ECM Releases

Yonathan Avishai: Joys And Solitudes (ECM 2611)

| Tyran Grillo

2611 X

Yonathan Avishai
Joys And Solitudes

Yonathan Avishai piano
Yoni Zelnik double bass
Donald Kontomanou drums
Recorded February 2018, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 25, 2019

Pianist Yonathan Avishai, first heard on ECM as a sideman for trumpeter Avishai Cohen (see, e.g., 2017’s Cross My Palm With Silver), makes another debut for the label, this time in triplicate with bassist Yoni Zelnik and drummer Donald Kontomanou. With the exception of opener “Mood Indigo,” Joys And Solitudes consists entirely of Avishai originals. That Duke Ellington evergreen is the first of a uniquely expressive forest. Its roots are deepest, and its leaves, here pruned with utmost care, are a living record of the tune’s many interpretations. Avishai approaches it with understated brilliance, as if clearing a grove for the prayers to follow.

“Song For Anny” begins in reverie and ends in revelry, joying in the memory of a loving friendship whose blossoms have only grown suppler with time. Buoyed by a willingness to let the melody breathe, filling and emptying its lungs at full capacity, this music rounds every sword it encounters into a butter knife. As in “Joy,” a deeply considered sense of development prevails, taking in the landscape as it burgeons rather than trying to paint over it prematurely. Any lushness one might attribute to these tunes is therefore indicative of an inner life, in relation to which Avishai is as much waterer as planter.

Whether playing solo (cf. “Tango,” meant to evoke the mood of Dino Saluzzi and Anja Lechner’s Ojos Negros) or in full swing with his bandmates (“Les Pianos De Brazzaville,” inspired by trips to the Republic of the Congo), Avishai gives precedence to the moment at hand. And while the trio can certainly swing, the sensitivities of each musician come out most vividly in the slower dives. In particular, “Shir Boker” quietly showcases Kontomanou’s non-invasive cymbal work, Zelnik’s ability to blur distinctions between supporting and leading, and Avishai’s in-between-the-lines style of exposition. Nowhere is this expressed so articulately as in the 12-minute journey of “When Things Fall Apart.” Written as a creative response to Avishai Cohen’s “Into The Silence” (from the 2016 album of the same name), its narrative is so full that to add or remove a single comma would render it fallible.

Torn/Berne/Smith: Sun Of Goldfinger (ECM 2613)

| Tyran Grillo

Sun Of Goldfinger

Sun Of Goldfinger

David Torn electric guitar, live-looping, electronics
Tim Berne alto saxophone
Ches Smith drums, electronics, tanbou
Craig Taborn electronics, piano
Scorchio Quartet
Amy Kimball violin
Rachel Golub violin
Martha Mooke viola
Leah Coloff cello
Mike Baggetta guitar
Ryan Ferreira guitar
Recorded September 2015 and August 2018 at The Bunker, Brooklyn Recording, EMPAC & Isokon Studios
Engineer: Daniel James Goodwin
Assistants: Adam Tilzer and Nolas Thies
Mixing: David Torn
Produced by David Torn
Release date: March 1, 2019

The trio featured on Sun Of Goldfinger coalesced in 2010, by which time guitarist David Torn and saxophonist Tim Berne had shared many years of collaborative experience between them, but to whom percussionist Ches Smith was a name as fresh as his talent. Over the next seven years, they opened themselves to the evolutionary potential of their collective body, to the point where they began laying down the tracks that would one day yield this self-titled debut.

The album opens and closes with two free improvisations, although not in the traditional sense of spontaneous creation. Rather, they are a product of mixing longer freak-outs into coherent mosaics. The result of what Torn calls this “gigantic reveal” is a sound-world bent on tattooing itself with permanence even as it dissolves in its own acid.

A hyperaware guitar licks the sky with flame in “Eye Meddle,” its electronic chemtrails a blissful grid of emotional circumstance. Smith’s own digital ephemera likewise render spaces larger than one might expect from a mere trio, as Berne cuts horizontally across their rising thermals of parthenogenesis. While Torn and Smith weave a sonic tapestry that is as much stratospheric as it is subterranean, Berne grafts on to dark matter of a highly different order, linking chains of notes in warped circularity. So committed is Berne to fighting a kneejerk fall into traction that he drops out of the matrix almost in protest when Smith drops his drum-and-bass groove. Berne struggles against its draw, adding fuel to the fire as Torn’s sun burns itself into a lightless dwarf of its former glory.

