Author: Tyran Grillo

Ludwig van Beethoven: The Piano Concertos (ECM New Series 2753-55)

| Tyran Grillo

Alexander Lonquich
Münchener Kammerorchester
Ludwig van Beethoven: The Piano Conceros

Alexander Lonquich piano, direction
Münchener Kammerorchester
Daniel Giglberger concertmaster
Recorded January 2022
Rathausprunksaal, Landshut
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover: Fidel Sclavo
An ECM Production
Release date: November 8, 2024

After a years-long relationship with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, pianist Alexander Lonquich had an opportunity to perform Beethoven’s entire cycle of piano concertos over the course of an autumn evening in 2019. The present recording draws upon that collaboration as a gesture of preservation. Composed between 1790 and 1809, the five completed concertos are what the pianist calls “outward-looking creations” and give us insight into the composer’s depth and breadth of mind. 

Lonquich begins, naturally, with the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, op. 19, given that it was written first but published second due to Beethoven’s initial displeasure with it. Although its opening movement immediately calls Mozart to mind, there are plenty of distinctive colorations to enjoy in its ferocious ebullience, and its central departure into more delicate textures is a marvel. The Adagio is haunting for its sustain-pedaled penultima, setting up the final Rondo, which introduces a veritable horse race of energy to reckon with.

The Mozartian flavors continue in both the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, op. 15, and Piano Concerto No. 3 in c minor, op. 37. Whereas the former’s martial beginnings (bordering on overbearing with the occasional blast of timpani and brass) and symphonic conclusion speak with the inflection of a true Classicalist, the second movement adopts a romantic sway. Its soliloquy drips from Lonquich’s fingers like moonlit water, while the surrounding brushwork lends dimension to the scene. The wind writing is especially poignant, blending with the soloist as organically as a forest envelops every tree. The op. 37 mirrors this format almost to a T, beginning with another garagantuan Allegro con brio. At 17 minutes, it’s nothing to take lightly and flows more comfortably to my ears than its op. 15 counterpart. Perhaps it’s the minor key, the more mature writing, or a combination of the two, but whatever the formula, it is bursting at the seams with inspiration and invention, not least of all in the cadenza. (It also seems to foreshadow the Fifth Symphony in the same key, to be written five years later.) Between it and the foot-tappingly engaging third act is cradled another beautiful Largo. As an inward turn, it looks to itself as if through a glass darkly. Yearning for the future, it glows like an ember of possibility.

The Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, op. 58, opens with even more resolutely symphonic textures, as winds and brass weave a tapestry of pastoral imagery. At 20 minutes, it is half the length of the average symphony and deserves regard as a universe unto itself. The piano’s entrance is timid, almost mocking, before it exuberantly courts the orchestra in a dance of ambitious proportions. Like the Rondo at the other end of the tunnel, it emerges confident, almost brash, in its virtuosity. The Andante con moto operates at a whole other level at their center. Originally conceived with the Orpheus myth in mind, it is by turns agitated and contemplative. This push and pull continues until the piano unfurls its grief alone in a tangled catharsis.

In his liner notes for the album, Lonquich conceives a title for the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, op. 73: “Battle, Prayer and Folk Festival.” For while the opening joys seem set in stone, they quickly crumble as more desperate convolutions come to the fore before the piano moves to its highest registers in a rousing meta statement. The Adagio un poco moto, perhaps the most recognizable movement of the collection, is easily heard anew in the present rendering, so crisp are its articulations that the smoothness of their skin feels real to the touch. Beethoven himself in the score marks the piano’s entrance “like the break of dawn,” but as Lonquich notes, what follows “feels to me like the attraction of a nocturnal source of light, which seems to be robbed of its radiance just five bars before the end.” And in that regression, we feel all sorts of trepidations shuffling through the mind until we land on the rousing third movement, where the sun indeed has the last word. Despite its many asides, tempering the sense of victory with that of retrospection, the music moves forward with confidence. Beethoven holds the flowing arpeggios and boisterous dances in constant check so as not to let time rule over space. With a brief yet inspiring finale, it sweeps us away in its arms and runs as far as its legs will carry us.

