Author: Tyran Grillo

Martin Speake: Change of Heart (ECM 1831)

| Tyran Grillo

Change of Heart

Martin Speake
Change of Heart

Martin Speake alto saxophone
Bobo Stenson piano
Mick Hutton bass
Paul Motian drums
Recorded April 2002 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Saxophonist Martin Speake makes his first—and so far only—ECM appearance in a dream quartet rounded out by pianist Bobo Stenson, bassist Mick Hutton (who debuted for the label with another English reedman, Ken Stubbs, on Eréndira), and drummer Paul Motian. The group’s account of eight Speake originals is as poetic as his titles.

Being made aware of the river that is “The Healing Power of Intimacy” as if we’d already had a toe in its waters is a startling way to introduce us to the session’s flow. Speake’s free-blowing ways fill the covers of Lee Konitz’s signature sweetness with pages all his own, on each of which is written a day in the life of a melodic sage. In the latter sense, we might also reference Charles Lloyd, whose tender drive seems to lurk in the altoist’s dream-weaving. Stenson offers some of his loveliest improvisatory reparations ever committed to disc as sideman. In this regard, the title track shuffles its feet by candlelight, in the soft illumination of which Speake puts pen to paper and lets the muses sing.

Hutton and Motian play catch and release throughout the set, gelling rather swingingly on “Barefaced Thieves” and spreading their fingers wider on “Venn,” into which Stenson and Speake interlace their own. The latter cut contains top-flight thematizing and shows the band at its most aligned. Speake’s golden hour comes in “Buried Somewhere.” This balladic tour de force casts its spell without thinking, lures the muses closer and grazes their palms with methodical freedom.

The rhythm section’s tailwind is that of a comet: vivid yet distant enough to seem frozen in time. And on the question of time, “In the Moment” has much to say. Its sweep is generous, allowing each member’s breath to circulate in the warmth of elegy. Here the flame flickers, never losing hold of its wick. Motian’s charcoal turns to pastel in “Three Hours” with no loss of blend. The steadiness of this tune gives it arms with which to hug, legs with which to move, and a mind with which to lower the cerebral to relatable levels. Listeners can appreciate the respect of this move, hard to come by in a sometimes far too intellectual business. All of which might help to explain why the album ends “In Code”—not for want of secrecy but for honesty of message. Encryptions take place at the very moment of creation. And even as Speake’s alto careens across the night, we can be sure that its soul will stay behind, awaiting further instructions.

Orchestre National de Jazz: Charmediterranéen (ECM 1828)

| Tyran Grillo

Charmediterranéen

Orchestre National de Jazz
Charmediterranéen

Paolo Damiani cello
Anouar Brahem oud
Gianluigi Trovesi piccolo clarinet, alto saxophone
François Jeanneau soprano sax, flute
Thomas de Pourquery soprano, alto and tenor saxophones
Jean-Marc Larché soprano, alto and baritone saxophones
Médéric Collignon pocket trumpet, fluegelhorn, voice
Alain Vankenhove trumpet, fluegelhorn
Gianluca Petrella trombone
Didier Havet sousaphone
Régis Huby violin
Olivier Benoit guitar
Paul Rogers double-bass
Christophe Marguet drums
Recorded October 15 & 16, 2001 live in concerts at Scene Nationale de Montbéliard, Palot/L’Allan
Mixed at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Assisstant: Gilles Olivesi
Produced by l’Association pour le Jazz en Orchestre National

The seeds for the Orchestre National de Jazz were planted in 1982, when France’s Ministry of Culture set out to promote non-classical forms of music in general, and jazz in particular. The ONJ was at the forefront of this movement and, since its establishment in 1985, has cut across musical divides with utmost professionalism and slick telepathy. In the spirit of developing and exploring fresh repertoire, the ONJ takes on a new director every few years. This album comes from a period under the artistic vision of cellist and double-bassist Paolo Damiani, who spearheaded the ensemble between 2000 and 2002. Although Damiani had previously appeared on ECM as part of the Italian Instabile Orchestra (see Skies Of Europe), his presence here gains frontline recognition. Guesting with him are Tunisian oudist and Anouar Brahem and Italian reed maestro Gianluigi Trovesi.

