Lumen Drones: s/t (ECM 2434)

May 20, 2015May 22, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Lumen Drones

Nils Økland fiddles
Per Steinar Lie guitars
Ørjan Haaland drums
Recorded November 2011, ABC Studio, Etne, Norway
Recording and mixing engineer: Kjetil Ulland
Mastering: Christoph Stickel and Manfred Eicher
An ECM Production

Since his first ECM appearance on the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble’s Sofienberg Variations in 2003, and even more so on his 2009 solo effort Monograph, Nils Økland has served as a conduit between the then and the now. His latest project, Lumen Drones, finds the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle virtuoso in the company of guitarist Per Steinar and drummer Ørjan Haaland. Økland had previously collaborated with Steinar and Haaland, both members of the post-rock group The Low Frequency in Stereo, for a track on the latter’s 2009 album Futuro. That track was called “Solar System,” which best indicates the cosmic reach of this new trio. In ways similar to the band Mono, Lumen Drones cultures its motifs like bacteria in Petri dishes until they reach dizzying proportions.

Chalk it up to ECM’s penchant for balance that often the most obscure, indefinable album covers sleeve the most clearly defined music, while here we have a rare animal encounter for music that is amorphous as the sun’s corona. Aside from two pieces—Lie’s webbed “Lux” and Økland’s ponderous “Keelwater”—this self-titled debut is comprised of collectively burnished hardwoods. “Dark Sea” comes to life without warning, as if startled from a dream, and draws us into a world of brushed drums, guitar, and fiddle. In wave after wave of memory, this unique combination sets a ghostly precedent. Even at its most enigmatic, however, the music that follows is so intensely visual that it’s near impossible not to accompany it with your own mental cinema. “Ira Furore,” for instance, unspools a single thread of cymbal from a tangle of heat-distorted guitar, while the fiddle pours its tenderness in a vain attempt to staunch the flames. The smoldering atmosphere recalls David Lynch’s Lost Highway in both its spatial and psychological desolations, tempered but never transcended by Økland’s soaring grammar. Further distortions abound in “Anemone,” which from deepest roots projects a bouquet of amplified thistles and burns by means of water. Yet the strongest inertia is to be found in the melodic progressions and folkish qualities of “Echo Plexus.” And with so much retrograde to appreciate, it’s no wonder we’re given some room to breathe in “Husky,” a brief and flowing duet between Lie and Økland. From here, it’s only a hop to “Svartaskjær.” Joining a free improv already in progress, it finishes with a jam band sensitivity stripped of all ornament. It breathes, cackles, and swivels its way into a 1970s bonfire, spreading ash all over its Technicolor skin.

Some make mountains of out molehills; Lumen Drones makes molehills out of mountains.

(To hear samples of Lumen Drones, click here.)

Tim Berne’s Snakeoil: You’ve Been Watching Me (ECM 2443)

May 20, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Tim Berne’s Snakeoil
You’ve Been Watching Me

Tim Berne alto saxophone
Oscar Noriega clarinet, bass clarinet
Matt Mitchell piano and electronics
Ryan Ferreira electric and acoustic guitars
Ches Smith drums, vibraphone, percussion, timpani
Recorded December 2014 at “The Clubhouse” in Rhinebeck, NY
Engineer: D. James Goodwin
Assistant: Bella Blasko
Mastering at MSM Studios by Christoph Stickel
Produced by David Torn

Alto saxophonist Tim Berne and his Snakeoil outfit stand poised and ready to strike on their third ECM excursion. You’ve Been Watching Me might just as well be titled “You’ve Been Listening To Me,” because it’s impossible to have wandered into Berne’s unmistakable ghost towns and not swear you’ve heard every poker game that went down in their saloons. As if the band weren’t tetrahedral enough, Berne welcomes guitarist Ryan Ferreira to his honed nexus of clarinetist Oscar Noriega, pianist Matt Mitchell (who also provides electronics), and drummer-percussionist extraordinaire Ches Smith. In this album’s press release, Berne speaks of Ferreira’s presence as “subtraction by addition,” and these musicians’ ability to open their sound by virtue of greater number speaks to the intuitiveness of this apparent contradiction. Producer David Torn, known to ECM fans for his own incendiary trips, further notes the role of space in the band’s improvisational purview.