Stephan Micus: Thunder (ECM 2757)

| Tyran Grillo

Stephan Micus
Thunder

Stephan Micus frame drum, storm drum, dung chen, Burmese temple bells, Himalayan horse bells, ki un ki, bass zither, bowed dinding, kyeezee, shakuhachi, sarangi, nyckelharpa, kaukas, sapeh, voice, nohkan
Recorded 2020-2022 at MCM Studios
Cover art: Eduard Micus (1925-2000)
An ECM Production
Release date: January 20, 2023

Multi-instrumentalist Stephan Micus goes bigger than he ever has before on Thunder, his 25th solo album for ECM. Inspired by the dung chen, a four-meter-long trumpet heard booming from monasteries during his travels to Tibet, he long dreamed of incorporating it into a series of compositions. After immersing himself in its depths (only in Kathmandu did he find someone willing to teach him how to play this instrument normally reserved for monks), he settled on the ki un ki (a cane stalk common among the Udegey people of Siberia played by inhaling) and the nohkan (a transverse bamboo flute from the Japanese Noh theatre). From this trinity arose a series of nine compositions, each dedicated to a different god of thunder from different world traditions.

Despite the album’s concept, however, and the decidedly spiritual overtones, there is something undeniably elemental about the music itself. For while there are certainly far-reaching moments of great drama and development, others are intimate spirals of reflection that are just as content in staying where they are. Of the former persuasion are pieces like “A Song For Thor,” “A Song For Vajrapani,” and “A Song For Perun.” All three make use of dung chen, frame drums, Burmese temple bells, Himalayan horse bells, bass zither, and either the ki un ki or nohkan. The drums are the heartfelt griots of this primal tale, evoking the sound of footsteps on dirt and stone. The ki un ki moves with an eagle’s precision, so determined that every clod seems to get out of its way as it barrels through with a human soul firmly in its sights. As it traverses the landscape, passing through every dead object as if it were made of air, it finds its way to life itself. Through this transformation, it lingers on the edge of speech. Meanwhile, the dung chen move like elephants across the plains, each carrying a virtue known only by its ancestors.

So much of what we encounter here, however, is as reflective as a pond in moonlight. For example, “A Song For Raijin” and “A Song For Leigong” feature the storm drum, which, despite its name, betrays only the slightest hint of a climatic disturbance on the horizon. Both tracks also feature bowed sinding (a West African harp), kyeezee (bronze chimes from the Buddhist temples of Burma), and shakuhachi. With so much tenderness between them, each wrapped in the arms of a subcutaneous drone, the Japanese bamboo flute can only plant its prayers in whispers. It is a frail warrior that would be torn in the next violent rainfall, the possibility of which haunts every dream.

Of those dreams, we get two glimpses through the lenses of “A Song For Armazi” and “A Song For Zeus.” These share the same scoring (3 sarangi, 2 bass zithers, and nyckelharpa), opening spaces of translucent incantation. Speaking of which, Micus’s voice enters magnified in “A Song For Shango” and “A Song For Ishkur.” Accompanied by the sapeh (a lute from Borneo) and kaukas (a five-string lyre of the San people in Southern Africa), he traces the aftermath of nature’s fury. We can feel the humidity in the air, the sweet musk of precipitation in the nostrils, and the tang of love on the tongue. The sapeh shimmers, while the singing rolls across the mountains, flattening everything it touches with quiet power—not a ritual but a revelation that manifests itself as a footnote on the page of time.

Trygve Seim/Frode Haltli: Our Time (ECM 2813)

| Tyran Grillo

Trygve Seim
Frode Haltli
Our Time

Trygve Seim soprano and tenor saxophones
Frode Haltli accordion
Recorded June 2023, Himmelfahrtskirche, Munich
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Cover photo: Thomas Wunsch
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 13, 2024

For the past 25 years, saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli have compacted dirt together as musical allies one step at a time. In this successor to 2008’s Yeraz, the duo opens a new door of their advent calendar into a world of freshly tilled land.