The album begins with a suite composed around the myth of Orpheus. Told in four chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue, they key to this revisionist narrative lies in its array of psychological insights. The journey into the underworld, for example, feels as if it begins the moment the music exhales with its playful mélange of modern classical touches and eclectic flourishes. Yet rather than a torturous slog through fire and brimstone, we get a swinging gait through the pits of human despair toward the reflected light of Eurydice’s mirror. As much Godard as it is Cocteau, the resolve of this mise-en-scène blisters across a free jazz landscape. Electronic enhancements to the horns render ghostly faces that swirl in and out of focus. Such infusions align this album more closely to Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble than to more conventional outfits. This isn’t your grandmother’s big band.

One suite follows another in the form of “Estramadure.” This three-parter is attuned to overtly compositional impulses, overlaying jagged themes onto smooth backings of winds and brass. Rhythms are tight but spongy, absorbing all that comes their way. Damiani glows in a superb solo turn, making way for a rainy montage cut to ribbons by the sharp relief of Trovesi’s altoism.

Those expecting to hear more of Brahem and Trovesi will either be disappointed or pleasantly surprised. Still, enthusiasts can bask in the warm light of “Montbéliard Trio,” in which the heroes of the hour spend twenty luxurious minutes in various stages of audibility eliciting gorgeous, elliptical themes toward rapture. Brahem also gilds the title track—which translates to “Mediterranean spell”—with appropriately dream-like patterns. Equally deserving of attention are the contributions of violinist Régis Huby, whose restless technical precision recalls that of Mark Feldman. Huby gives especial vibrancy to this 14 and a half-minute epic and elicits a memorable performance in the first of two iterations of “Argentiera.” The fluid stylings of electric guitarist Olivier Benoit also deserve special note.

All told, this is a consistently detailed and sometimes surprising effort that is sure to reward repeated listening.

Gianluigi Trovesi Ottetto: Fugace (ECM 1827)

| Tyran Grillo

Fugace

Gianluigi Trovesi Ottetto
Fugace

Gianluigi Trovesi alto saxophone, piccolo, alto clarinets
Beppe Caruso trombone
Massimo Greco trumpet, electronics
Marco Remondini cello, electronics
Roberto Bonati double-bass
Marco Micheli double-bass, electric bass
Fulvio Maras percussion, electronics
Vittorio Marinoni drums
Recorded June 2002 at Next Officine Meccaniche Studios, Milan
Recording engineer: Marti Jane Robertson
Assistant engineer: Guido Andreani
Mixed at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Konshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Gianluigi Trovesi is a maverick in ECM’s stable. His ear for melody and, above all, aesthetics makes him a perfect fit for the label and a standout among its crowded roster. The Italian multi-reedist and composer has, it seems, always had his fingers in many pies, yet consistent to his flavor has been the acidity of celluloid. Indeed, Trovei’s penchant for cinematic atmospheres is a running theme throughout his work on all scales, but nowhere more so than on Fugace. The album’s tasteful admixture of noir, new wave, and expressionist “imagery” enables a deep journey to take place for the open-minded listener. Black-and-white figures shake hands with old-time jazzmen and sultry Technicolor beauties alike—all of them bound to a code of traditional and popular European elements. The latter serve to clear all distractions and highlight the diasporic nature of each genre sampled therein. These elements and more come together in what essentially amounts to a fantasy soundtrack, for it needs no film in order to find focus. Rather, moving pictures would be a hindrance to this music, already so robust in its evocativeness that a screen would be just that: something in the way.

The psychedelic electronic refrain of opener “As strange as a ballad” smacks of a dream sequence, Trovesi’s clarinet the psychoanalyst with an ulterior motive hovering at its periphery. Between this and the follow-up, “Sogno d’Orfeo,” there is already much to admire. The latter’s swanky air opens wispily before floating along the avenues of times past in vintage clothing, clutching worn-out hopes all the while. Sampled harpsichord runs add clink and spatter to this astute rollick, as also to the four “Siparietti,” or entr’actes, that pepper the album’s second act. Each turns a similar motif into a corkscrew of Baroque energy just waiting for the right moment to spawn. The title track performs the same trick, replacing one impact with another.

