds lends remarkable immediacy to the space in which they unfold.

Tom van der Geld/Children At Play: Out Patients (JAPO 60035)

| Tyran Grillo

Out Patients

Tom van der Geld
Children At Play
Out Patients

Tom van der Geld vibraharp
Roger Jannotta tenor and alto saxophones, bass clarinet, oboe, flute, whistles
Wayne Darling bass
Bill Elgart drums, percussion
Recorded July 1980 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Steve Lake and the band

Was it you?
was it me?
who said that if
two people think the same
then one of them is unnecessary.

Well if that’s true, my friend,
I hope it’s you.

–Tom van der Geld

Vibraphonist-composer Tom van der Geld’s ECM initiation came by way of the JAPO sister label when, in 1976, the self-titled Children At Play introduced listeners to an album of uncompromising originality. Recorded in 1973, the same year of van der Geld’s permanent relocation to Germany (where the band’s reedman, Roger Jannotta, and drummer, Bill Elgart, would also find new homes), it’s a formative release not only for being Children At Play’s first, but also for sharing its uniquely sunlit sound with the world at large. Tropical and sweet, the album is a sparkling endeavor that favors the lived reality of jazz over its descriptive pitfalls. Patience (1978) was van der Geld’s first dip into ECM proper and stands out for its bright geography. This time, however, the tectonic plates shift more abstractly below with the heat of friction. The freedom of this sophomore effort offers plenty of room for the listener to find a story. On its heels came Path (1979), the phenomenal trio album with Jannotta and guitarist Bill Connors. Hewn in pastels rather than oils, it’s a decidedly softer and sometimes-haunting affair.

TvdG
(Photo by Peter Nimsky)

This brings us to 1980’s Out Patients, in which van der Geld closed the JAPO circle alongside the ever-versatile Jannotta (on tenor and alto saxophones, bass clarinet, oboe, flute, and whistles), bassist Wayne Darling, and Elgart on drums and percussion. Two of the vibraphonist’s compositions bookend the album, contrasting the free unity of “Things Have Changed” with the expressive rubato of “I Hope It’s You.” The first coheres into a loose brand of unity, the bass clarinet a noteworthy foil to van der Geld, who takes an early solo down a slippery slope yet maintains tactful balance within the rhythm section’s mosaic. The concluding tune finds Jannotta (on tenor) leading with truth. The reedman further contributes “Dreamer” for the listener’s fortunate consideration. It travels and unravels somewhere between starlight and sunrise, revealing a melodic core in Jannotta’s flute and Darling’s resonant bassing. The latter’s “Ballade Matteotti” awakens like a dawn chorus. Van der Geld describes so much of the image that, were his bandmates not so attuned, they might feel superfluous. Their ease of diction contributes to the group’s strength. Consequently, the music flips from intense to reflective at the turn of a phrase. Jannotta’s extended delivery in the second half is tour de force in the truest sense, for in it force prevails.

Yet nothing in the program surpasses Elgart’s “How Gently Sails The Moon Twixt The Arbour And The Bough (And The World Is Waiting For The Sun,” a tune as epic as its title, and one that adds some groove to the band’s loose equation. Smooth yet crisp, and brimming with a chamber jazz aesthetic, it explores a wide dynamic range, with a memorable midsection in which delicate utterances ripple through the quartet. Jannotta (now on alto) lends mystical qualities to the scene, finding scratchy-throated catharsis in the unfolding. Interpretive diffusions all around show a group becoming more unified the wilder it gets: proof that, at least in musical terms, letting go will sometimes be the key to being found.

Although Children At Play disbanded in 1981, its spirit lives on in these highly collectible recordings, as also through its leader’s commitment to jazz education. In the interest of making his mission known, below is an e-mail Q&A I conducted with van der Geld, who kindly shared his memories and thoughts. And for an exhaustive assessment of van der Geld’s career, plus a more extensive interview, check out Formosa Coweater’s fabulous article here.

Can you tell me about your musical background and about how you came to be a jazz musician?

Well, I come from a third-generation family of musicians, so I guess there is something hereditary here. I grew up in an environment where jazz was always being played or listened to. My parents had a “dance band” which played on weekends at officer’s clubs and private clubs. I played trumpet in that band for several years. Having been the world’s second worse trumpet player (!), I decided at age 21 to start playing the vibes. There was never really much of a choice regarding becoming a jazz musician. At one point, I did earn an engineering degree—mainly at the request of my father. Following that, I was devoted to music.

