ECM Releases

Richard Beirach: Hubris (ECM 1104)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1104

Richard Beirach
Hubris

Richard Beirach piano
Recorded June 1977 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Classically trained pianist Richie Beirach has created some of ECM’s most melodically engaging music. His first solo album is a keepsake to be treasured for its melodic detail and structure. “Sunday Song” embraces the album at either end with heartache and never lets go, even in silence. Within its fibrous interior, Beirach spins thematic funnels from vivid ostinatos. Floating in its liquid center is the title piece, which if anything is circumscribed and modest. No single mood dominates, thereby allowing the listener the benefit of continual reassessment. One feels the music developing in multiple and simultaneous directions, such that a destination cannot always be inferred. Between the speculative considerations of “Osiris” and “Future Memory” and the narrow syncopations of “Leaving,” one finds a range of brushstrokes at the musician’s employ. The aerial dissonances of the latter piece leave particularly indelible impressions upon the mind’s palimpsest. “Koan” is a colorful and erratic interlude and stands equidistant from the likeminded “Rectilinear.” Beirach scales his greatest heights in “The Pearl,” which he buffs to a blinding shine with arresting key changes, only to be refracted in a haunting traipse through the “Invisible Corridor.”

With no one to answer to here, Beirach’s notecraft is pared down to the core and given free reign. These vignettes are atmosphere itself, bound to their titular prompts while also shedding them in favor of absolute expression.

<< Jack DeJohnette’s Directions: New Rags (ECM 1103)
>> Abercrombie/Holland/DeJohnnette: Gateway 2 (ECM 1105)

Jack DeJohnette: New Rags (ECM 1103)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1103

Jack DeJohnette
New Rags

Jack DeJohnette drums, piano
John Abercrombie electric guitar, electric mandolin
Alex Foster tenor and soprano saxophones
Mike Richmond bass, electric bass
Recorded May 1977 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Directions was a short-lived unit from the evolving mind of drummer Jack DeJohnette, who on this ECM joint proved once again that his deftness at the keyboard is almost on par with his mainstay. New Rags features the same line-up (John Abercrombie on electric guitar and mandolin, Alex Foster on reeds, and Mike Richmond on basses) as 1976’s Untitled, sans Bernhardt. Our frontman meanders into the thick of things with three originals, of which the title track bristles with luscious work from Richmond in a steady interplay with all. The consistent improv comes to a head at the halfway point, where Foster pulls his fingers as if in a vast string game by way of transition. We lapse into a brief, somnambulant carnivalesque before merging back on track as Abercrombie leads the charge, loosing a thematic call to arms that concludes in delight. An energetic groove awaits us in “Minya’s The Mooch,” in which sax and guitar are more than happy to hop onto the rhythmic bandwagon. Energies subside as quickly as they flare, leaving Abercrombie to hang in space like the brightest star on a cloudy night. Meanwhile, the elegant sax trio of “Lydia” is a short but sweet diamond in the rough that is sure to win your heart.

Foster counters with two sucker punches of his own. “Flys” is an upbeat number with attentive chording from Abercrombie. The final “Steppin’ Thru,” however, outshines the others combined in a 10.5-minute exposition with the raw intensity of an Everyman Band. Abercrombie wrenches out the album’s best solo here, more than willing to take us along for the ride. The energy accumulates with a funky electric bass before fading out, having no other recourse to finish.

While perhaps not as melodically solid as its previous effort, New Rags lives up to the group’s name. With purposive commitment and forward-looking arrangements, DeJohnette serves up another piping hot dish of auditory comfort food.

<< Kenny Wheeler: Deer Wan (ECM 1102)
>> Richard Beirach: Hubris (ECM 1104)

Kenny Wheeler: Deer Wan (ECM 1102)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1102

Kenny Wheeler
Deer Wan

Kenny Wheeler trumpet, fluegelhorn
Jan Garbarek saxophones
John Abercrombie electric guitar, electric mandolin
Dave Holland bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Ralph Towner 12-string guitar
Recorded July 1977 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Among Kenny Wheeler’s cleverly punned titles, Deer Wan takes the cake. For his second ECM album as headliner, the prodigious trumpeter/fluegelhornist serves up a set of four originals—three long and one short—sure to enliven any morning routine or Sunday afternoon alike. The top-shelf cast reads like a who’s who of ECM’s best and brightest: Jan Garbarek on saxophones, John Abercrombie on electrics, Dave Holland on bass, Ralph Towner on his ever-present 12-string, and Jack DeJohnette at the drums. Wrap this in the splendid engineering of Jan Erik Kongshaug and you get unquestionable sonic bliss.