The “African Triptych” is an indisputable highlight of the program, moving across swaths of landscape in smooth and easygoing melodies. The musicianship is at once careful and carefree, the composing likewise. The second section, “Scarlet Dunes,” unveils a refreshing turn from alto, plying that middle range with all the depth of a sailor dropping anchor. Trovesi manages to scrape the horizon with his fingernails and reveal the gessoed backing. His screeching works wonders here and hereafter, and enhances the band’s subconscious qualities.

Of said band, one can hardly say enough. With Trovesi in the lead, it includes two bassists, two percussionists, a cellist, trombonist, and trumpeter. Its recipes expand upon the minimal ingredients of Trovesi’s chamber projects, and the decade of experience that comes to the table here is detectable in every course. The incorporation of electronics is an ingenious touch, resulting in a hybrid that is as much nu jazz (cf. the dancing breakbeats of “Clumsy dancing of the fat bird”) as Vivaldi; at times haunting (“Canto di lavoro”) and at others parodic. “Blues and West” fits squarely in the vein of parody. Fronting gritty electric guitar work over a smooth bass line and hip blowing from the horns, it gives off whimsical pheromones to be sure. Trovesi’s nod to W. C. Handy, “Ramble,” is another fascinating mélange of eras and styles, shifting John Zorn-like from Dixieland to free jazz in the blink of an eye. The rhythms are totally on point and keep us locked into every chameleonic change. Further along, the whitewash of “Il Domatore” dovetails the beauteous desolation of a William Basinski loop with the hard post-bop of a Dave Holland joint. Its arc goes into hiding until it touches ground in “Totò nei Caraibi,” which pulls the mournful final credits like a curtain in reverse.

Of all possible genres to have been referenced here, neo-realism remains unacknowledged, perhaps in fear of its own reflection. That its hard-won lessons might jump out and startle us at any time is part of the appeal of Fugace, which quells those urges with tightly wound lyricism and colorful appeal. Another masterstroke from Trovesi and his circle.

Andersen/Vinaccia/Smith: Live At Belleville (ECM 2078)

| Tyran Grillo

Live At Belleville

Live At Belleville

Arild Andersen double-bass, live-electronics
Paolo Vinaccia drums
Tommy Smith tenor saxophone
Recorded September 2007 at Belleville, Oslo and Drammen Theatre
Engineers: Svyer Frøyslie and Asle Karstad
Edited and mixed June 2008 at Rainbow Studio
Produced by Arild Andersen

Hearing and seeing bassist Arild Andersen, tenorist Tommy Smith, and drummer Paolo Vinaccia will be one of the last memories to fade if and when I ever go senile. The concert was proof positive that these musicians have hit on something special and drove home the point that together they are no mere trio, but a triangle, each side as vital as the others in maintaining the shape of its overall purpose: to emote in a clear and focused way across landscapes at once ethereal and ridden with earthly histories.

The lion’s share of the set is consumed by Andersen’s four-part “Independency.” The infusions of bow taps and fluid pizzicato that open the suite betray nothing of its muscle power. Smith’s bronzed melody-making and Vinaccia’s tremors hold restrainedly yet fiercely to thematic resolve. The reedman’s no-nonsense kaleidoscope foils his increasingly entrenched bandmates with robust ingenuity. Andersen casts a multifaceted shadow across the center of all this, each string of his bass a solitary voice that lives for harmony. Smith carries much of the weight of Part 2, opening with a protracted improvisation that skirts multiphonic edges and catapults its voice across the valley stretched out before him like a royal carpet. Yet where the latter would yield to the touch of uncalloused feet, here the footprints are erratic, as much animal as human, and uninterested in the rules of dominion. Rather, its complexities lie in the simple act of giving in to the glorious potential for jazz to turn the moon like the dial of some cosmic safe and let the magic of spontaneous interpretation come spilling out as stars. Bass and drums connect on yet another level, swinging so hard that the chain wraps full circle until the inertia of Smith’s frenzy gives way to the polyglot freedom of his cohorts. Part 3 works a spell of pretty desolation. For every skyward step, it falls two inward and settles into the comfort of dreams. Part 4, though anchored only by a mid-tempo swing, actually fans the suite’s brightest flames. The band evokes every gradation of color: Smith’s free-blowing soul is the white-hot core, Andersen’s chromatic dance the outer orange and yellow, and Vinaccia the ephemeral sparks kicking the light fantastic out into ether. All the while, the tenor’s gritty squeals add shots of fuel to every indication of waning oxygen. Phenomenal.