The set is pillared by four improvisations, each of which blends into a through-composed selection. Across this spectrum, they carve into introspection and extroversion, and back again. Seim has such an ancient approach to the modern reed, which at his lips sounds like a duduk, as Haltli’s wingflaps take his uplift to heart. Delicacy abounds, along with mature textural contrasts, each of which elicits a mood, a picture, a song. In “Shyama Sundara Madana Mohana,” a North Indian folk song, higher notes seek transcendence, while colors come alive in Igor Stravinsky’s “Les Cinq Doigts No. 5.”

Aside from “Oy Khodyt’ Son, Kolo Vikon,” a traditional Ukrainian lullaby rendered with just as much freedom and love as anything unscripted between them, the album is largely self-composed. From Haltli’s “Du, mi tid” to Seim’s “Elegi,” they plant one careful seed after another, watering with patient listening. The gradualness of their hindsight pays commensurate deference to the subject matters at hand. It is as if theirs was a world of shadows whose existence is discernible only because of the light they carry. Although we cannot know for sure where they are going, the music hints at a destination known only to the subconscious mind. Rising tensions mingle with artful release as the landscape feels warmer and less distant, more human than before. Amid all of this emotional shading, “Arabian Tango” feels like a once-in-a-lifetime joy. The most delicate tenor notes from its composer mesh beautifully with Haltli’s solo of sorts, while the space of the room itself lends a voice to this dance of emergence and recession.

Taken as a whole, Our Time is a mountain compressed into breath and exhaled in words of snow.

Norma Winstone/Kit Downes: Outpost of Dreams (ECM 2811)

| Tyran Grillo

Norma Winstone
Kit Downes
Outpost

Norma Winstone voice
Kit Downes piano
Recorded April 2023 at Artesuono Recording Studio, Udine
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Mixed January 2024
by Manfred Eicher and Stefano Amerio
at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich
Cover photo: Fotini Potamia
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: July 5, 2024

The duo on this recording of vocalist Norma Winstone and pianist Kit Downes came about by chance when Winstone’s go-to accompanist, Nikki Iles, was unable to participate in a London gig, resulting in Downes sitting in as a last-minute replacement. And yet, one would never guess at such a backstory given the openness of heart and communication shared between these two luminaries in their own right. The resulting binary star of their collaboration makes for a tender yet powerful examination of emotional landscapes that feels like it has been around for aeons.

Especially revelatory is hearing Downes’ settings of Winstone’s characteristically astute words. The first of four, “El,” opens the set with the piano’s inner resonance, extended by a faint shimmer from a Hammond B3 organ. The lyrics, written for Downes’ daughter, turn the environment into a reflection of the inner self—and vice versa. Her voice is one of a kind, not only because it belongs to her, body and soul, but also because she gives it so freely to the bodies and souls of her listeners. It exposes its strengths and vulnerabilities in equal measure, knowing that each needs the other in mutual regard. Nowhere is this clearer than in “The Steppe,” where what she calls the “slow drip, drip of a fantasy” becomes the time signature of our existence. Downes expands on this in an instrumental passage, as if the only way out is the path leading back to itself. “Nocturne” peeks beyond the curtain of human folly to the core of truth it so often obscures, while the spoken word of “In Search Of Sleep” touches the darkness with its psychological acuity. Between them is “Black Is the Colour,” one of two traditionals on the album. Winstone digs deep into her vocal register, exploring that ashen beauty she carries inside. Downes makes it all the more poignant with his adventurous harmonizing. The Scandinavian folk tune, “Rowing Home” (in an arrangement by Bob Cornford) becomes a song of desire. Winstone carries its fire into the foreground, casting a shadow over the face of fate.