In the latter vein, “Small World In A Small Town” opens Snakeoil’s postmodern borders to the possibility of transcendence. The late-night balladry of Berne and Mitchell forms a double helix that is equal parts playoff and championship before vibraphone and electric guitar place their thematic bets. Yet what begins in typical Berne territory soon veers skyward as verdant cymbals and sustained pianism ride a wave of panning satellite transmissions. Noriega’s clarinet pulls weeds as if from below, leaving room for Berne to sprout in their place some of his most beautiful playing on record. In return, Noriega draws a bow from klezmer strands and nocks an arrow of river water before letting it fly in slow motion into an originary cushion. The band rises like a golem, overrunning its cup with maxed-out levels of intensity.

Before taking that space walk, we start out with the recognizably jagged cohesions of “Lost In Redding.” Ferreira’s firewall of distortion is noticeable from the outset and gives the other instruments an indelible point of reference. Guitar and bass clarinet find each other in the swarm just as the band leaves them hanging like solars in desperate absence of systems. Multi-phonic squeals from the two reedmen and Ferreira’s crisp unraveling send a newborn piano out on its stumbling legs, gaining uprightness like a foal on the outside. Berne and Noriega find tenderness in the poignant “Embraceable Me,” which opens a direct line of communication between the listener and the listened. This irons itself out into a resonant space of timpani, piano, and edge-worn clarinet, while Ferreira goes splashing through martial orbits.

Much of what follows is fragmentary or, as one title would have it, “Semi-Self Detached.” The latter tune’s hazy flotation marries alto to echo until Ferreira unsolders the seams of time, thus unleashing Berne’s anti-tirade like the electricity from King Humpty Dumpty’s cracked sun. The compact yet strangely gradual “Angles” is the yolk within, just at the brink of rupture, while the title track, a through-composed refraction for solo acoustic guitar, diffuses the white around it. At the end of the tunnel we find the roller-coaster ladders and cinematic desiderata of “False Impressions,” another prime space for Ferreira seen through the darker glasses of vibraphone and alto.

One may speak of great jazzmen as evolving before our very ears with each successive release, but Berne’s case is a living example of an artist involving with age: not scaling an impossible mountain of ideals but boring through it to see how people live on the other side. What he returns with is something like jazz times ten, an advancement of such integral proportions that it might set your cells to stun. A phenomenal album, and Snakeoil’s highest proof mash so far.

(To hear samples of You’ve Been Watching Me, click here.)

Louis Sclavis Quartet: Silk And Salt Melodies (ECM 2402)

May 19, 2015May 20, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Louis Sclavis Quartet
Silk And Salt Melodies

Louis Sclavis clarinet
Gilles Coronado guitar
Benjamin Moussay piano, keyboard
Keyvan Chemirani percussion
Recorded March 2014, Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Romain Castera
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Silk And Salt Melodies draws on the well of Louis Sclavis’s Sources. The latter trio album showed the French multi-reedist and composer channeling the spirit of invention with guitarist Gilles Coronado and keyboardist Benjamin Moussay. To that band he now welcomes Iranian-French percussionist and goblet drum master Keyvan Chemirani in a characteristically recalibrated project of musical nomadism. Sclavis’s writing, of which this album is entirely composed, is obviously enlivened by the reinvention.

(Photo credit: Olivier Degen)

The year 2014, when this album was released, was something of a golden one for the electric guitar on ECM, which found ambassadorship in the artistries of Wolfgang Muthspiel, Jacob Young, and Per Steinar Lie of Lumen Drones. Coronado is no exception, and adds his gold-leaf appliqué with more aplomb than ever. Like each of this band’s musicians, he cares less for soloing than solitude and accordingly explores the methods by which one can travel alone while still being in the company of others. The modal harmonies Coronado shares with Sclavis’s bass clarinet in “L’homme sud,” for example, would seem to indicate a total fusion of interests but, like a deck of cards fanned in anticipation of a spectator’s selection, his guitar waits for just the right moment to be plucked. Then there is his knife-edged interjection into “L’autre rive,” by which he pares a pianistic reverie down to a bite-sized blues. And one must also remark on Coronado’s geometric approach to “Cortège,” in which he takes his playing to a third dimension along a percussive z-axis.