To this magnum opus are appended three tunes. First is a flexible take on Duke Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss.” Like a heavy marionette, it responds to the pull of Smith’s sax to slog through alleyways of hunger, finding at last the promise of a love supreme in the singsong music of the city, of which only a screen holds the line between desolation and consummation. Vinaccia sets the mood of “Outhouse” with his distinctly bundled sound. Smith joins the theme tentatively at first, Andersen more forthcoming, before they trip into a poised, full-on groove. This skittering jive is the album’s shining beacon toward which all surrounding vessels sail with confidence. And there, on the shore, they dance like they never have before while Smith unearths mounds of treasure onto the sands. Their prized offering is “Dreamhorse,” in which Andersen’s methodical and alluring bass line invites some fast-fingered antiphony with Smith, thereby ending with a touch of the sacred in view.

Even with such a rich (and enriching) career behind him, it’s heartening to discover that in some ways Andersen is just getting started. He is, quite simply, making the best music of his life, made possible through a life of music.

Jon Balke & Magnetic North Orchestra: Diverted Travels (ECM 1886)

| Tyran Grillo

Diverted Travels

Jon Balke & Magnetic North Orchestra
Diverted Travels

Magnetic North Orchestra
Per Jørgensen trumpet, vocals
Fredrik Lundin bass flute, saxophones
Jon Balke piano and keyboards
Bjarte Eike violin
Peter Spissky violin
Thomas Pitt bass violin
Helge Andreas Norbakken percussion
Ingar Zach percussion
Recorded September and November 2003 at La Buissonne Studios, Pernes-Les-Fontaines and Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Jan Erik Kongshaug
Mixed at Rainbow Studio by Jon Balke, Manfred Eicher, and Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Jon Balke and Manfred Eicher

For his third Magnetic North Orchestra release (following Further and Kyanos), pianist Jon Balke pools together a new band of Scandinavian talent under the same name in the project’s most focused iteration to date. With only trumpeter Per Jørgensen retained from the original lineup, the overall effect is that of a watchmaker and his apprentices turned composers. Such attention to detail has always been part and parcel of Balke’s recognizable approach, but nowhere more so than in the facets of Diverted Travels, where it manifests in shorter pieces, a few of which hover on either side of the one-minute fence. The reconfigured roster reveals itself in the album’s wealth of intimate sub-combinations. The breathy horns and electric piano of “Sink,” for instance, turn ice into water and set a climatic precedent for its companions.

“Machinery” sets the clockwork beat to which the band tunes its heart. The chamber aesthetic so vital to Balke’s aural psyche sings with vibrancy here. Indications of his encounters with West African music are already apparent, clarifying themselves in such pieces as “Nutating,” “In Patches,” and “River,” in which the pulse becomes the melody. The latter’s muted trumpet is especially organic and foils the waterwheel motions of its backing with genuine augury. “Climb” is another energizing walkabout with all the makings of a nervous breakdown yet with none of the weak spots. Agitations darken into a lullaby beneath a giant eyelid closing to reveal the starlit canopy of its inner surface.