“Soften The Blow” opens more bloodshot eyes, itching along the edges of consciousness. This a deeper and darker pit of despair that nevertheless touches its reflection with childlike curiosity and opens the window to possibilities never before entertained. That said, one might draw filament influences to early Painkiller (saxophonist John Zorn’s power trio with bassist Bill Laswell and drummer Mick Harris), the only outfit I would dare to draw comparison. For while their sound and imagery occupy spaces of their own, there’s a kindred spirit of creation going on here that speaks its own will to power.

SOG
(Photo credit: Robert Lewis)

The album’s molten core is “Spartan, Before It Hit,” a piece conceived and constructed by Torn, who adds a string quartet, two guitarists (Mike Baggetta and Ryan Ferreira), and pianist Craig Taborn to the mix. What begins in arco bliss spills out across an arid plane of ancient caravan beats. Torn’s guitar has its day, shining brighter than our nearest star as if to bleach out the universe. The axis tilts, one dramatic degree at a time, until polarities are reversed on their way toward returning to neutral. It’s a process that’s both mournful and ecstatic: a sense of corporeal lust transforming into light.

Dominic Miller: Absinthe (ECM 2614)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Absinthe

Dominic Miller
Absinthe

Dominic Miller guitar
Santiago Arias bandoneon
Mike Lindup keyboard
Nicolas Fiszman bass
Manu Katché drums
Recorded February 2018, Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: March 1, 2019

The title of Absinthe, Dominic Miller’s follow-up to his 2017 ECM debut, Silent Light, harks to the early French Impressionists, whose all-in dedication to art is a philosophical touchpoint for the guitarist. To carry on that spirit, he could hardly have asked for a more eclectic yet integrated band. Bandoneon player Santiago Arias brings a sense of cross-continental shift that makes the world just a little smaller; keyboardist Mike Lindup adds a sometimes-surreal vibe that’s equal parts cry from the past and message from the future; bassist Nicolas Fiszman is the soil to Miller’s sunlight; and drummer Manu Katché, a remarkable impressionist in his own right, is time incarnate.

With such a massive scale to be reckoned with in theory, one might expect the results to be overpowering, when in practice the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic content is so evenly distributed between pans that by the end of each tune we’re left on an even keel from where we began. This is nowhere so true as on the opening title track, which spins a steady downtempo groove from the filaments of Miller’s solo introduction. The way his bandmates shuttle through the greater loom of the album’s concept is as intuitive as the compositions yearning for consummation. A certain feeling of inward travel continues in all that follows.

The quiet locomotion of “Mixed Blessing” and is as progressive as the tender “Christiana” is regressive, the geometrically inflected “Étude” as inviting as the open-ended charm of “Ombu,” the melancholy “Ténèbres” as dark as the transparent “Saint Vincent” is bright. The latter bears dedication to the late Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini, a longtime collaborator with Paul Simon and something of a mentor for Miller.Even without such biographical details, these stories write themselves, unhidden, in real time. Binding their pages are shorter pieces, including the piano-rich “Verveine” and the haunting “La Petite Reine.” Into these we are afforded only fleeting glimpses, personal tesseracts whose potential for transfiguration can only be expressed in song.

Absinthe Portrait
(Photo credit: Gildas Boclé)

All of which makes “Bicyle” quintessential in the present milieu. Its pedaling motion is more than a metaphor; it’s an actualization of life’s unstoppable flow. For there, woven between each spoke like a playing card, memories fade into new experiences, squinting into the glare of a setting sun as the world curls into slumber.

Dominic Miller: Silent Light (ECM 2518)

| Tyran Grillo

Silent Light

Dominic Miller
Silent Light

Dominic Miller guitar, electric bass
Miles Bould percussion, drums
Recorded March 2016 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 7, 2017

As guitarist Dominic Miller recalls in this CD’s liner notes, when approached by producer Manfred Eicher to make an album for ECM, he discussed various musicians and configurations before deciding to go solo. Having grown up in Argentina, Miller was indelibly influenced by Latin American sounds, and counts Egberto Gismonti’s Solo and Pat Metheny’s Offramp as watershed listening experiences. Since living in the UK and now in France, he has worked with Phil Collins, Paul Simon, and Sting, among others, all the while developing his own voice. As Sting himself writes in a supplementary note: “[W]henever Dominic plays the guitar he creates colour, a complete spectrum of emotions, sonic architecture built of resonance as well as silence, he lifts the spirit into higher realms, perhaps those realms where silence reigns.” And perhaps no other combination of location, timing, and circumstance could have produced something that so beautifully lives up to that assessment.