And speaking of percussive axes, Chemirani draws them wherever he happens to be. His opening duet with Coronado in “Dance For Horses” shows a natural virtuoso at work and establishes the pulse by which piano and bass clarinet must reach their apex at the precise moment of abandonment. Chemirani connects his biggest constellations in “Dust And Dogs,” making it the album’s highlight for its ripple effect. From the groovy electric piano, twanging guitar, and beautiful reed work, one can sense a new door opening by the end of its 10 venerable minutes.

Sclavis, for his part, gives back that same inspiration with interest in “Sel et soie.” In his hands, the bass clarinet becomes an emotional portal, and it is all we can do not to get sucked in. Moussay is a suitable partner for that darker reed, as in the duo track “Des feux lointains,” which like a Jenga tower at the hands of skillful players maintains its structural integrity no matter how many pieces are removed. This same combination opens the album’s introductory “Le parfum de l’éxil” before giving way to the full quartet in all of its distorted integrity. From the beginning we jump to “Prato plage,” which caps off the album with a brief, minute-long field recording of amphibious night that suddenly leaves us suspended, grasping for the melodies that brought us here.

Louis Sclavis is like a sun that whips planetary bodies into harmonious dances of orbits. Or, better yet, a moon that draws melodies from the waves at any hour. Over the years he has narrowed his focus, unpacking the multifaceted implications of liner melodies rather than the linear implications of multifaceted arrangements. Leaning toward the former with experience and age has made his music at once edgier and more accessible. Because the improvising among these musicians is so well matured, the material along this Silk Road feels arranged right out of the box and awaits the manipulation of our listening to make it so.

(To hear samples of Silk And Salt Melodies, click here.)

Michael Mantler: The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update (ECM 2391)

May 19, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Michael Mantler
The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update

Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band
Christoph Cech conductor
Michael Mantler trumpet
Harry Sokal tenor saxophone
Bjarne Roupé guitar
Wolfgang Puschnig alto saxophone
David Helbock piano
radio.string.quartet.vienna
Bernie Mallinger violin
Igmar Jenner violin
Cynthia Liao viola
Asja Valcic cello
Recorded live August 30/31 and September 1, 2013 at Porgy & Bess, Vienna, Austria
Engineer: Martin Vetters
Mixed and mastered October and December 2013 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes_les_Fontaines, France
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Michael Mantler
An ECM Production in collaboration with Porgy & Bess, Vienna

Trumpeter and composer Michael Mantler began the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra in the mid-1960s with Carla Bley as a larger outlet for radical jazz interventions. Having just arrived in New York City as a young man from Vienna, Mantler was raring to float his ideas among musicians—Pharoah Sanders, Cecil Taylor, and Don Cherry among them—who cared. In an interview with Steve Lake printed in this album’s booklet, he stresses the tightly knit community of free jazz at the time. The scene was small, he recalls, “and most everybody knew and worked with each other, having formed a kind of bond through necessity, since we were involved in a music that was commercially totally unviable and often even quite disliked by the mainstream audience and critics alike.” While digitizing old JCO scores in 2012, he saw a chance at renewal and The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update was born. The new pieces—penned 1963-69 and revised in 2013—are sheep in wolves’ clothing, each precisely notated but with room to spin wool of improvisation.

Mantler has always been one for forthright atmospherics, and these pieces are no exception to that tendency. If anything, they embody it to the fullest. Aiding in the reshuffling are guitarist Bjarne Roupé (last heard on Mantler’s For Two), altoist Wolfgang Puschnig, tenorist Harry Sokal, pianist David Helbock, the radio.string.quartet.vienna, the Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band under the direction of Christoph Cech, and the composer himself on trumpet. Mantler is, in fact, the featured soloist of Update One, which introduces a slightly dissonant and reactive world of sound. Because the big band cuts such a complex figure in the studio, muscling its way through a chain of through-composed cells, each “Update” may be distinguished by its soloist(s). While all the musicians here are well suited for the job, Roupé is a natural-born Mantler interpreter. His gestures cut like a razor across Updates Eleven and Part 1 of Twelve, both of them bursting with roots in a gnarled sort of grandeur.

