ECM Releases

Trygve Seim: Helsinki Songs (ECM 2607)

| Tyran Grillo

2607 X

Trygve Seim
Helsinki Songs

Trygve Seim tenor and soprano saxophones
Kristjan Randalu piano
Mats Eilertsen double bass
Markku Ounaskari drums
Recorded January 2018 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Peer Espen Ursfjord
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 31, 2018

Every new release by Trygve Seim is cause for celebration. In this case, a quiet celebration, as the Norwegian saxophonist offers a brilliantly understated program in Helsinki Songs. Despite lacking a single lyric, the keyword here is “songs,” for every track tells a story in its own right, rendered through feeling rather than exposition. Thus, whether laying down a theme or straying freely from it, Seim is as much a singer as a reed player. All of which yields a dedicatoryalbum replete with friendship, love, and communication: the very hallmarks of an artist unafraid to clip his heart on his bell where most would settle for a microphone.

Of especial note are two tracks written for his children. Both “Sol’s Song” (for his daughter) and “Ciaccona per Embrik” (for his son) evoke budding minds whose blossoming is limited only by the amount of sunshine they’re willing to take in. Either melody is an exercise in honest reflection, balancing the anxiety of parenthood with the affirmations of its inarticulable joys. In each, bassist Mats Eilertsen and drummer Markku Ounaskari fill in the cracks of Randalu’s soulful bedrock, so that the way forward remains as smooth as this band traveling across it. “Birthday Song” likewise pays tribute to Eilertsen, whose pivoting therein from drunken haze to self-awareness is its own rejoicing. Other nods include Igor Stravinsky, whose relationship with his first wife is examined in the bittersweet “Katya’s Dream,” Jimmy Webb in the fiercely poetic “Morning Song,” and even a city in “Helsinki Song,” which matches its namesake’s blend of stark originality and hospitality. Another highlight is “Randalusian Folk Song,” which finds the selfsame pianist in a sublime mode, and Seim closest in spirit to one of his deepest influences: Jan Garbarek.

Other connections reveal themselves more in the playing than in the naming. “New Beginning” and “Sorrow March” speak of the emotional depths acquired in Seim’s studies with Armenian duduk virtuoso Djivan Gasparyan. These haunting tunes allow his backing trio to unravel filaments that might be missed as the bandleader cries out, as if from an arid mountain, knowing only the earth might be listening. That same rich soprano chases the setting sun of “Nocturne” and the Ornette Coleman-esque tail of “Yes Please Both.” The last, with its free charm, embraces questions without answers in a space of total clarity. As Seim himself notes, “I’m surrounded in this quartet by players who enable me to really be myself.” And boy, does it show.

Michael Mantler: Comment C’est (ECM 2537)

| Tyran Grillo

Comment C'est

Michael Mantler
Comment C’est

Himiko Paganotti voice
Michael Mantler trumpet
Max Brand Ensemble
Christoph Cechconductor
Recorded April 2016 at Porgy & Bess Studio, Vienna
Additional recording, mix, and mastering June/July 2016 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: November 3, 2017

Few composers face their zeitgeist quite so head-on as like Michael Mantler. In this timely song cycle, written in French and performed by Himiko Paganotti (voice), Mantler himself (trumpet), and the Max Brand Ensemble under the direction of Christoph Cech, Comment C’est is a gut punch of agitprop exasperation, reactionary finesse, and thick description. It’s also in many ways the closing of a circle begun on his first ECM project, Folly Seeing All This. As on that 1993 album, we begin here by beholding the news (“Aujourd’hui”) in all its violent denouement. The instruments, now as then, embody a concerned citizenry, while Paganotti wraps her vocal cashmere around every word as if it were in danger of never being heard.

not much
if anything
not much at all
we’ve learned from history

Mantler’s trumpet, for its own part, acts as mediator between linguistically articulated horrors and victims whose capacity for speech has been torn apart. Through perennial indiscretions of xenophobia (“Intolérance”), killing (“Guerre”), and capitalism (“Commerce”), Mantler leaves a trail of mirrors in the hopes that false idols of supply and demand might catch a glimpse of themselves and turn to salt at the mere sight of their own reflections.

At the core of it all is a harsh winter (“Hiver”), whose nakedness is its only defense against itself. Paganotti’s dramaturgical commitment, shivering at the molecular level, awakens the dead to mourn for those still alive.

of course I know
when this one ends
another war
will start some other place

This triangle of interpretive forces—lungs, brass, and ensemble—folds in on itself until one side can no longer be distinguished from the other (“Sans fin”). The winds take on progressively darker shades of meaning, as if the very shadows of war were reaching out their hands in the hopes of taking down as many with them as possible before the light of the next bomb extinguishes that possibility.

no more place to live
not even in a space already gray
cataclysmic
and again, again
they resume

Terrorism reigns (“Folie”), wonderment bleeds (“Pourquoi”), and despair grows into an all-consuming forest (“Après”). Mantler tries to prune every offending branch, but finds even himself overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of our own inhumanity. The poignancy of this music, its reason for existing in the first place, is an endless cycle of which we’ve been offered these ten exegeses. But while they might seem crisp now, we know that one day they will be shuffled into a deck perpetually stacked against us. As the final question (“Que dire de plus”) bids us adieu, we must ask ourselves another: When will it end?

Wolfgang Muthspiel: Where The River Goes (ECM 2610)

| Tyran Grillo

2610 X

Wolfgang Muthspiel
Where The River Goes

Wolfgang Muthspiel guitar
Ambrose Akinmusire trumpet
Brad Mehldau piano
Larry Grenadier double bass
Eric Harland drums
Recorded February 2018, Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 5, 2018

Where The River Goes doesn’t so much pick up where Rising Grace, guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel’s second leader date for ECM, left off as add sub-chapters and interludes to its story. Drummer Brian Blade is replaced here by Eric Harland, while core band members Ambrose Akinsmusire (trumpet), Brad Mehldau (piano), and Larry Grenadier (bass) are carried over in the creative equation. While each musician has leveled his own combination of power and grace in respective projects, in this configuration a certain ease of expression prevails, allowing them to luxuriate in the resonance of an exclusive spirit.

The title track introduces the strengths of each player in turn. Muthspiel’s ability to establish a framework of quiet integrity is demonstrated in his unaccompanied intro. Mehldau’s unparalleled lyricism eases into frame with the tenderness of a child awakening in Saturday-morning sunlight. Grenadier likewise transitions from whisper to declaration, lubricating every joint for want of a healthy body. Harland treats cymbals like drums and drums like cymbals, lending warmth to a frost-kissed scene. Akinmusire, for his part, is like a daytime moon: almost surreal yet an undeniable reminder of celestial forces at work beyond the firmament. The more hauntingly rendered “Clearing,” a group improvisation, is another example whereby layers of space and time are delicately upended in favor of a democratic relativity.

Harmonically speaking, this album’s core spins by the magnetic give and take of Muthspiel and Mehldau, whose dialogic interactions in “For Django,” “Descendants,” and “One Day My Prince Was Gone” evoke fantasy and reality in equal measure. Mehldau’s lone compositional offering, “Blueshead,” triangulates that relationship with Grenadier’s muscular refereeing, and gives Akinmusire air through which to soar. Indeed, the trumpeter’s voice soars highest in the present milieu, although there are passages, such as “Panorama,” in which the bandleader duets with Harland, and the nostalgia-brimming “Buenos Aires,” which holds the guitar alone, thus reminding us that no organism can function without a neural network to archive its experiences, ready for recall at a moment’s notice, when communication matters above all.

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.