In thinking about the genesis of Silent Light, Miller turned to percussionist and longtime collaborator, Miles Bould, whose applications seem born of the guitar’s deepest imaginings. As it happened, the night before the recording, Bould learned that the great Brazilian percussionist and ECM veteran Nana Vasconcelos had just passed away, lending the session heartfelt poignancy. That said, there’s so much joy to be found that one would need to listen most attentively to find a single tear.

The strains of “What You Didn’t Say” delineate an opening portal, beyond which personal interactions float along waves of gentlest memory, barely detailed by percussion amid Miller’s speechless legibility. So begins a journey of concentric circles, each a band of influence along the surface of the composer’s life. From the Venezuelan flavor of “Urban Waltz” and laid-back precision of “Baden” (dedicated to Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell) to the Celtic folk-inspired “Angel” and early 20th-century French stylings of “Le Pont,” a red thread of respect runs unbroken and with clarity of purpose to a tender, solo rendition of Sting’s “Fields Of Gold.”

If anything further unites these pieces, it’s that they all seem to follow—rather than issue from—the guitar as if it were a compass attuned to melodic north. One feels this especially in “Water,” “En Passant,” and “Chaos Theory,” the latter of which navigates shimmering harmonies by the addition of bass and drums for a feeling that is decidedly crystalline, transparent, and honest. Like the recording as a whole, it is intimate without being invasive, allows no room for misinterpretation, and is as comforting as waking up knowing the only thing required of you is to listen…and to love.

Bill Frisell/Thomas Morgan: Small Town (ECM 2525)

| Tyran Grillo

Small Town

Small Town

Bill Frisell guitar
Thomas Morgan double bass
Recorded March 2016 at Village Vanguard, New York
Engineers: James A. Farber and Paul Zinman
Mixing at Avatar Studios December 2016: James A. Farber, Manfred Eicher, Bill Frisell, and Thomas Morgan
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: May 26, 2017

In this intimately performed and recorded album, one of two documenting a historic performance at New York City’s Village Vanguard, guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan show us what it means to treat jazz as a dialogue. While floating on the waves of their complementary artistry, we encounter one vessel after another of quiet majesty, each more attuned to the stars of navigation than the last.

Because Frisell and Morgan both played at the last session of Paul Motian, it’s only fitting they open with the drummer’s “It Should Have Happened A Long Time Ago,” their meditation on which unravels in an 11-minute exhale. This experience alone was more than worth the price of admission for those fortunate enough to have been at the Vanguard that night, and is a perfect summation, if not also aconsummation, of the duo’s boundless imagination.

“Subconscious Lee” follows by paying homage to its composer, Lee Konitz, with an uplifting yet fiercely inward-focused reading. Frisell’s buoyancy here speaks of a musician well aware of the ethereal hand in which the tether of his creativity is gripped. “Song For Andrew No. 1” bears dedication to Andrew Cyrille. An earlier version appeared on The Declaration of Musical Independence, and now finds itself reborn in amorphous coherence. The guitar is nothing short of haunting, as it is in “Small Town,” wherein it sings with tumbleweed-kissed charm. Morgan is a wonderous complement, not so much supporting from the periphery as bringing out punctuation from within. Between those two Frisell originals, the folk tune “Wildwood Flower” wraps Morgan in joyful comfort. The bassist’s own “Pearl,” one of his earliest compositions, speaks with a certain innocence and basks in its own evolution. His heartfelt soloing thinks back, looks forward.

Fats Domino’s flirtatious “What A Party” and a 1960s-inspired nod to “Goldfinger” strings a daisy chain of allusions like a smile across azure sky, sending us on a mission not to destroy but to share the good news of music that awakens us to deepest sense of self.

Although the conversation begun here might seem to end with its companion album, Epistrophy, it will continue to yield new insights the more it’s heard in the world. For to the world it belongs, a sincere echo of its own creation, resonant and deserving of our undivided regard.

Shai Maestro: The Dream Thief (ECM 2616)

| Tyran Grillo

2616 X

Shai Maestro
The Dream Thief

Shai Maestro piano
Jorge Roeder double bass
Ofri Nehemya drums
Recorded April 2018, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 28, 2018

The Dream Thief is Shai Maestro’s welcome leader debut for ECM. First heard on the label as sideman for Theo Bleckmann’s Elegy, the pianist now gets the full thermals of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI studio to lift his wings skyward.