“Columns” boasts the unmistakable vocal stylings of Jørgensen, whose tense histrionics slalom like an aria from a lost Michael Mantler opera through spokes of arid strings. The trumpeter reveals further mysteries in “Deep,” working his craft through the prism of saxophonist Fredrik Lundin amid a smattering of percussion. Likewise, the mysterious “Downslope” is an album highlight. Rendering molecules of horns within a sul ponticello fringe, it turns air into breath and breath into bodies, footsteps audible on the plains as they balance a hunter’s lance atop the scalp of the setting sun. In the shadow of this piece is “The Drive,” a drone of stunning capacity.

At nearly seven minutes, “And On” is the longest selection, a storm that utilizes the full force of the MNO to evoke changes in atmospheric pressure. Balke’s pianism is wondrously compact, running tighter and tighter circles until it expends itself with jouissance. How else to deal with this than by “Falling,” which brings together the three violinists and Jørgensen’s recorder-like throat in ashen harmony, signing off this love letter to cloudy skies with a taste of antiquity.

Jon Balke & Magnetic North Orchestra: Kyanos (ECM 1822)

| Tyran Grillo

Kyanos

Jon Balke & Magnetic North Orchestra
Kyanos

Magnetic North Orchestra
Per Jørgensen trumpet
Morten Halle saxophones, flute
Arve Henriksen trumpet
Svante Henryson cello
Jon Balke piano, keyboards
Anders Jormin double-bass
Audun Kleive drums, percussion
Recorded November 2001 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Jon Balke and Manfred Eicher

For Kyanos, Jon Balke continues the journey begun on Further with an assembly of likeminded label mates—among them trumpeters Per Jørgensen and Arve Henriksen, bassist Anders Jormin, and drummer Audun Kleive—under the moniker Magnetic North Orchestra to ply the glaciers of the Norwegian pianist’s nostalgic compositional approach. Many permutations of the album’s title (which means “blue” in Greek) find purchase in the album’s intimate geography. “Mutatio,” for one, unpacks the depressing implications of the color, trading piano-heavy gestures with soft punctuations from the MNO, each a hope sidestepped in favor of seclusion. “Katabolic” tells the same story but reverses the formula, fronting Jørgensen and Henriksen against intermittent swells of synth. “In vitro” seems to speak in the language of the color itself, as if it were an entire species with specific taxonomic histories and genetic signatures.

Balke’s introduction to opener “Phanai” is the most evocative of them all, dancing like sunlight between tree branches. Sudden intakes betray a drama waiting to leap out into the wider world, finding instead the slow entry of percussion and brass. The feeling is one of a giant sleepwalking through forest as if it were underbrush. Balke and Jormin’s rhythmically savvy interplay bleeds contrast. With insectile harmonics and trembling heart, Jormin bounces along the inner walls of “Zygotos” with a string of genetic possibilities while the surface around him glows to the horns’ intervals, though nowhere no delicate as in “Ganglion,” a masterful conversation between Balke, Jormin, and Kleive that is the most microscopic portion of the set. Haunting accents from flutist Morten Halle and cellist Svante Henryson indicate a world much farther away, a place where the eddying winds cease only for the fearless.

The second half of Kyanos consists of miniatures in more ways than one. The intimate details of “Plica” and “Nano”—mostly percussive expressions and dream-tracings—intensify the magnification. Clicks on piano strings and sibilant fluting designate especially fruitful cells of intent. “Karyon” is the album’s truest groove and packs huge emotion into barest gestures. Its evolution from blind wandering to keen-eyed flight reaches its peak in the form of Jørgensen’s unique vocal edge. Henryson duets enigmatically with Jormin in the concluding “Apsis.”

A prevalence of biological imagery in the song names characterizes this album as a mapping of bodily spaces, thus clarifying the ultimate nuance of blue: namely, as the stain beneath a cover slide. The title track is the most concentrated solution to be found on this laboratory bench, enhancing as it does the emotional details of everything around it. Just turn up the volume as you would a focus knob, and it will all become clear.

