Author: Tyran Grillo

Stefano Bollani: Piano Solo (ECM 1964)

| Tyran Grillo

Piano Solo

Piano Solo

Stefano Bollani piano
Recorded August 2005, Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Assistant: Lara Persia
Mixed at Artesuono Studio, Udine
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After a fruitful apprenticeship under the wing of Enrico Rava (cf. Easy Living), pianist Stefano Bollani goes solo for ECM in a set of 16 vignettes as virtuosic as they are varied. From this alliterative description alone, one might think the simply titled Piano Solo to be nothing more than a potpourri of stylistic experiments. It is, rather, the wonderful, and sometimes wondrous, curriculum vitae of an artist who comes into his own on this record, even as he surpasses his own expectations.

Much of the marrow in the bones of Piano Solo draws nourishment from Bollani’s unprepared improvisations. Of these we are treated to four examples, the first of which breaks open the geode of his craft and renders every architectural facet therein. The remaining three, each more focused than the last, proceed from convolution to clarity, venturing along the way into the piano cavity before migrating with childlike energy to the keyboard proper. Notes sing their songs like storybook characters, flipping by like so many turned pages.

From Bollani’s own pen come three loosely drawn pieces: “Promenade,” “Buzzillare,” and “Sarcasmi.” Each lays another edge piece of the pianist’s puzzle, showing depth of range in its equal fascination with wistful autumns and humid summers. They are further notable for the humility of their virtuosity, and for the genuine attraction of their whimsy. Even his “On a Theme by Sergey Prokofiev,” tangential at best to the Andante of the Russian composer’s First Piano Concerto, takes on a special persuasion.

As alluring as these windows are, none are so Palladian as Bollani’s interpretations of standards and popular tunes. The reigning highlights thereof—namely, “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans” and Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”—come straight out of Dixieland. Of them Bollani makes a cocktail that tastes at once fresh and nostalgic, with just the right twist for balance. “On The Street Where You Live” is another contender for album zenith, its descriptive beauties outmatched only by the adaptive flair of the one making them audible. Indeed, Bollani is just as comfortable waxing the prosody of “Antonia” (by the Milanese pianist and composer Antonio Zambrini) or the timeworn balladry of “For All We Know” as he is deconstructing the tango of “A Media Luz” or spouting golden heat across the dreamscape of “Como Fue.” In all of these, a marked separation between the left (sea) and right (sky) hands prevails, separating even the densest chords into their constituent elements. All of which funnels into the benediction of Brian Wilson’s “Don’t Talk,” by which the program impresses its seal with a gentle good night.

Not many pianists can be said, with any faith, to approach the improvisatory prowess of Keith Jarrett, but one need listen no further than Bollani, who in his arcing way creates a keystone for every flourish, so that everything holds true. For my money, he most closely fits the bill for his weighing of space and time, for a downright religious respect for the almighty melody, and for the breadth of his sounding. His distinction can be found in the robustness of his textures, which no matter how tightly woven always let the wind through.

Gianluigi Trovesi/Gianni Coscia: Round About Weill (ECM 1907)

| Tyran Grillo

Round About Weill

Round About Weill

Gianluigi Trovesi piccolo and alto clarinets
Gianni Coscia accordion
Recorded July 2004, Radio Studio DRS, Zurich
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Master clarinetist Gianluigi Trovesi and kindred accordionist Gianni Coscia pick up where they left off on Round about Offenbach, this time giving Kurt Weill (1900-1950) a treatment such as only they can realize. The two friends make Weill their own. Or, more precisely, they make their own Weill, stirring the pot until flavors become one delicious amalgamation. Their doing so is not without precedent. Weill himself found, and forged, art wherever he went, caring not for petty distinctions between the raw and the cooked. From Berlin to Broadway, to borrow from the title of Foster Hirsch’s biography, Weill left a vivid trail of reinvigoration. Yet Trovesi and Coscia do more than pick up the pieces left in his wake, adding as they do a slurry of original counterparts along the way. The latter, in fact, strut with as much panache as the one in whose name they were fashioned.