The 16.5-minute “Peace For Five” is an album in itself and provides an ideal launching pad for Wheeler’s astonishing lyricism. A somber aside from Holland and not-so-somber acrobatics from Abercrombie and Garbarek all contribute to a richly flowing tapestry in this epic opener. Wheeler and company tear a page from the book of Enrico Rava with “3/4 In The Afternoon.” Like a stroll through lush gardens, one finds in it a veritable ecosystem of visual and melodic ideas, compressed into a single brass-gilded flower. Towner’s reverberant plush underscores the warmth within. As we swing over into night with “Sumother Song,” Garbarek’s liquid tenor evaporates into its own swan song with only a tinkling of cymbals to mark where it once stood. But this, we soon discover, is only a pause before DeJohnette’s beautifully corrugated rhythms unfold beneath a soaring fluegelhorn. After a windy introduction, the title track quickly weaves itself into an upbeat welcome mat on which we wipe our feet as if after a long journey. Buffeted soloing all around brings us full circle to a state of renewed appreciation for that which we’ve always known.

Deer Wan is an unsung masterpiece of smooth jazz with just enough sharp edges to leave an unforgettable scar or two. A most endearing album for those who like a shot of whiskey in their musical coffee.

<< Gary Peacock: Tales Of Another (ECM 1101)
>> Jack DeJohnette’s Directions: New Rags (ECM 1103)

Gary Peacock: Tales Of Another (ECM 1101)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1101

Gary Peacock
Tales Of Another

Gary Peacock bass
Keith Jarrett piano
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded February 1977, Generation Sound Studios, New York
Engineer: Tony May
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The grouping on this album represents a milestone in ECM outfits, persevering to the present day as it has in the form of Keith Jarrett’s mighty standards trio. Though a far cry from the ecstatic overloads honed over years of synergy and touring, there is an almost naïve charm to this effort and the evenhanded musicianship that sustains it. Each of these six “tales” begins in loveliness. Piano and bass bring the most urgency to bear, as in the gorgeous “Vignette,” in which Peacock gets his first lilting solo, and its follow-up, “Tone Field.” Both start off slow and sure, with DeJohnette giving the barest hint of traction and Jarrett biting deeply into fractured themes. “Major Major” gives us the steady beat we crave beneath majestic chording from the piano man, who offers up a prime slab of linear sirloin. Yet the album’s juiciest sediments can be found in the massive “Trilogy” that makes up its second half. DeJohnette skirts the rims with requisite flair while Peacock slathers on a bright veneer. Jarrett grunts ecstatically with every new development, shooting fire from his fingers. Such is the energy one has come to expect from this nonpareil threesome. Jarrett cuts off our air supply before the final stretch, the hair-trigger precision and on-your-toes syncopations of which make this pensive journey more than worth taking.

Peacock’s moody compositions make for a strikingly different experience. His fingers pull with accomplished ease at the strings of his bass. DeJohnette sticks to the margins, but fills them like no one else can. Jarrett, it might be noted, is more vocal here than I’ve ever heard him. For many, this seems to be the album’s only downfall. As far as this listener is concerned, his woops, grunts, and squeals merely underscore a musician who is unafraid to let his heart sing.

<< Keith Jarrett: Sun Bear Concerts (ECM 1100)
>> Kenny Wheeler: Deer Wan (ECM 1102)

Tom van der Geld: Path (ECM 1134)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1134

Tom van der Geld
Path

Tom van der Geld vibraharp
Bill Connors guitars
Roger Jannotta flute, soprano saxophone, oboe
Recorded February 1979 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Path brings together guitarist Bill Connors (fresh off a stint with the Jan Garbarek Group on Photo With…), Carla Bley Big Band regular Roger Jannotta on winds, and vibraphonist Tom van der Geld for a network of pellucid improvisations entwining the barest of compositional skeletons. Connors’s twangy steel drops us immediately into an ethereal sound-world with “One,” mediating a pleasant conversation between flute and vibraphone. Thus begins a kaleidoscope of duets, trios, and quartets (the latter courtesy of some non-intrusive overdubbing). Mallets provide a resonant trunk in “Eevee,” from which branches Connors’s crisp foliage, all of it animated by the breath of a majestic flute. This blends smoothly into the pastels of “Joujou,” where familial nostalgia abounds. The title of “Michi” is Japanese for “path,” which makes it the title track by way of translation. Jannotta switches to soprano sax in this new enigmatic territory, landmarked by gossamer flags and empty way stations, before fluting a veil of Aeolian sounds over our ears. “Joys And Sorrows” works stretches our heartstrings and plucks each with the gentility of a raindrop on a spider’s web. Two ghostly guitars shine inside its nocturnal halo of vibes, bisected by soprano with a comet’s grace.