You seem to have followed in the footsteps of many American-born musicians who have found a musical home in Europe. Can you tell me what differentiates European approaches to jazz performance and pedagogy from their counterparts elsewhere?

The Europeans have, over the decades, developed a very special jazz signature. Significant input has come from English players like Kenny Wheeler and John Taylor. But throughout Europe there have been great players who have taken American music and blended it with their own particular cultural and musical expression. Names that come into mind would include Thomas Stanko, Jan Garbarek, Dave Holland and many more.

In the early seventies, there were very few schools in Europe with an adequate jazz curriculum. This is no longer the case. There are excellent jazz departments in many European universities.

Who did you count among your deepest musical influences when you began your professional career? Has that list changed since then?

As far as the vibes are concerned, my first influences were Lionel Hampton (the first LP I ever bought) and Milt Jackson (the first jazz concert I ever went to). When Gary Burton came to Albuquerque with his famous first quartet in 1969, I was completely blown away. Later I became one of his students at Berklee. Other important musical influences included Marion Brown, Ornette Coleman, Paul Bley, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, ESP, Archie Shepp, Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler.

What role does teaching play in your musical life? What have you learned from your students?

I was fortunate to be able to teach and, in fact, to quite enjoy teaching. Teaching was also often the mainstay regarding things like paying the rent. And I have indeed learned very much from my students. The most important lesson: be open to questions and remain curious.

Each of the four albums you recorded for ECM/JAPO is distinct from the rest. How would you characterize their moods and styles? Is there an overarching theme that connects them all?

Those recordings are individually the result of circumstance and coincidence. There is no overarching theme connecting them. It was very rewarding to play with those great players/composers.

How has the experience of performing enhanced your understanding of jazz as an art form? Do you see jazz as an art form to begin with, or is it something else?

I don’t know: I never use the word “artist” when describing myself, and have never consciously considered these questions.

Who are you listening to these days?

Mostly piano players, with Bill Evans, John Taylor, Ahmad Jamal, Bud Powell and Art Tatum being on top of the list. I also listen often to “classical” music.

Your Ear Training textbook has enjoyed international success as a teaching tool. How did you come to write it? What did it mean for you to have Dave Liebman write its Foreword?

I had applied for a professorship at the Musikhochschule Köln (a school of music at the university level in Cologne). This must have been sometime during early 1994. Well, I didn’t get the professorship. They were, however, at that time looking for someone to teach the jazz ear-training courses. Since I had already been teaching ear-training at Berklee, they asked me to join the faculty. After a few semesters, I had produced a large amount of my own teaching materials. My subsequent method books are based on these materials.

I was extremely happy that Dave agreed to write the Foreword for these books: he is a player and teacher of great integrity for whom I have always had the greatest respect.

What is your best advice for aspiring jazz musicians?

Learn the science of our music (harmony) and develop your instrumental technique.

But NEVER forget: jazz improvisation begins and ends with your ears.

If you can’t hear it, don’t play it!

Out (Back) Patients
(Out Patients back cover)

Quercus review in RootsWorld

| Tyran Grillo

Another new review for RootsWorld online magazine. This one details the self-titled ECM debut of Quercus, a trio consisting of folksinger June Tabor, pianist Huw Warren, and saxophonist Iain Ballamy. Click the cover to read the article and hear a sample track.

2276 X

Marilyn Crispell: Vignettes (ECM 2027)

| Tyran Grillo

Vignettes

Marilyn Crispell
Vignettes

Marilyn Crispell piano
Recorded April 2007, Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Assistant engineer: Lara Persia
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In the light of her successful trio albums for ECM, pianist-composer Marilyn Crispell brings jazz to its knees with a solo album of such shadow that descriptors run dry. Nominally, the reduction would seem to be just that: a paring of musicians from three to one, a nakedness of melody, a sparser palette. And yet, when “Vignette I”—the first of seven such improvisations strewn among a field of selectively prewritten material—casts its handful of stars into the night sky, the ripple effect is anything but restricted. Rather, this foray builds a grand emotion as only Crispell’s intersections of personal experience and growth can accommodate. Grounded by the occasional bass note, a floor to every ceiling, her introduction inhales as deeply as possible before draping its breath across the horizon. The six remaining vignettes capture details such as Crispell has never revealed before or since. Whether plucked like harp strings in rhythm with veiled footsteps (“Vignette II”) or tracing a vine’s path up an old stone wall (“Vignette VII”), she attends to every cell, reaching through muddy waters and touching the riverbed with her resolute sunbeams.