Turning to the duo’s contributions first, we find the playful romp—replete with harrumphing bellows and Trovesi’s nimble steps—of “Dov’è la città?” setting a tone of variation and complexity. Like so much of what follows, it is a constantly evolving organism, wearing and casting off styles like quick-change artists. Moods range from the profundity of a Górecki string quartet (“Improvvisamente”) and exploratory fugue of “Ein Taifun! … Tifone? No, pioggerella!” to the provocative slants of “Boxen” and the bifurcated title homage. Trovesi manages to navigate every maze-like turn Coscia mortars into being. As with seasoned actors, not a single gesture is out of place in their comportment, as each trades lines with the other in a match of wits so even that it would go on forever without the limits of human attention cutting away the edges.

That said, this is really Coscia’s album through and through. He activates the air as a film projector lights a screen, pulling the dead into life and the living into dreams. Whether riding the effortless wave of “Tango Ballade” (from The Beggar’s Opera) or flipping the coin of excitement and reverie that is “Alabama Song,” his elaborations sing like new. Yet the alpha and omega of the program, and of the duo’s performance thereof, is Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Like the fugitives with which the satirical opera concerns itself, the music herein is resourceful, self-confident, and always heading toward pandemonium. In these scenes, Trovesi and Coscia swap places with telepathic ease, mapping gypsy jazz motifs as comfortably as balladic impulses. Like the album’s penultimate interlude, which bonds “Cumparsita Maggiorata” (by tango pioneer Gerardo Matos Rodríguez) with the traditional “Tristezze di Fra’ Martino,” these instrumental thespians dip into nostalgia only sparingly, so that the dramaturgy at hand can spring forth as if for the first time.

Iro Haarla: Northbound (ECM 1918)

| Tyran Grillo

Northbound

Iro Haarla
Northbound

Iro Haarla piano, harp
Trygve Seim saxophones
Mathias Eick trumpet
Uffe Krokfors double-bass
Jon Christensen drums
Recorded September 2004 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

It’s surely tempting to label Iro Haarla as a “jazz harpist,” which in one sense she is. Northbound proves she is far more. Above all, Haarla is a composer of contrast and depth, one who is eminently comfortable mixing diverse ingredients into a picture that remains fully within her grasp at any given moment, even as she allows it to develop at its own pace. For her ECM leader debut, she draws saxophonist Trygve Seim, trumpeter Mathias Eick, bassist Uffe Krokfors, and drummer Christensen into her net. While familiar names all, it’s especially inspiring to see Krokfors among them, carrying as he does the credit and experience of playing on drummer Edward Vesala’s Ode To The Death Of Jazz.

If “Avian Kingdom” seems to cast a nostalgic glance toward Vesala’s mood, it’s because Haarla shared tenure not only in his influential Sound & Fury project, but also in his adoration. Since 1978, she became a guiding light in her late husband’s sonic activities, learning the harp and other instruments (she is a pianist by training) to cast just the shadows he was looking for. Shadows are indeed an important coloring tool throughout this, the album’s opener, and its subsequent autumnal spread. Christensen, too, resurrects some of Vesala’s ancient spirit, bringing free-flowing comfort throughout.

Accordingly, the set is anchored by Haarla’s melodies, which manage to be at once contemplative and near bursting with expressive power. Each highlights one among this tender quintet. In “Time For Recollection” it’s Krokfors who breaks the hermetic seal with his bow, woven into a braid of two by whispering harp strings. Likewise in the title track, which ends the album on a cartographic note. Even the breezy “Barcarole” shelters a thoughtful heart, wistful yet secure in its free being (if not also its being free). It’s an open-topped vehicle for Eick and Seim in turn, a verse that takes equal pleasure in rhyme and dissonance. Haarla, too, comes forward, especially in the more hopeful passages. Whether uplifting the band’s full strengths in “Light In The Sadness” or greasing the wheel in “With Thanksgiving,” she gives the horns plenty of palimpsests across which to chalk their messages.