But just as these feel as fresh as yesterday, the application of her wordcraft turns modern themes into timeless constructions. The music of John Taylor takes center stage in “Fly The Wind,” showing that the late pianist’s spirit is still very much alive in Winstone’s heart. For Carla Bley’s “Jesus Maria,” she replaces the original lyrics with those of her own making, telling of a man whose presence defies the laws of physics by working through the narrowest emotional crevices toward solace from misguided worlds. Winstone’s ability to draw out scenes that feel so inevitable speaks to her connection to melody, not as an aesthetic necessity but as a narrative skeleton to which her words are seamless flesh. In “Beneath An Evening Sky” (Ralph Towner), two lovers find their hearts intertwined no matter the distance between them. Meanwhile, in “Out Of The Dancing Sea” (Aidan O’Rourke), the inner self becomes a map to unfold in the outside world. With that as our guide, the more we travel, the more we begin to know ourselves as we inhabit different places of residence along the way.

Colin Vallon: Samares (ECM 2809)

| Tyran Grillo

Colin Vallon
Samares

Colin Vallon piano
Patrice Moret double bass
Julian Sartorius drums
Recorded June/July 2023 at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Cover photo: Woong Chul An
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: November 15, 2024

With Samares, Colin Vallon completes a trilogy that began with 2014’s Le Vent and continued with 2017’s Danse, bringing its themes into the present. The Swiss pianist, reunited once again with bassist Patrice Moret and drummer Julian Sartorius, deepens his telepathic sense of touch across nine original compositions. The album’s title refers to what I grew up calling “helicopter seeds,” which often fall from maple trees in protracted flights. The image is an apt one, as each tune lends itself to plentiful regard as it makes its way toward the ground, so that by the end, we are left with a clearer view of the sky than ever.

“Racine” opens with brushed drums and prepared piano before morphing into piano proper with bowed cymbals and other gilding from Sartorius (who proves himself to be a phenomenal colorist here and in the later track, “Étincelle”). This exploration of morning light allows us to take in the scenery as it emerges, one frame at a time. Next to this awakening, “Mars” introduces the trio’s subtle feel for groove. Blending distance and proximity, the atmosphere is cushioned by the softness of its vision. There is a sense of privacy, of one looking out toward the mountains, of waiting for new constellations to shed the blanket of the horizon and reveal themselves. The underlying pulse is a comforting reminder that we are always moving forward, bound for life itself. Akin to tracks 4 (“Ronce”) and 8 (“Souche”), it emits a subtle yet locked-in pulse that always ensures Vallon has a light, no matter how dark the mood gets.

“Lou” is one of two pieces named for his children (the other being the progressively whimsical and lively “Timo”). It features piano preparations with objects bouncing on the strings as if to convey the trepidations of parenthood. Finally, “Brin” evokes the rustling of leaves, a shifting light, and faces from the past—fading but not forgotten. It is a photograph in a darkroom developing in reverse, leading the eyes (and ears) into shadow.

What has always caught my attention with Vallon’s trio, and with particular maturity this time around, is the ability to disturb the surface tension of its melodic waters without ever breaking it. It cradles the spinning seeds of the title track in their delicate demise, knowing that fresh growth will always find a way to take root.

Giovanni Guidi: A New Day (ECM 2808)

| Tyran Grillo

Giovanni Guidi
A New Day

Giovanni Guidi piano
James Brandon Lewis tenor saxophone
Thomas Morgan double bass
João Lobo drums
Recorded August 2023 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Mastering: Nicolas Baillard
Cover painting: Emmanuel Barcilon
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: July 12, 2024

Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi expands on his trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer João Lobo by welcoming saxophonist James Brandon Lewis (here making his ECM debut). The result is A New Day in more ways than one, each breath a chance at discovery.