Jan Garbarek/The Hilliard Ensemble: Officium Novum (ECM New Series 2125)

| Tyran Grillo

Officium Novum

Officium Novum

Jan Garbarek soprano and tenor saxophones
The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Steven Harrold tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Recorded June 2009 at Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

A little farther
we will see the almond trees blossoming
the marble gleaming in the sun
the sea breaking into waves 

a little farther,
let us rise a little higher.
–Giorgos Seferis

Sometimes music bypasses all other faculties and journeys straight into our souls. It eschews intellectual games, removes the safety net from beneath critical acrobats, and seeks no justification for its effects. To say that Officium Novum is just such music would be as gross an understatement as is likely to drop from my brain. The achievements of the Hilliard Ensemble and saxophonist Jan Garbarek on this album’s predecessors, Officium and Mnemosyne, hardly need emphasis. They were nothing short of astonishing, blending presumably incongruous signatures in a sound of unparalleled parallels. Yet this third effort from the project stands out for its distinct separation of voices as it leads our ears and hearts more toward Eastern Europe, and farther to Armenia.

Hilliards Garbarek

In the latter vein, the multifaceted folk and liturgical arrangements of Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935)—whose music has elsewhere fallen within ECM’s purview on Kim Kashkashian’s Hayren—form the album’s central nervous system, although nowhere more so than in “Ov zarmanali,” a baptismal hymn that with Garbarek’s solo introduction marks the aforementioned separation as a running theme from first blush. In the rasp of his reed breathes a memory of nature, so that the Hilliards’ entrance spins a fantasy that can never gain traction in the here and now, confined as it is to wandering the past like a prisoner in his cell. Nevertheless, sanctity reigns, as prophesied by the third-century Byzantine chant, “Svjete tihij” (Gladsome light), which sacrifices its luminescence as it is sliced by the barred window. Its vocal blood later warms the body of Arvo Pärt’s “Most Holy Mother of God,” written for the Hilliards in 2003, thereby closing a divine circuit with its concluding dissonances.

Separations abound in other Komitas pieces as Garbarek carries the full chanting weight of “Surb, Surb” and skirts fields of dew in “Hays hark nviranats ukhti,” surpassed only once by countertenor David James in the “Sirt im sasani” (Hymn for Maundy Thursday). Like two wings joined to the same body, they are nominally separate but linked by thought, instinct, and action. Such notes of independence are implied also by the album’s cover photograph, which shows a lone outlier, back turned yet bridged to his fellows by light on the water. Even that reflection bears a horizontal rift of shadow: a cleft of nascent wave eating its way toward shore.

The lifeblood of Officium Novum courses through “Litany,” a three-chambered heart of Russian, Romanian, and anonymous sources. At its center is “Otche nash,” drawn from the Lipovan Old Believers tradition and sung alone by baritone Gordon Jones before Garbarek threads the backdrop of an anonymous “Dostoino est” in ways eerily similar to the first collaboration in 1993. Another anonymous relic, this of 16th century Spain, braces the architecture of “Tres morillas m’enamoran.” Heard on many a Renaissance record, the piece finds new life in the current rendering, seeming to reach for us from the future rather than out of the past. This is where the separations begin to soften, as Garbarek harmonizes more docilely at first before darting through and around the voices with bird-like grace. Breaths between verses lend a reflective, antiphonal quality, as they do also in Pérotin’s “Alleluia. Nativitas,” newly rendered since its appearance on Mnemosyne. It is joyous, almost incongruously so, among these monochromatic brethren, but gives a name to the light from which it fashions flesh for bone.

Two pieces by Jan Garbarek complete the musical share of the album. “Allting finns” (Everything there is) sets “Den döde” (The dead one), a poem by Swedish writer Pär Lagerkvist (1891-1974), into beautiful interpretive metalwork, filigreed by the composer’s alchemy of paramusical elements, while “We are the stars” (based on a Native American poem of the Passamaquoddy people) is here transformed from its last appearance on RITES into a fully embodied soul, whose words and bare coherences constitute a fabric unto itself. Garbarek’s playing is so respectful that it walks on water and leads us to Bruno Ganz’s reading of “Nur ein Weniges noch” by Giorgos Seferis (1900-1971), which ends the program. Both narrator and poet are recurring touch-points in the ECM corpus. By their virtue, we are left with a vastly intersectional view of the (im)material world and a single takeaway message that resounds, May you be blessed to be found.