Although the lion’s share of composing credit goes to Maestro, two outliers peel back personal layers of his craft. “My Second Childhood,” by Israeli singer-songwriter Matti Caspi, opens the set with palpable nostalgia, a feeling of not only reviving but reliving the past with fresh eyes. Like the standard “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You),” he plays it solo, as if to hold only himself accountable for every vulnerable detail. As Maestro himself notes: “The tremendous history of jazz is a great inspiration but also a great challenge. We each have our own individual gift, which is the choices we make—whether we turn to major or minor, whether we play pianissimo or fortissimo at a key moment. I always try to remember to embrace history while not trying to be anything or anyone else—to let the music come out of me.”

With regard to his own writing, he lives up to his surname in concept and execution. The holistic narratives of “The Forgotten Village” and the title track are allowed to expand their lungs before communicating a single concept. Nehemya, a recent addition to the group at the time of this recording, is a revelation of subtlety throughout, and Roeder’s soloing is the perfect complement: buoyant yet open, comforting yet daring, extroverted yet welcoming. As a rhythm section, they treat shadows and brighter persuasions with equal care, giving every note a surface on which to run.

As for Maestro’s playing, one need only witness what he does with a simple ostinato in “Lifeline” and a balance of synchronicity with Roeder in “New River, New Water” to feel guided along a true path of discovery. Between these are the parabolic connective tissues of “A Moon’s Tale” and “Choral,” both of which elicit a oneness of medium and message while gifting something sacred.

All of this makes “What Else Needs to Happen” an especially hard-hitting conclusion. Written for saxophonist Jimmy Greene’s daughter Ana, a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting, it stencils excerpts from President Obama’s speeches on gun control from 2015 and 2016 over a prayerful theme. More relevant than ever, it magnifies the need for conversation in a world with tape over its mouth. Let this music, at least, be the first step toward ripping it off.

Keith Jarrett: La Fenice (ECM 2601)

| Tyran Grillo

2601|02 X

Keith Jarrett
La Fenice

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded live in concert July 19, 2006 at Gran Teatro La Fenice, Venice
Producer: Keith Jarrett
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Mastering: Christoph Stickel and Manfred Eicher at MSM Studio, München
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 19, 2018

In his 2014 book, Listen to Keith Jarrett! (available only in Japanese as: キース・ジャレットを聴け!), author Yasuki Nakayama doesn’t see the pianist as a “jazz” musician per se, but as one more closely aligned with the tradition of Bob Dylan. Not merely because he played Dylan on his early albums (“My Back Pages” and “Lay Lady Lay”), but because there’s a folk-rock groove common to both. This double-disc gem from the Jarrett solo archives, documenting a concert given on 19 July 2006 at Venice’s Gran Teatro, speaks truth to that spirit, casting a backward glance to some formative ECM ventures and beyond.

Parts I and II drop us into the flow of Jarrett’s unstoppable creativity, and it’s all we can do to achieve flotation in the wake of his improvisational vessel. That said, he isn’t out to drown us with his prowess or leave us dogpaddling for meaning. Rather, the purpose of his art is as naked as it is spontaneous. Every note conveys its inevitability: an answer to a question we never needed to ask in the first place. His frames have porous edges, each a sentient microbiome hungering for communication.

Where Part III brings us into an urgent yet bluesy solar system, slowing from a run to a crawl until a life has been fulfilled by its own telling, Part IV yields ecliptic lyricism. Jarrett cuts away each motif one umbilical cord at a time so that its own personality traits can emerge. Thus, he takes lessons of love and turns them into opportunities for self-assessment, growth, and milestones. Part V is a boppish affair with plenty of twists and turns to satisfy the eager listener. Its wondrous energy is superseded only by Part VIII. With feet stomping and voice churning, Jarrett transforms the piano into metaphysical substance, whereby the path to harmony must be paved with commitment.

The performance is consummated by a few inspired pieces. “The Sun Whose Rays,” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, acts as a fulcrum between the cinematic drama of Part VI and the family photograph developing in the solution of VII. It fits seamlessly into its surroundings, a drop of the terrestrial in a realm otherwise all its own. “My Wild Irish Rose” receives a heartfelt treatment. Poised yet dramatic, Jarrett is unafraid to unravel it with all its might. “Stella by Starlight” is a standard of a different stripe. Just in the way Jarrett plays it, one can feel the decades spent with his trio bubbling up from a thick broth of ideas. Lastly, we have “Blossom,” a deep nod to his 1974 classic Belonging. The title is more than appropriate, for his music likewise releases pollen to populate the world with its songs.