Like a meteor shower, one spends a long time waiting for excitement in Path, only to realize that the pregnant darkness to which one has held such rapt attention harbors far greater wonderment. As one of ECM’s most transparent statements, this positively exquisite album is an easy candidate for president of the label’s Bizarrely Out of Print Club. Find it any way you can and be moved, as you will.

<< John Abercrombie Quartet: Arcade (ECM 1133)
>> Jan Garbarek Group: Photo With… (ECM 1135)

John Abercrombie: Characters (ECM 1117)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1117

John Abercrombie
Characters

John Abercrombie guitars, electric mandolin
Recorded November 1977 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Just four months after the historic Gateway 2 session, John Abercrombie stepped into Oslo’s Talent Studio to record Characters, his first and only solo album for ECM. While the guitarist’s trademark electric lurks here and there, a modified mandolin takes the strongest lead. The album also features about as much acoustic as one is likely to hear from Abercrombie in one sitting. All of this makes for sonic perfection.

At nearly 11 minutes, “Parable” is the longest cut on the album. A plaintive mandolin seems to stretch its strings as Abercrombie adds almost sitar-like cadences until, about halfway through, we realize this is but the stem of an overarching flower, which reveals its full bloom in an acoustic umbrella. With peerless thematic acuity, Abercrombie reconfigures his melodic matrix in “Memoir,” a nostalgic acoustic duet, each channel part of a spontaneous conversation. It is the most fleeting track on the album, but also the most intuitive. Next, Abercrombie transmits a “Telegram” straight into our souls. Like the message of its title, it is formless during transmission, but arrives in tangible form through the advent of technology, of which performance is Abercrombie’s medium of choice. His involuntary humming harmonizes with itself in a subconscious overdubbed chamber choir. “Backward Glance” recalls the title of Steve Kuhn’s classic tune. Dense acoustic chording spins powerful thermals upon which Abercrombie spreads his electric wings, drawing a feathered curtain over our eyes in the final strum. The spindly diversions of “Ghost Dance” percolate like anesthesia through the bloodstream before “Paramour” makes its debut as another acoustic duet (Abercrombie would soon resurrect it at the heart of his first quartet album, Arcade). More of the same awaits us in “After Thoughts,” where every pause feels like a deep breath that is at last exhaled in a luxurious chord. Lastly, through the liquid sheen of “Evensong” we catch visions of ourselves at different ages. After a silence, an acoustic hand opens its fingers wide as one electric swells in accompaniment and the other glides like a stingray for a sublime finish.

The album’s title is a prescient one. In addition to glyphs on a writing surface, “characters” are people, animals, or any other living creature whose desires animate a story. They might also be the traits of those creatures, or even the morals that define their personalities. Here, we encounter all of these and more, threaded ever so genuinely by one musician’s unique sense of space-time. For anyone wishing to peer into the soul behind the sound, let this be your window.

<< Egberto Gismonti: Sol Do Meio Dia (ECM 1116)
>> Jan Garbarek: Places (ECM 1118)

Ralph Towner: Batik (ECM 1121)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1121 CD

Ralph Towner
Batik

Ralph Towner 12-string and classical guitar, piano
Eddie Gomez bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded January 1978, Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

There are certain images that seem fail-proof when musically evoked. The “Waterwheel” that inaugurates us into guitarist Ralph Towner’s astonishingly beautiful Batik is one of them. Having since been painted for us by such varied talents as Hamza El Din (see the Kronos Quartet’s Pieces of Africa) and Marina Belica (former leader of the October Project, of which their self-titled debut is a personal all-time favorite), Towner’s particular configuration embodies the best of all worlds with the precision of his fingers magnified to great effect by Jack DeJohnette on drums and soothingly animated by the bass of Eddie Gomez. Towner’s democratic shifts in density allow for solos to shine through the haze unhindered, such as the enchanting bass that darts through his added splashes of 12-string. Towner rejoins in overdubbed costume, while amplified sustains peek like the sun from behind a cloud. Their passage through the sky is marked only by DeJohnette’s delicate metronome, allowing us one final glimpse of its thematic pool. “Shades of Sutton Hoo” is named for an Anglo-Saxon burial ground and haunts us with its reverberant lows and tinkling cymbals. A noticeably freer structure pervades, tracing every mound of earth with archaeological care. This delicate filler leads us up a “Trellis” of melody into ghostly afterthoughts. Gomez’s voice cuts with urgency through Towner’s ornamental stride. Their sumptuous counterpoint continues in the 16-minute title track and sets us down comfortably in Solstice territory. DeJohnette unleashes a noteworthy solo, while Gomez laces his quick fingers to support every hoisted footstep. We end in the “Green Room.” Painted with Towner’s mournful piano, it glows in a wash of potent commentary from bass and brushed drums, crumbling like spring snow into silence.