In both concept and execution, scattered tracks play variations on an aquatic theme. Some are more obvious. “On A Crest Of A Wave,” for one, features rolling pianism, splashing cymbals, and a bass undertow. And there are the folksong qualities of “Yarra, Yarra…” (presumably a reference to Australia’s perennial river of the same name), in which harp and bass opening a deep conversational rift in the sheetrock as the horns span their bridges in response. Others, like “Veil Of Mist,” work a more abstract form of magic. Still others marry both states of mind. To wit: the album’s two duo settings. “Waterworn Rocks,” an album highlight, pairs Haarla at the keys with Christensen, while “A Singing Water Nymph” is a lacy interlude for harp and saxophone that proceeds in rippling steps and crosshatches them with reflections from above.

In light of these geographic paintings, Northbound belongs on the shelf next to The Sea and is sure to please fans of that classic predecessor. Although Haarla’s slow pacing may be off-putting to those looking to tap their feet, just know that such a methodology gives every nuance a chance to be heard and felt. Such attention to detail sets Haarla apart and asks only that listeners slow their heartbeats for a while in return.

Misha Alperin: Her First Dance (ECM 1995)

| Tyran Grillo

Her First Dance

Misha Alperin
Her First Dance

Misha Alperin piano
Arkady Shilkloper French horn, flugelhorn
Anja Lechner violoncello
Recorded July 2006, Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After a decade-long absence, Russian pianist-composer Misha Alperin returns to ECM with his most fragrant release to date. He retains cellist Anja Lechner from the last session, Night, and rejoins his longtime ally, horn player Arkady Shilkloper. The deeper (if only for being the oldest) relationship of the two is with Shilkloper, who since 1990’s Wave Of Sorrow has been a constant companion throughout Alperin’s ECM tenure. In fact, the only piece not by Alperin on this album, “The Russian Song,” flows from Shilkloper’s pen in a lovingly arpeggiated duet for French horn and cello, with no piano between them. The remaining pieces comprise a mixed palette of solos, duos, and one trio. The latter, “Tiflis,” again features French horn, only now working a mournful charge between cells of piano and cello. It’s a stunning, lyrical voyage that works its subtle ways into the mind.

Of Alperin’s piano solos the listener is treated to a wide variety. From the tintinnabulations of “Vayan” (which veers down unexpected avenues of twilight) to the sprightly virtuosity of “Jump,” each is a transfiguration, a whirling dervish of melody. Eyes closed and heart open, Alperin passes, ghost-like, through the tenderness of “April In February” and the Bach-like grandiosity of “Via Dolorosa” with equal attention, such that each becomes a waterfall droplet made audible through slow motion.

Piano and flugelhorn make for a profound combination in the title track. Here the keyboard is distant, and the music all the more intimate because of it, as if it were being played in a chamber of the mind, personal and untouched by the outside. There is a spin and a sway to this tune, fleshed by the childhood implied by its title, by the magic of kindness that pulls flowers from the soil before the world at large can paint them with words.

Piano and cello make two somber appearances. “A New Day” turns like a ballerina in a music box, Alperin dotting the edges of Lechner’s spinal lines with light impulses of grace, while “Frozen Tears” breathes cinematic reality through a steady pulse and wavering foreground.

Together, these vignettes boil down to a beauteous representation of Alperin’s diction. Secure and sparkling, it speaks as it lives: which is to say, from the heart.

Paul Motian Band: Garden of Eden (ECM 1917)

| Tyran Grillo

Garden of Eden

Paul Motian Band
Garden of Eden

Chris Cheek tenor and alto saxophone
Tony Malaby tenor saxophone
Jakob Bro guitar
Ben Monder guitar
Steve Cardenas guitar
Jerome Harris bass
Paul Motian drums
Recorded November 2004, Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Paul Motian was nothing if not unpredictable, and on Garden of Eden he degausses the jazz landscape not for the first time. The album represents a headlong dive into bebop roots, but also a tangling of their pathways. More than his refashioning, however, it is the instrumentation that holds the most surprises. In addition to bassist Jerome Harris (previously heard alongside the legendary drummer on Bill Frisell’s Rambler), Motian welcomes not one or even two but three guitarists (Jakob Bro, Ben Monder, and Steve Cardenas) and tenorists Tony Malaby and Chris Cheek (also on alto duty) for a session that is equal parts comfort food and new wave. Interestingly enough, the former comes from Motian’s newer tunes, while qualities of the latter infuse the tried and true.