Above all, Crispell’s integrity is integral. As she labors between discomfort and resolution through the rubato oscillations of “Valse Triste,” navigates the pedestrian paths of “Sweden,” and places cross-sections of reminiscence under the dual microscope of “Ballade” and “Time Past,” an origin story begins to emerge. In “Gathering Light,” too, her mystical touch reigns. By the eddying currents of her left hand, she guides the school of fish evoked by her right, that its spiritual purpose might break shore and take root on land. Even in her most abstract moments (cf. “Axis”), Crispell’s feel for geometry is so genuine as to be irrefutable, and at her most somber (“Little Song For My Father”) she chains whispers of respect and love, allowing empty spaces to do most of the talking.

Rounding out the set are two artfully placed interpretations of others’ works. “Stilleweg” is by Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen, and is an airy dance with a folkish quality. It is the other, however, to which I would focus your attention, for “Cuida Tu Espíritu” (Take Care of Your Spirit), by flutist Jayna Nelson, is one of the most transcendental piano works ever recorded for ECM. Crispell inhabits its every architectural nook and cranny, the staggered relationship between her fingers serving to magnify the holy vision at their tips.

Vignettes is both pure Crispell and Crispell at her purest. It holds its own alongside any Keith Jarrett album and is just as indicative of genius. An ECM “Top 10” candidate, for sure. Do yourself a favor and find out if you agree.

Stefano Bollani: Stone In The Water (ECM 2080)

| Tyran Grillo

Stone In The Water

Stefano Bollani
Stone In The Water

Stefano Bollani piano
Jesper Bodilsen double-bass
Morten Lund drums
Recorded October 2008 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Italian pianist Stefano Bollani, last heard alongside mentor Enrico Rava on The Third Man, leads a hip Danish rhythm section of bassist Jesper Bodilsen and drummer Morten Lund for this colorful trio outing.

“Dom de iludir” is one of two Brazilian songs featured in the set and a personal favorite of Bollani. Written by Caetano Veloso, it intros with a pianistic staircase that leads us into the album’s mosaic of light and shadow. As brushed drums and bass saunter their way into frame, Bodilsen’s heartfelt solo giving early tell of the trio’s balladic core, we know we’ve come home. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Brigas nunca mais” closes the South American circle with fluted, martini-glass contours. Between these tunes are two more by Bodilsen, whose sweeping “Orvieto” channels Chick Corea, with whom Bollani would of course collaborate on an album of the same name. Contrasting this waterfall of sparkle and shine is the bar-lit “Edith,” which folds and unfolds a promise of love until it dissolves. In both tracks, the composer burns in the atmosphere by means of a deep pyrography, all the while retaining an optimistic sheen.

Aside from the trio’s fluid take on “Improvisation 13 en la mineur” by the (in Bollani’s estimation) underappreciated French composer Francis Poulenc and notable for Lund’s tactile engagement, the remaining tracks mine original Bollani ore exclusively. Much to this listener’s delight, the Latin undercurrent established at the outset colors the tender drivenness throughout, particularly in the nostalgia-laden “Asuda” and the concluding “Joker in the village,” prime vehicles both for bassist and drummer, respectively, who mix colors with such integrity that even Bollani’s textural authority can seem but sand to their waves.

That said, the leader elicits the album’s deepest moments by far in the aerial flyby that is “Un sasso nello stagno,” for which he soars and descends with the kind of precision that only years of flying experience can entail, and above all in “Il cervello del pavone,” one of the most fascinating trio cuts in the entire ECM catalogue. With its elliptical riffs and pointillist segues, it fills in the all the right gaps with tactful charm and understands that mastery comes only through a balance of groundedness and letting go.

(To hear samples of Stone In The Water, click here.)

Vassilis Tsabropoulos: The Promise (ECM 2081)

| Tyran Grillo

The Promise

Vassilis Tsabropoulos
The Promise

Vassilis Tsabropoulos piano
Recorded January 2008 at Dmitri Mitropoulos Hall, Megaron, Athens
Engineer: Nikos Espialidis
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Vassilis Tsabropoulos’s sixth ECM disc proves that less is indeed more. The Greek pianist-composer offers 11 pieces of original and improvised material, most of it sketched just weeks before the recording session. As solo piano records go, this has none of the fire of a Keith Jarrett or the richness of a Richie Beirach, but what it foregoes in flourish it supplements with emotional fluency.