This deeply curated session begins with “Cantos Del Ocells,” a traditional Catalan Christmas song rendered with soft-spoken confidence. Lewis speaks only as needed, letting his tenor work its way only through those cracks wide enough to accommodate him. It’s one of two tunes not written by Guidi—the other being a rubato take on the Rogers and Hart standard “My Funny Valentine,” which feels like a well of possibility despite (if not because of) its familiarity. 

With so much space to wander in, the listener is free to explore each new environment as it unlocks itself. Whether your flavor of choice is the arco-inflected bassing of “To A Young Student” or the extended percussion of “Means For A Rescue,” organic elements get revealed by the mesh of every excavation. The group improvisational “Only Sometimes” casts a dim spotlight on Morgan and is remarkable for fitting seamlessly into its surroundings, as if it were an inevitability of the musicians gathered.

The inky call and response between Lewis and Guidi in “Luigi (The Boy Who Lost His Name)” is a highlight for its colorful turns, Lobo providing especially detailed commentary throughout. Between it and the glistening “Wonderland,” there is plenty of dreaminess to unpack in future listenings. Having the surest traction of any tune, Guidi, Morgan, and Lobo interlocking while Lewis carves through ebony and ivory, it is an invitation to run back home and start the journey again with fresh ears.

Those searching for groove in the standard sense will come up short. But if you want something exploratory that expresses itself with open-book honesty, then this one is for you.

Charlie Rauh: Simply, Patiently, Quietly (Book Review)

| Tyran Grillo

It would be easy to say that guitarist, composer, and producer Charlie Rauh charts a territory all his own. But to fall into that cliché would risk eliding the tender graces that have fueled his endeavors from the beginning. He averts his eyes from the road less traveled, setting his heart instead on that still bearing the footprints of ancestors related either by blood or artistic heritage. Whether tuning his guitar like a microscope to the poetry of Phillis Wheatley or Anne and Emily Brontë or flipping it around like a telescope in the warmth of such albums as Viriditas and Hiraeth, he never lets go of the human condition as a central concern.

This debut musical treatise bears the subtitle “An Approach to Creating Intentional Music.” And yet, what is so refreshing about the narrative offered in these pages is that you need not be a musician, intentional or otherwise, to benefit from its insights. Central among them is that we tend to back down from the passion projects we hold dear in our youth. As time tempers these into rote platitudes (“hobbies at best, hidden out of embarrassment at worst,” he notes in the Foreword), we treat their recession as inevitable. This is, perhaps, one reason why literary works and all the paratextual experiences they entail have been integral to his oeuvre for so long. In that sense, he is as much a translator as a composer.

In the first section, “Simply,” he reflects on his time studying improvisation with jazz pianist Connie Crothers. Instead of bowing to the (relatively recent) convention that tells us simplicity is a bad thing, he embraces it as “a pure distillation of identifiable quality” that allows complexity to breathe. I cannot help but liken it to a line drawing of a wing versus a massive Baroque painting filled with saints and cherubim. The burden of proof on the creator of the former is deeper in the sense that every line speaks nakedly on the page, whereas in the latter, the margin for self-indulgence is greater yet more easily concealed. What Rauh realized at a key turning point in his growth as a musician was that complicating matters with business wasn’t the end goal. It was tapping into the childlike curiosity that such veneers, fragile as they are, do a surprisingly good job of hiding. This does not mean that one must “devolve” but that one must be willing to be vulnerable. And when we are vulnerable, we confront the question of who we are in spite of ourselves.

“Patiently” brings us into the spiritual weeds, through which every glimpse of sunshine becomes a tether to hope. More than that, it is the ultimate expression of love (think, for example, of the long-suffering God who stays his hand so that we might learn from our mistakes). And so, patience is not about proving your limits of tolerance but about faith as the evidence of things unseen. As Rauh humbly admits, “This is easier said than done, and despite my best wishes, I cannot claim that I am fully in tune with the concept as it applies to my life.” Amen, and amen.