Two Charles Mingus tunes open the set with a stage-setting contrast of temperatures and climates. “Pithecanthropus Erectus” finds Motian in a state of subtle swing, spearheading cool, spacious pockets of force. Beneath tasteful soloing from Cheek and chromatic flourishes from Malaby, Harris works his groove-mind, even as the guitarists kindle the music’s inner glow. Despite, if not because of, the assembly, such progressive tunes seem to float, while the leisurely crawl of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” is far denser due to its high emotional thread count. Through its crosstalk of guitars and reeds echoes a graceful photosynthesis.

Motian’s snare is profound in its variety. A sound at once hollow and resonant, it begs attention, a light visible in the thickest fog. It is central to his craft not only as a player, but also as a composer. In this role Motian excels beauteously with seven viscous originals, in particular the title track, which moves like globules in a lava lamp and, along with Jerome Kern’s “Bill” (from the musical Show Boat), paves the album’s dreamiest thoroughfares. Other wonders: the slipstream “Mesmer,” in which Motian spackles highlights with his cymbals, characteristically insistent yet accommodating; the spider-webbed guitars of “Prelude 2 Narcissus” and “Manhattan Melodrama,” each a radiation of moonlight; and “Etude,” which has put on some shadows since its appearance on 1982’s Psalm.

Cheek and Cardenas each contribute a tune. “Desert Dream” is the saxophonist’s modal vision, a haunting piece of cartography that side-winds into the guitarist’s “Balata.” In both, themes act as concave bookends to even more concave departures. The wave takes us back to finish, looking to Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence” and Charlie Parker’s
“Cheryl” for closure. Both manifest the full tactility of bebop, thus cinching one of Motian’s finest records on any label.

Is this where jazz is going? Hardly. This is where jazz already was. It only took a genius like Motian to hear it that way. A crime not to savor.

Savina Yannatou & Primavera en Salonico: Sumiglia (ECM 1903)

| Tyran Grillo

Sumiglia

Savina Yannatou
Primavera en Salonico
Sumiglia

Savina Yannatou voice
Primavera en Salonico
Kostas Vomvolos accordion, qanun, kalimba
Yannis Alexandris tamboura, oud, guitar
Michalis Siganidis double-bass
Kyriakos Gouventas violin, viola
Harris Lambrakis ney
Kostas Theodorou percussion
Recorded May 2004 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Two years after the release of her ECM leader debut (although really a preexisting live recording repackaged as such), Savina Yannatou returns with her first album recorded under the label’s auspices at Rainbow Studio in Oslo. Sumiglia is at once a departure from and a deepening of the Greek singer’s extraordinary gifts, bound by nothing save her own imagination. Flanked as always by Primavera en Salonico, a band of dynamic expressive power, Yannatou graces another characteristically eclectic program of folk songs. Her voice is like a head of hair: thicker in some places, thinner in others, containing a wealth of reflections and colors, but always rooted and growing. Her wisdom is thus animated, blowing in winds from a thousand isles.

In spite of the studio comforts, one experiences Sumiglia as if a live recording, pulsing as it does with only thinly mitigated vibrancy. Like its predecessor, this album begins with a violin solo—a modest introduction that betrays nothing of the ensuing profusions. “Evga mana mou” thus opens with a nod to Yannatou’s homeland, a bridal song of farewell to family and friends. Adopting a tone that is delicate as a butterfly yet sharp as the bird that hunts it, the singing navigates a droning landscape with free surety. Other Greek songs include the tender, spring-like “Yanno Yannovitse” and the beautifully arranged “Ela ipne ke pare to,” which walks with a light kalimba step and a slight Arabic curl, further proving that sometimes the most bone-humming singing is that which is on the verge of fadeout. Within this frame, listeners are whisked away on a carefully sequenced journey. From the droning of Spain (“Muineira”) through the forests of Ukraine (“Ta chervona ta kalinonka”) to the twists of Albania (“Smarte moj”), there’s something for nearly everyone to grasp along the way.