The album is tented by the first iteration and two equidistant variations of a song called “The Other,” the repetition of which links bed sheets like a child scaling from an orphanage’s high window. Enjoying the feeling of cool, damp grass between his toes, he looks around before taking that first fateful step into new life. Starlit and sweet, his face draws curtains with a single gaze, whispering a ghostly farewell. Between these support beams thrives an effective garden of ruminations, each with its own part to play. “Tale Of A Man” perhaps sees that same child grown into someone who has never forgotten the way his escape has shaped the here, the now, and the ever after. The left and right hands run parallel along opposite riverbanks, never touching across the watery path until they at last reach the ocean into which that river empties.

“Smoke And Mirrors” overlooks that calm, moonlit sea. Hints of dance drop their anchors and hold their vessel true in the afterglow of moonset, which registers as but a glimmer on the water. In “Pearl” Tsabropoulos jumps from that vessel seeking the titular jewel. He finds it not between two shells, but growing of its own desire to be held. And so he plucks it from the sandy floor, cradling it in a calloused palm to the surface, where eyes await to behold its beauty.

One might easily read such evocative associations into the program’s whole, but the music holds its own without them. Despite the fact that much of it follows the same formula, laying melodic improvisations over flowing ostinatos, one also feels spoken to in an honest, reflective way. In this regard, the title track is the heart of Tsabropoulos’s art. Other key moments emerge by way of the crystalline geometry of “Djivaeri” and the intensely cinematic “Promenade.” And Tsabropoulos’s ECM tenure bears traces on “The Insider,” which recalls Ketil Bjørnstad at his solitary best, while “Confession” moves mountains with its G. I. Gurdjieff-like meditation.

These are as much pieces of literature as of music, their language as vivid on the wind as it would be on the page. The recording is distant, seemingly on the verge of floating away, and suits the sounds as the sun suits the moon. At the risk of over-comparing, fans of Eleni Karaindrou’s soundtracks—indeed, The Promise reads like a book of lost dances from an Angelopoulos film—will not want to pass this one by. It’s a melodic oracle. In hearing it for the first time, we know that we’ve heard it before.

Trygve Seim and Frode Haltli: Yeraz (ECM 2044)

| Tyran Grillo

Yeraz

Yeraz

Trygve Seim soprano and tenor saxophones
Frode Haltli accordion
Recorded June 2007 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli, both children of the Norwegian jazz scene and frequent collaborators who have grown into some of that scene’s most genre-defying proponents, pair up for an intimate songbook of frequencies that wraps the duo’s minds around an erudite program of mostly Seim-composed pieces. Exceptions include the haunting and windswept Armenian traditional song, from which the album gets its name, and the seemingly bipartite “MmBall,” penned by Seim’s go-to drummer, Per Oddvar Johansen. Seim and Haltli further explore two melodies—“Bayaty” and “Duduki”—by spiritual guru G. I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949), who, since Keith Jarrett’s 1980 Sacred Hymns, has been a ghostly presence on a handful of ECM projects.

Seim Haltli
(Photo credit: Morten Krogvold)

Compared to past recordings, Haltli treads more carefully across the accordion’s polar ice caps, his touch as pliant as ever. With the slightest pitch bend or intervallic quaver, the accordion’s inner heart speaks with utmost profundity, especially in the lower range, which despite a seemingly tenuous hold on notes lays foundations of its own. Seim proves an ideal partner, not only sonically—both are reedmen of sorts—but also in musicality. Nowhere more so than in their interpretation of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” for which the instruments blend so well they sound like extensions of one another, regressions and evolutions linking toward plush, resolute skies. In the Gurdjieff pieces, too, the duo feels like a splitting of the same consciousness. Seim’s duduk-like sound reveals tonal mastery, painting a cathedral from the steeple down to Haltli’s throaty bedrock.

As for Seim’s pieces, each is possessed of its own physical property. From the slow-moving liquid of “Airamero” to the cinematic grain of the Tom Waits-inspired “Waits for Waltz,” his writing engenders a joyous but never boisterous sense of play and understated virtuosity. Other Seim notables: the less inhibited brushwork of “Fast Jazz” and the accordion solo “Bhavana,” for which Haltli’s transcendent highs evoke the Russian bayan or, perhaps, the Japanese shō.

Holding the disc together are the freely improvised “Praeludium” and “Postludium,” each a beginning and an end in and of itself, waiting to redraw the circle. Thankfully, the PLAY button allows us to do just that.