Dominique Pifarély: Time Before And Time After (ECM 2411)

| Tyran Grillo

2411 X

Dominique Pifarély
Time Before And Time After

Dominique Pifarély violin
Recorded in concerts in September 2012
at Auditorium Saint-Germain, Poitiers (France)
and in February 2013
at Cave Dimière, Argenteuil (France)
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 28, 2015

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty…
–T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

After leading a string of caravans across the sands of ECM, Dominique Pifarély enchants on this set of solo recordings taken from French concerts in 2012 and 2013 at Auditorium Saint-Germain (Poitiers) and Cave Dimière (Argenteuil). Although nearly everything is improvised, the violinist dedicated each piece in retrospect to a certain poet, from whose verses he also chose a title. More than highlighting personal connections between literature and music, this artistic decision reveals an agency of spontaneous creation.

The Near Eastern quality of “Sur terre” (for Mahmoud Darwich) makes for a poignant introduction to this border zone where motifs converse for want of being equally heard. Every color and texture is like the seed of a new community, touched by horizons yet to be unfolded, and in this respect shares kindship with “L’air soudain” (for André du Bouchet). The latter’s robust yet plaintive cry yearns to be acknowledged in a place uninhabited except by its own singing. Arid climates are evoked in the rasp of a bow: a gargantuan tongue scraping along the earth in search of nourishment but finding only dust and ruins.

“Meu ser elástico” (for Fernando Pessoa) and “D’une main distraite” (for Henri Michaux) are both jagged wonders, wherein leaping suggestions of dance are constantly pulled back to origins, while the masterful“Gegenlicht” (for Paul Celan) shows us thefull scope of Pifarély’s technical and artistic capabilities. Like a prisoner who succeeds in digging his way through a wall with bare hands, he peels away the barrier to freedom one granule at a time. But before he inhales fresh air again, he must pass through “Violin y otras cuestiones” (for Juan Gelman). A struggle that is as political as it is personal, it finds temperance only in the sul ponticellosalvations of “Avant le regard” (for Jacques Dupin) and “L’oubli” (for Bernard Noël).

If shades of the Baroque are present, they’re no illusion, as even Pifarély admits: “[O]f course Bach is in the air because Bach is polyphonic, and the violin is polyphonic.” Bach also informs his decision to close his solo performances with a standard—in this instance Victor Young’s “My Foolish Heart”—to assert the violin’s autonomy. His interpretation thereof looks in the proverbial mirror, hoping to recognize itself but instead finding awe in what it has become.

Vijay Iyer/Craig Taborn: The Transitory Poems (ECM 2644)

| Tyran Grillo

The Transitory Poems

The Transitory Poems

Vijay Iyer piano
Craig Taborn piano
Recorded live March 12, 2018
at the concert hall of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: March 15, 2019

The duo of pianists Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn, documented on this March 2018 live recording at Budapest’s Franz Liszt Academy of Music, came out of an involvement in Roscoe Mitchell’s Note Factory. In that context they balanced prewritten knotwork with improvisational unraveling and acted as likeminded catalysts for spontaneous composition.

The opening “Life Line (Seven Tensions)” bears an appropriate subtitle, which, by gentle force of suggestion, allows one to imagine the physiological give and take required to bring this music to fruition. Interplays between passages of both intense abstraction and synchronicity feel as much indicative of where Iyer and Taborn came from as where they are going. With actorly sense of space they mold the stage as inspirational substance. They move as if stationary, posing as if never settling for one meaning.

Iyer Taborn
(Photo credit: Monica Jane Frisell)

Although subsequent tracks have their distinctions, as a whole they form an album of immense coherence. This didn’t stop the musicians from hearing much of what they rendered as impromptu panegyrics for legends lost that same year. “Sensorium,” for Jack Whitten, evokes the artist’s complex inner worlds and fractal obsessions; “Clear Monolith,” for Muhal Richard Abrams, allows light to pass through its latticed notes; and “Luminous Brew,” for Cecil Taylor, boils highs and lows over a campfire until their ingredients are indistinguishable. But nowhere is the feeling of dedication so palpable as in Geri Allen’s “When Kabuya Dances,” which crystallizes themes hinted at in a preceding improvisation and leaves listeners suspended far above where they started.

Beyond assertions of technical skill, Iyer and Taborn are purveyors of the metaphysical, listening more than making. Whether in sporadic (“Kairòs”) or rhythmically-driven (“Shake Down”) dialects, they speak in a supremely translatable language. This, if anything, is what makes these transitory poems more than freely made: rather, they’re made free.

(This article originally appeared in the July 2019 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, a full PDF of which is available for download here.)