(To hear samples of Officium Novum, click here.)

Keith Jarrett: Concerts – Bregenz/München (ECM 1227-29)

| Tyran Grillo

Concerts

Keith Jarrett
Concerts – Bregenz/München

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded May 28, 1981 in Festspielhaus Bregenz (Austria) and June 2, 1981 in Herkulessaal München (Germany)
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Concerts may just be the brightest star in the galaxy of Keith Jarrett’s live solo improvisations. Where previously one could get only a third of the nearly two-and-a-half-hour experience on CD (the entire experience was, of course, always available on vinyl), it has at last been restored to its celestial glory in digital form. Indeed, form is what this recording is all about, for its spins, seemingly from nothing, a fibrous body of sound. The first of the album’s concerts took place in Bregenz on 28 May 1981, the second in Munich on the 2nd of June that same year. Though markedly different, their kinship is overwhelming.

Bregenz is the meatier of the two, and comes into being, as Jarrett’s improvisations so often do, as if midstream, a reverie from which attention has been diverted by the circadian rhythms of life. A quiet and reverential tone pervades its initial stirrings, which sometimes dart into the sky like meteors in reverse. Yet one gets the feeling as Jarrett lays into jazzier motives that he is neither floating nor falling but emotes in softest paralysis. He intensifies urgency, stomping to a drum only he can hear. Within each solemn depression of key and spirited cluster alike, there is constant medi(t)ation. Like fingers uncurling, his music melts through tension and ego. Shostakovichian flourishes enable ecstatic transition into Part II, where the clockwork of his instrument further opens his performing self. He is a reflection of the interior, eliciting rolls that hum their way along the edges of unforeseeable futures into the stillness of bated breath. Were it not for the applause, the spell might never be broken. “Untitled” is terse and brightly syncopated, trail-marked by Jarrett’s paroxysms. These get a deservedly strong reaction from the crowd before ending on a soulful note with the anthemic, and iconic, “Heartland.”

Munich swaddles with its porous sound. Part I is likewise born to humble beginnings. Individual droplets spread into sheets of rain, in which one tastes a bittersweet concoction of trial and transcendence. Fingers slide into Gurdjieff-like homage, Jarrett grunting with intense joy between pauses, where breathes the generative energy that sustains his brilliance long into the enigmatic Part II. With this savory swing he mortars fractured arcs of time by way of uncontainable expectorations, every note emoting the staying power of a keystone. He breaks the stillness with his feet, easing into a liquid ostinato. Gently at first, then with more insistence, Jarrett gilds the frame with increasingly frenzied ornaments. At their center are the gospel sounds of Part III. Threaded by Jarrett’s singing on and off the keys, these bustle with a deep commitment to pastoral resolution, evoking the majestic patchwork of clouds as well as that of the land below them. This switches to rich ascending phrases and chord voicings, taking pleasure in the therapy of an unobstructed view, which Jarrett manages to describe to us as if we were blind. The little staircase of Part IV burrows deeper into the ear, opening into a full-blown lighthouse of sound before jumping off into the sparkling horizon. Abstract touches inside the piano break the monochromatic spell and pour us into the colorful world of “Mon Cœur Est Rouge,” in which Jarrett achieves such poignant balance that it might just be his most astonishing solo ever recorded. Running with the abandon of a child yet marked by experience, it beams a laser into a reprise of “Heartland.” The latter is the perfect title for Jarrett’s emotional geographies, inspired as they are by the terrain of love and photosynthesis that sustains them.

Most compelling about these solo concerts is that, no matter how epic their tales become, they never seem more than flecks of dew, noticeable only because Jarrett angles the sunlight on them just so. What stands out in these oceans of technical flourish, therefore, are those carefully rendered single notes. Whether finger-pedaled or hanging in space like gongs, each mitochondrial curlicue recedes into another life. That life may be yours or a stranger’s. Or maybe it’s trying to tell us that those lives are one and the same, and that a need for music has all along been the eternal chain of being from which we all swing and of which we all will one day let go.