Patience, too, is a mode of healing. It is the promise of strength fulfilled and renewed through the perseverance of the human (and animal) spirit. By tempering our fears, it gives room to stretch out our egos and cut them into millions of pieces. On the practical side, patience makes it “not only acceptable but optimal to leave spaces in your workflow.” Without those spaces, we lose sight of ourselves and what we are capable of. The moment we say we have arrived is probably when we need to check our assurance at the door and start singing again for its own sake.

The book’s third act, “Quietly,” is where the soul comes most readily into play. That said, quietude isn’t some mystical state of being in which one achieves unity with the universe but rather a recognition that the melodies of our lives need volition to seek one another out. And that is where the youthful essence from which we have distanced ourselves must be fished from within. Children are nothing if not intentional, and such clarity of expression is where we get our profoundest ideas. To be silent is to see ourselves no longer through the filters of camera lenses and computer screens but rather in the naked truth of the proverbial mirror. In so doing, we realize just how noisy we are inside.

I am reminded of an anecdote involving John Cage, who stepped into an anechoic chamber with the intention of experiencing true silence, only to discover that the faint sounds of his circulating blood and nervous system rendered that concept moot. This experience happened to be the inspiration behind his infamous composition 4’33”, for which the performer sits quietly in front of a piano for the titular duration without playing a single note. In hindsight, what was so disturbing about the piece’s premiere wasn’t necessarily that Cage was poking fun at the academy or even philosophically questioning the very definition of music; it was the fact that the performer ceased to matter. Thus, to experience 4’33” live is to be flooded with all sorts of internal voices. In wrestling with this same tension, Rauh concludes that the result of quiet music isn’t boredom or relaxation but power. It also tests our mettle as listeners and clues us in on the creed of patience. “When the rest falls away,” he observes, “all that is left is all we can give.”

No review of this superbly rendered meta-statement would be complete without mentioning the contributions of his sister, Christina Rauh Fishburne, whose illustrations are the glue that binds. By turns whimsical and contemplative, they work in counterpoint to the text without ever intruding. One in particular, which appears on page 24, speaks to the nostalgia of this reader/viewer. Its depiction of curiosity, stripped of all the baggage that adults bring to this impulse, teeters on the edge of interpretation. It is also the first of a sequence of images that home in on key aspects of the words preceding them.

Whether in the domestic comforts of a life without clear and present dangers or in the wider view of time and its inevitable entropy, Fishburne’s ability to pull out memories we never knew we had is a blessing and a comfort. As a segue into the scores included herein, they are denizens of a time capsule that is itself the curio of another time capsule. Of said scores, the musically inclined among us get access to a swath of moods. From lullabies to choral settings, they offer plenty of soil in which to plant and water seeds of communion, assuring us that we can rest our heads on pillows of wonder every night, knowing there is only more to come when day breaks.

John Surman: Words Unspoken (ECM 2789)

| Tyran Grillo

John Surman
Words Unspoken

John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet
Rob Luft guitar
Rob Waring vibraphone
Thomas Strønen drums
Recorded December 2022 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Martin Abrahamsen
Cover photo: Christian Vogt
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: February 16, 2024

Words Unspoken documents the unique convocation of saxophonist John Surman (in his 80th year as of this writing) with guitarist Rob Luft, vibraphonist Rob Waring, and drummer Thomas Strønen. The combination, both in terms of the instruments and the spirit of those handling them, evokes some of the groundbreaking collaborations that graced ECM in the 90s, If Mountains Could Sing not least among them. Though I wouldn’t place this in the same category, the session certainly has a charm all its own—one that is unmistakably Surman.