Regardless of the roles she adopts, Yannatou remains painterly and self-aware. In the Moldavian song “Porondos viz partjan,” for one, she takes on the voice of an orphaned child, her evening wanderings matched step for step in arco starlight. In the Sicilian “Terra ca nun senti,” for another, she darts through mazes of war-weary angst. Other flybys of the Mediterranean yield the gravelly, fairytale affectations of “Orrio tto fengo” and the whimsical romanticism of “Sta kala lu serenu,” both from Italy. A stopover in Corsica in the album’s title track draws Yannatou’s voice like a thick rope through darkness, heaving histories and mysteries in equal measure. We feel that depth of mourning for times past.

The album’s delights take us inland and beyond. “Sedi Yanna,” a well-known Bulgarian folk song, receives an invigorating treatment, with just the exact amount of lilt and forward motion. It is also a perfect representation of the band’s clarity, which despite the density of its execution remains crystal clear. The lyrical fire of “Ganchum em yar ari,” from Armenia, warms us to “Tulbah.” This last is a Palestinian song that shows the Primavera at its chameleonic best. Whether riding the wave or swaying to the rhythm of calmer currents, the band adapts.

In addition to its many other virtues, Sumiglia is yet another feather in the cap of engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug. Known, of course, for his spacious treatments of various jazz configurations, here he brings an immediacy that serves the music as much as it serves us. A bravura showing from every angle.

To the Third Power: Keiji Haino and Friends take on the Night in Philadelphia

| Tyran Grillo

James Plotkin/Oren Ambarchi/Keiji Haino
Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia
May 18, 2014

In his epic Dark Tower series, Stephen King tells of Roland, hero of a world that has, in the author’s parlance, “moved on.” In his quest for the eponymous tower, Roland enlists the help of others from our own world. His doing so is foretold by the drawing of three Tarot cards, each manifesting as a door that allows him to slip into the minds and bodies of those fated to aid him. We fortunate few who were upstairs at Johnny Brenda’s bar in Philadelphia on a cool May night surely knew something of what it feels like to be overtaken by Roland. Overtaken, yes, but cognizant enough to realize we’d become lungs for some unfathomable force breathing through us. Fate, indeed, was in effect, challenged to the core.

Presented as part of Ars Nova Workshop’s ongoing concert series, the performance in question brought together American producer-guitarist James Plotkin, Australian multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi, and Japanese underground legend Keiji Haino. Although Haino’s name loomed largest, as it would on any roster, it soothed this admirer’s soul to witness the intuitive progression of each set interlocking into the next, in the order in which it was received. Soothing, too, to see that the ubiquitous electric guitar was the nexus of nearly all the activity that blossomed on stage.

As Plotkin slipped through the first door and into the depths of our attentions, it was clear that something cosmic was waiting in the wings, in the form of wings. An insistent loop—part firmament, part earth—awoke an automaton whose limbs had stopped working long ago, repairing circulatory systems abandoned by aortal vagabonds. There was much to hear in Plotkin’s six strings and the modest array of machinery used to suck out their innermost dreams: a pulse, a video game turned on its axis until it screamed, gestures buffed into oblivion, hints of sampled drums. Even so, traction was at best an ant burning in the full, gravity-biting sun. With quiet turnings came disquieting streams. Static, beep, out.

At first intermission, the cards got a thorough shuffle, unleashing bits of wisdom from between the pasteboards. First: Screaming and whispering are the same—only a knob turned either way stands between them. Second: Manipulation is not an act of omniscience but of incorporation. Third: The torch may flicker out and die, but its ashes are immortal.

Through the second door stepped Ambarchi, an ear’s depth away. From this breach issued a low drone. There was something fleshy about it—in a way, vocal—that attracted us like fingerprints to a touchscreen. Into his wires Ambarchi threaded an unusual current of hope, a feeling of shocking bliss that awakened signals in the spine left dormant since birth. As if along the skins of fish, watery molecules glided smoothly around us, and through their collective conflict bore silver unto the ocean. Indeed, the door had opened. In its frame, a multitude of stars, each shouting above the rest in effort to be heard over a tangle of astronomical calibrations. The result was profoundly beautiful. Algorithms flickered and died, but their light stayed behind to teach us how to mourn. There was a rhythm, one beyond the capability of any drum to shelter. It found us, no matter where (or when) we were. To end: a peeling away of Saturn’s rings until only a gaseous orb remained.