<< Gary Burton Quartet: Picture This (ECM 1226)
>> Don Cherry/Ed Blackwell: El Corazón (ECM 1230)

Keith Jarrett: Hymns/Spheres (ECM 1086/87)

| Tyran Grillo

Hymns Spheres

Keith Jarrett
Hymns/Spheres

Keith Jarrett organ
Recorded September 1976, Ottobeuren Abbey
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

There are musicians and there are magicians. Keith Jarrett is of the latter persuasion. Whenever his fingers touch the keyboard, they seem to have plunged into earth and anointed themselves with million-year-old magma before committing themselves to ivory. To be sure, he is one of the world’s most renowned improvisers, yet Hymns/Spheres—released unabridged at last in this double-CD set—documents an encounter with a grand Baroque organ that seems written in the stars. The organ in question was built by Karl Joseph Riepp in the eighteenth century and is a spectacular instrument in its own right. In communication with Jarrett, it produces sounds of extraordinary color and variety of register (many of the unique effects were produced by pulling stops only partway), sounds that comprise perhaps his most transcendent record to date.

Trying to describe it is like painting every leaf on a tree: far easier to take a photograph and offer it in place of an inferior rendering. Yet the parsing of its canvas over the years justifies a more surgical analysis. When first reissued on CD in 1985 as Spheres (ECM 1302)—i.e., with none of the “Hymns” included—it retained from those titular pieces only the 1st, 4th, 7th, and 9th Movements. Through them Jarrett was telling an eco-minded story, one that follows a single drop of water from the sky (prelude to a storm that never materializes) and freezes it in midair with winter’s coming to the sound of one bird flying south. Feelings of ice pervade the barren trees. The laughter that once ricocheted between them now hangs from the branches, an icicle for every child’s breath. Not all is gloom, however, for there is also a plenitude of warmth to be consumed and savored. Like a sleeping beauty who opens her eyes, only to stare into the depths of her own face, the 7th Movement stands before a mirror of inescapable meditation, while the 9th breaks thaw. Stirrings from below: beetles and earthworms unfurling with virginal respiration. A volcano erupts halfway around the world, yet you feel it in every follicle. Ships release their warning calls. You twist like a braided cord, thinner with each revolution, until your body is a wisp of molecules connecting lad, sea, and sky.

Fans were rightly saddened by the 1985 reissue for lacking five of the nine “Spheres” and the two “Hymns” etched into the original vinyl. The Hymns are especially important in tying this intimate session together; they begin and end its otherwise incomplete circle. Like much of the once-missing material, they are fuller, rib-shattering proclamations, much in contrast to the brooding abridgement. “Hymn Of Remembrance” opens ears and hearts like a church service in which communion is taken in wafers of sound, baptism in a river of glowing breath. “Hymn Of Release” processes along the walls, resting behind pews in postludinal exaltation.

As for the newly restored “Spheres,” they seem to open their mouths and eject columns of light into the very stars. Jarrett threads between the falling debris as many chords as he can before it combusts in the stratosphere (perhaps cluing us in on their collective title). If, in the 2nd Movement, we find ourselves confronted with a blinding vision of spirit, in the 3rd we are shown the opposite in tangled darkness. Jarrett resolves this tension with a pedaled drone, over which he unfurls a hefty banner of unrelenting majesty. The 5th and 6th Movements complicate this resolution with jagged memories, uncertain motives, and tattered masks. The final mystery is reclaimed in the 8th, where notes shimmer with underwater vibrato in a deepening commitment to contemplation.

It’s a shame that over half the album should have once been sacrificed, though I wouldn’t have programmed the Spheres reduction any differently, except perhaps to include the Hymns. Then again, a realization wraps its arms around me as I listen to the whole story anew: this music will never be complete. Its hints of infinity are overwhelming, and we are fortunate enough to know their touch in any form.

<< Keith Jarrett: The Survivors’ Suite (ECM 1085)
>> Edward Vesala: Satu (ECM 1088)