The main reedmen are likewise exceptional. Sokal’s tenor flips a coin of thunder and soul in Update Eight, landing once on each side in the name of night. Puschnig’s alto, rides a wave somewhere beyond even those extremes in Update Ten, crashing on a vacant shore and leaving only a tender solo from bassist Manuel Mayr to show for having been there. Update Five lodges both saxophones in a briar patch of architectural impulses as the brass section blasts its messages with faith. The radio.string.quartet.vienna adds a dab of brooding to the palette in Update Nine. Violent expectorations, flowering pizzicati, tinkling cymbals, bright piano, clarion trumpet, and dim sonorities from the horns all enhance the strings’ flexibility as spider-web anchors bowing in the wind. Update Six, meanwhile, boasts crepuscular descriptions from Helbock at the keys, while Mantler returns in his barnacled shell.

The last two tracks form an unspoken diptych, with “Update Twelve Pt. 2 (Preview)” going all in with its round of spotlights, and “Update Twelve Pt. 3” taking the opposite route in a skeletal motif, ending where it might also have began: with a thesis statement. It’s an enjoyable reminder that Mantler’s pieces, while consummate in execution, are forever malleable in form, markers along a trail like no other on ECM grounds.

(To hear samples of The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Update, click here.)

Kenny Wheeler: Songs for Quintet (ECM 2388)

May 19, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Kenny Wheeler
Songs for Quintet

Kenny Wheeler flugelhorn
Stan Sulzmann tenor saxophone
John Parricelli guitar
Chris Laurence double bass
Martin France drums
Recorded December 2013 and mixed September 2014 at Abbey Road Studios, London
Engineer: Andrew Dudman
Assistant: Toby Hulbert
Mastering: Frank Arkwright
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Steve Lake

The late trumpet/flugelhorn virtuoso and composer Kenny Wheeler was one of jazz’s most beloved musicians and every album he recorded for ECM was an event to be savored—and now more than ever with Songs for Quintet. Wheeler’s last recording nestles some classics in mostly newer material and is a departure for the label in being recorded at London’s legendary Abbey Road Studios, where he is joined by longtime friends tenor saxophonist Stan Sulzmann, guitarist John Parricelli, bassist Chris Laurence, and drummer Martin France.

Given the way that “Seventy-Six” eases its way into the heart, you can be sure this is a Wheeler record. Like “The Long Waiting” later in the set, it rests on a foundation of bass and guitar, on which the band builds its togetherness. Within this mesh, Parricelli slings his guitar solo like a comfortable leather bag that conforms to the body from years of regular use. In both tracks, Sulzmann’s tenor is another remarkable voice, shadowing Wheeler’s own lyrical fronting without stepping on their toes. In fact, he and the rest are in obvious deference to their leader’s coolness.

Two blasts from the past, buffed to a reflective shine, enrich the album with their inclusion. “Old Time,” last heard as “How It Was Then” on the 1995 Azimuth album of the same name, is among the groovier numbers. Sulzmann and Wheeler share soaring harmonies over some prime rhythm sectionining: France an ambassador of finesse and Laurence of nimble eccentricities. And one of ECM’s finest jazz albums of all time, Angel Song, gets a nod in “Nonetheless,” a deserving self-tribute now shed of its shadows in the presence of brighter cymbals and guitar. Sulzmann’s wings catch thermal after thermal in a space that Wheeler might once have claimed on Gnu High. The saxophonist’s true standout track, though, is “Sly Eyes,” a luscious tango that is all the wiser for its bassing. “Pretty Liddle Waltz” is another robust dance.

The cryptically titled “1076” is champagne in a bottle, by which is christened a scuttling vessel. Like “Jigsaw,” its elements interlock seamlessly. The latter tune is slick in that distinctly Wheelerian way and spotlights a musician with a lot on his mind. By his gentle yet forthright tone, Wheeler serves no pretense but the down-home profundity of his vision. Even as his younger sidemen paint sunbursts overhead, he is content to strip his cottage and repaint its walls in variations of that same comfortable shade. In keeping with the rural theme, “Canter No. 1” begins with a relaxed bass solo, from which Wheeler spins an enchanting story. Each chord change becomes a rope swing in his hands as he suspends his peerless language over childhood rivers toward fuller throttle.