At second intermission, the cards were reshuffled. From them came further wisdom. First: The drone is a bone with marrow made of shadow, which feeds off the terrible fear of silence to which we must all one day pay respects. Second: Harmony is a force that takes a million light years to reach, but only a blink to extinguish. Third: Solar flares are secrets just waiting to be reborn as givens.

Haino passed through the third door without needing to open it. And so it began, this magic called “now.” As the master haunted the stage, it was as if leaves turned into flame under his step, somehow affirming in their clarion force. Through a tableful of accoutrements, Haino evoked nerve endings of uncharted muscle. Each change was a spectral reaping, a mantra given freedom to dance where borders fell into themselves. Be it a contact microphone on a leg, the onslaught of his guitar, or a bowed strip of magnetic tape, each cell formed a stained glass mosaic of mounting proportion. Even an amplified slinky became fair—and compelling—game for expression. In the end, however, it was less about the medium than the message, even if that message was in his visceral scream and in his body, both of which held kinesis so tightly that two became one. This was where ice storms courted volcanoes, where rhythms were not heartbeats but failed programs, recognizable gnarls in the fallacy of experience. As if to assert their intuition, single notes shone through like rays of light from cloud. The almighty chord screamed until it was glued to us. “Someone is always lurking within the heart,” Haino sang. “It is fate!” And later: “Something is praying, something is waiting…” The magic of lore turned cosmic and free. Galactic nightmares turned benedictions. Dark matter turned spirit. Drop and exeunt.

Although offstage Haino is undoubtedly a part of this reality (he is, in fact, of the nicest and most playful personalities you’re likely to encounter in the game of life), onstage he inhabits another plane of existence entirely. His contributing wisdom was simple: Those who search for a pulse will find nothing but mirrors of their seeking. And for good reason. With only a ghost of feedback to show for all that had just transpired, it’s a wonder any of us could hear our thoughts, for all the din of vortices opened within. In the wake of such visceral experience (here was the transfiguration), “catharsis” had become a dirty word.

Like the ringing in my ears that lingers even as I write this, the search for meaning in this trilogy of happenings has left its traces, pieces of sonic shrapnel too microscopic to tweeze out and which will outlast me when I expire.

Sometimes, planets align. Other times, they explode. The supernova is king, queen, and jester all in one.

Paul Motian Trio: I Have The Room Above Her (ECM 1902)

| Tyran Grillo

I Have The Room Above Her

Paul Motian Trio
I Have The Room Above Her

Bill Frisell guitar
Joe Lovano tenor saxophone
Paul Motian drums
Recorded April 2004, Avatar Studio, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I Have The Room Above Her continues drummer-composer Paul Motian’s depth-journeying with guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano, who, in line with Motian’s free, integral thinking, compress coals into diamonds with every meeting captured on record. Here especially, they prove that, “power trio” though they may be, their power thrums beneath the flowers rather than shining down on them.

The lion’s share of this, the trio’s third outing for ECM, is comprised of new Motian material, although backward glances do lurk here and there. Among the latter, “Dance” is the quintessential blast from the past. Not only because it comes from Motian’s 1978 album of the same name, but also quite simply because of his youthful, euphoric playing. Thelonious Monk’s “Dreamland,” which caps the set, balances darkness and light with equal profundity—an affirmation of all things that resound. And then there is, of course, the title track, which in these six simpatico hands yawns into something far beyond its roots (in the musical Show Boat) and establishes a dark street scene in its place. As after-midnight stragglers enjoy the drunken air, a lone figure ambles his way through, slips into cold sheets, and dreams of a time when ill-fated hearts might beat as one. It is Lovano who evokes this lonely routine, swaying through the night with inebriated pall but also a hard-won beauty that burns in the chest like a star.