A classic to the nth degree.

<< Bill Connors: Of Mist And Melting (ECM 1120)
>> Enrico Rava Quartet: s/t (ECM 1122)

Paul Giger: Vindonissa (ECM 1836)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Paul Giger
Vindonissa

Paul Giger violin, violino d’amore, viola d’amore, footbells
Robert Dick c-flute, glissando flute, bass flute in c, bass flute in f, contrabass flute
Satoshi Takeishi percussion
Recorded June 1998 and 2000

Modern-day gypsy, musical traveler, melodic nomad: call him what you will, but Paul Giger has created some of the most haunting music to ever grace your ears. Adding yet another branch to the bold tree that began with Chartres and which was expanded in three subsequent projects, the Swiss violinist/composer beguiles us yet again with this more whimsical, though no less trenchant, collaboration. On Vindonissa, he is joined by two outstanding musicians. Robert Dick is a truly revolutionary American flutist and composer who has taken his instrument to new heights. A pioneer in extended techniques, design, and improvisation, he is a welcome presence on ECM. Percussionist Satoshi Takeishi is a kindred itinerant spirit, and has worked with a wide range of musicians, including Anthony Braxton and Joe Zeytoonian. A skilled improviser in his own right, his openness to the musical moment is a no-brainer for inclusion here.

Giger bookends this yawning chasm of life with a meditation on solo violin from which the album gets its name, distilling from the chromatic banality of open strings a potent tincture of dissonance and transcendence. Such lone signposts dot the album with moments of pause, as in the lilting Introitus and Kyrie. The group tracks contrast with open spaces and colorful mysticism. Starting with the pointillism of Oogoogajoo and ending on the likeminded An Ear On Buddha’s Belly, these intersections of time and circumstance seem to grow organically, as if in waves. Dick and Takeishi walk comfortably alongside Giger, bringing vital human energy to the untouchable center of Lava Coils and even greater earthly care to Fractal Joy, the most profound triangle therein. Gloria et Tarantella, in which Giger rocks the viola d’amore to the beat of his own foot bells, is the album’s masterpiece and builds to a frenzy of Tartini-like exuberance. With every note, it burns a root and follows its smoke ever skyward.

Giger is easily one of the greatest violinists of our time, not only because of his technical prowess, but more importantly for his ability to grab hold of a melodic handle and never let go until it asks him too. Such talent can take some getting used to, especially in the presence of other musicians, but I think this is an album in which one can rest assured that a meeting of three bodies, minds, and worldviews can indeed find harmony through sound’s untold alchemies.

Michael Galasso: Scenes (ECM 1245)

| Tyran Grillo

1245Michael Galasso
Scenes

Michael Galasso violin
Recorded October 1982, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Born in Louisiana in 1949, Michael Galasso picked up his first violin at age 3. After debuting with the New Orleans Philharmonic at 11, he went on to forge a unique and fascinating career. As a longtime collaborator of Robert Wilson, he composed incidental music for a host of renowned productions, including an award-winning 1998 staging of Strindberg’s A Dreamplay, in addition to being involved in numerous sound installations in museums worldwide. Many will have encountered him as the film scorer for Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, and most recently for Martin Provost’s Séraphine, but far too few have heard him on his own terms, divorced from the images he describes.

For his first solo album, Galasso gives us nine numbered “Scenes,” each the facet of an unfathomable jewel. It is an album to which I often played my violin by ear, trying to gain inner sight to its deeper complexities. And indeed, beyond its charming Philip Glassean veneer heaves a pair of expansive lungs that expel far more than they take in. The album has the feeling of a home recording, multi-tracked and with minimal processing applied. Despite being meticulously composed, it is also spontaneous in feel and refreshingly non-perfectionist. Some lines don’t quite sync up, as if what we hear were just a potent coincidence. From the hauntingly enigmatic (Scenes II and VI) to the whimsical (Scene III), we are privileged to stroll through this modest gallery of sound. Scene IV stands out with its boldly syncopated lead and subtle harmonizing. Others, like Scenes VII and VIII, tremble with incidental potential, seeming to spring forth from an as yet unrealized mise-en-scène. But it is the final Scene that remains closest to my heart, for its utter simplicity draws from a groundswell of bliss. Not unlike the solo work of Paul Giger, it has a magic all its own, an uncompromising sense of direction that can never be thwarted once it holds you.

Scenes is more than a soundtrack without images. Not unlike the shadow on the cover, its chapters are disembodied. We see only their negative selves, and hear only the sounds that animate them.

<< Jack DeJohnette’s Special Edition: Inflation Blues (ECM 1244)
>> Lester Bowie: All The Magic! (ECM 1246/47)