While the bandleader’s fluidity on soprano saxophone is as full-throated as ever, especially in the opening “Pebble Dance,” for which Waring and Luft create a flexible center while Strønen provides the undercurrent for their forward motion, there’s nothing quite like his handling of the lower reeds. The baritone of the title track dances with a characteristically light touch, while Luft’s electric overlay adds cosmic touches expanding on Surman’s experiments with arpeggiators back in the 80s. This, in combination with the vibraphone, adds a requisite touch. The baritone moves more snakily in “Around The Edges,” where romantic and platonic impulses comingle. Sticking with the gravelly end of things, Surman elicits some fantastic palindromes on the bass clarinet, culminating in “Hawksmoor,” which offers the most endearing development of the set, exhaling two parts gold for every inhalation of silver. Along the way, “Graviola” epitomizes the freedom of his playing over Waring’s precise infrastructures. Strønen, too, defers to a liberated touch.

Let us not neglect, though, the soprano’s philosophies, so beautifully expressed in such tracks as “Precipice,” in which it teeters at dizzying heights, and “Flower In Aspic,” where time and space bond over shared interests. The revelrous “Onich Ceilidh” (“ceilidh” referring to a party with dancing and music) encapsulates the joy still left in one of ECM’s most uncompromising yet humble stars, giving Luft carte blanche to reach some of the album’s finest points. And while much of the territory will seem familiar to longtime listeners at its core, to experience it under the navigation of such a fresh band makes it feel presciently true.

Keith Jarrett: New Vienna (ECM 2850)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarret
New Vienna

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded live July 9, 2016
Goldener Saal, Musikverein, Vienna
Producer: Keith Jarrett
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Cover design: Sascha Kleis
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: May 30, 2025

Today marks the 80th birthday of Keith Jarrett, one of the most uncompromising visionaries of modern music. Although he is unlikely to be heard from again in a live setting, we can rejoice that ECM still has recordings in its vault waiting to be released. Among them is New Vienna, the label’s fourth document from the pianist’s final European solo tour (the previous recordings being Munich 2016, Budapest Concert, and Bordeaux Concert). The title of the present disc is a nod to his seminal Vienna Concert, recorded 25 years earlier, almost to the day.

Part I jumps into the bramble of our expectations and slinks through the sticks and foliage with the litheness of a mountain lion. The music evolves in a convoluted dance, moving ever forward to its sudden cessation. In light of such focused energy, it’s only fitting that the shadows of Part II should cast their pall over the scene at hand. Rather than tell a story, each resonant chord lingers long enough for us to come up with our own, so that by the end of this meditative slip, we are closer neither to the destination nor the point of departure. The applause between this and Part III is especially jarring, even as it prepares us for the latter’s spell-breaking properties. Every stomp of its feet is a declaration of the shorter forms that Jarrett came to favor in his latter-day performances. Part IV is an anthem for the soul, drawing a dangling hand through the waters of reflection on its way to the opposite shore. A brief shift into dissonance in the final leg is the only tinge of regret we encounter.

The balladic Part V represents a sea change in the program, channeling feelings so familiar that we must close our eyes to contain them. Every new layer reveals an older memory—this one of a hermetic childhood, that one of an unbridled young adulthood, and yet another of generations interconnected by love—leaving behind a gift unwrappable by time and space. The rise and fall of Jarrett’s left hand mimics the trepidations of an anxious heart that finds truest release at the keyboard alone. The hall recedes, the audience fades, and the lights dim until there is only vibration existing for no other sake than its own.

Part VI is the aftermath of an argument. An unnamed protagonist picks up the physical and immaterial pieces of what has just transpired in the hopes of refashioning them into a semblance of unity. But no matter how much he tries, the cracks are always visible. Part VII evokes the mourning of self that follows, creating hope from scratch before the clouds have a chance to weep. The increasingly dense textures come across as simultaneously desperate and liberated, while Part VIII cleans the proverbial slate with a brief yet cathartic blues. The gospel-infused Part IX is a return to form, giving joy to everything it touches. This glorious turnaround shows us that hope is a many-pronged path. And of all the places it might take us, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” couldn’t be more suitable. Its timelessness is the frame of a building that continues standing even when the mortar crumbles away. And as the winds blow through its open walls, they seem to whisper, “In a life filled with so much wonder, melodies are the only language that matters.”