The greatest secrets of Room, however, can be found glistening in Motian’s “Osmosis Part III,” which begins the album as if midsentence yet brims with consummate sentiment. Frisell provides enchanting starlight by way of his tasteful electronic looping. Lovano, meanwhile, brings the pulse of the moon, and Motian the dance of its light upon water. There is savory thinking in this first encounter, and much more to be found in repeat listening, where the business of “Odd Man Out” (notable for Lovano’s channeling of Charles Lloyd) sits comfortably alongside the softer alloys of “Shadows,” and the percolating snare of “The Riot Act” (enhanced by computerized reflections from Frisell) funnels organically into the bluesy whimsy of “The Bag Man.”

Above all, it is the aching melodies that bloom widest. Be they the modal strains of “Harmony” or the shifting tectonics of “Sketches,” chains of notes seem to rain from Motian’s cymbals, even as his bandmates evaporate them back into cloud forms. As spoken through the anthemic qualities of “One In Three,” each theme leads listeners like torchlight through a cave. It traces archways of stone and glyph, only to find naked and inviting cause.

For as long as Motian walked this earth and spoke his rhythms true, he left few fuses as surge-proof as this. Part of an unfathomable circuit, it will forever be, running on an electricity all its own.

Marc Johnson: Shades of Jade (ECM 1894)

| Tyran Grillo

Shades of Jade

Marc Johnson
Shades of Jade

Joe Lovano tenor saxophone
John Scofield guitar
Eliane Elias piano
Marc Johnson double-bass
Joey Baron drums
Alain Mallet organ
Recorded January and February 2004 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: Joe Ferla
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Elaine Elias

If you had heard only Marc Johnson’s ECM debut with his Bass Desires quartet, you might be forgiven in thinking that the bassist was an extroverted player by default. Yet, listening to his rounded commentaries on such albums as Rosslyn and Class Trip, it’s easy to see how this, his third leader date for the label, reveals in him a tender heart that holds beauty and integrity in highest esteem. Shades of Jade complements his full sound with an even richer tapestry of carefully chosen bandmates, including the painterly and good-humored Joey Baron at the drums, tenorist Joe Lovano, guitarist John Scofield, and, in her debut for the label, Brazilian pianist Eliane Elias (who also produces alongside Manfred Eicher). The result is something as timeless as the set’s opener, “Ton Sur Ton.” It is, along with the title track, co-composed by Johnson and Elias. Both rock a delicate balance of guitar and sax that is smooth, hip, and subtle. The composers, here and throughout, lay the ground in shaded Morse code. Baron splashes delicately around as Scofield and Lovano complete things, clinging leisurely like sunbeams on water’s surface.

With exception of the epilogue, Johnson and Elias individually compose the album’s remaining tunes. To his own, the bassist reaches back to his defining years will Bill Evans through an artful shuffling of touch and go. He is, for the most part, by his pen deferential, as both “Blue Nefertiti” and “Raise” put Scofield in the spotlight, dancing nimbly through the changes. The latter tune adds the organ of Alain Mallet for some flavor. Yet the highlight, of both subset and album, is his bass solo “Since You Asked.” Accompanied by a whisper of cymbals, it is an utterly personal dialogue between deep and deeper.

It is in the context of Elias’s writing that Johnson comes more overtly into his own. Whether through the deep circulation he provides in the trio setting of “Snow” or in the album’s ballad du jour, “All Yours,” he carves out prime singing space amid Elias’s flowing keys. For her part, the composer gets plenty of shine time in her denser moments, as in “Apareceu,” which calculates an even smoother ratio of bread to butter alongside Lovano’s champagne sparkle, and in the curtains of “In 30 Hours” that billow from the wind of a passing memory.

Shades ends with exactly that in the form of a haunting take on the Armenian folk song “Don’t Ask of Me” (a.k.a. Intz Mi Khntrir). Its echoes burn forlorn afterimages into the night. Droning, keening, dreaming. As if the music alone weren’t enough, the album is an engineering gem, managing to bring out inner warmth while retaining all the immediacy of a live set. And in the end, is not immediacy what jazz is all about?