Not only is this as fine a swan song as one could hope for; it’s also fantastic album in and of itself. Were one to approach it not knowing the personnel involved, it would sound just as poignant, for its strength lies first and foremost in the writing: a mark of greatness, if ever there was one.

(To hear samples of Songs for Quintet, click here.)

Chris Potter & Underground Orchestra: Imaginary Cities (ECM 2387)

May 19, 2015November 5, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Chris Potter
Underground Orchestra
Imaginary Cities

Chris Potter tenor and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet
Adam Rogers guitars
Craig Taborn piano
Steve Nelson vibraphone, marimba
Fima Ephron bass guitar
Scott Colley double bass
Nate Smith drums
Mark Feldman violin
Joyce Hammann violin
Lois Martin viola
Dave Eggar cello
Recorded December 2013 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Assistant: Tim Marchiafava
Mixed October 2014 by Manfred Eicher, Chris Potter and James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Chris Potter has been deservedly recognized as a superlative musician and soloist, but he will just as likely go down in history as one of the great jazz composers of his time. Having already proven himself in that capacity with The Sirens, Potter continues his relationship with the only label with vision deep enough to realize his own. The title of Imaginary Cities evokes Italo Calvino’s invisible ones, and like the Italian magical realist’s vignettes depicts the same space from different angles of time and perspective. Bringing life to this masterpiece are the musicians of his Underground Orchestra. Essentially an expansion of his Underground quartet with guitarist Adam Rogers, pianist Craig Taborn, and drummer Nate Smith, the current project adds to that nexus bassists Fima Ephron (on electric) and Scott Colley (on upright), vibraphonist and Dave Holland Quintet colleague Steve Nelson, and a string quartet headed by violinist Mark Feldman.

The album’s torso is the title suite in four parts. Beginning with the sparkle of “Compassion,” moving through the propulsive “Dualities” and “Disintegration,” and ending with “Rebuilding,” Potter applies pigment to a formidable cityscape indeed, beyond which the bandleader’s sidemen and -women unroll ocean until an entire globe’s worth of water is given a chance to reflect it. Strokes of brilliance to listen for are Rogers’s constellatory riffs (especially in the far-reaching Part 4) and the string quartet writing of Part 2 (in which Nelson’s marimba also makes a multifaceted splash within a pizzicato frame). Through it all, Potter’s saxophones carve lines in the water like the fins of benevolent sharks. He unpacks his solos with the intuition of an experienced traveler and, especially by the sopranism of Part 3, emotes in an honest, straightforward tone.

The peripheral yet no-less-integral outliers of the program beget some of Potter’s most advanced playing on record. Of these, “Lament” is a most worthy introduction. Colley’s contributions on bass to the same are duly expressive and feed off arco strings without draining their atmosphere, from which emerges Potter’s tenor only after a lush prologue. His patient reveal is genius and thwarts our over-allegiance to the man at stage center. Between the angular “Firefly” (remarkable for Ephron’s bass guitar solo) and the Bartók-inspired “Shadow Self” (marked by Feldman’s unmistakable violin and Potter’s bass clarinet), exist lips locked in a smile, and which in the concluding “Sky” leave their kiss marks on the clouds.

Potter practices a trifecta approach, meaning that he eases into his themes and that, no matter how far his fingers travel in improvising around them, he always keeps home base in plain sight. His is a music of the here and now. It needs only you to guide it into the future.

(To hear samples of Imaginary Cities, you may watch the EPK above or click here.)

Stefano Bollani: Joy In Spite Of Everything (ECM 2360)

May 18, 2015May 20, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Stefano Bollani
Joy In Spite Of Everything

Mark Turner tenor saxophone
Bill Frisell guitar
Stefano Bollani piano
Jesper Bodilsen double bass
Morten Lund drums
Recorded June 2013 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Mixed March 2014 in Lugano by Manfred Eicher, Stefano Bollani and Stefano Amerio (engineer)
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“You just go and you see what happens.” This is how pianist Stefano Bollani describes jazz in its purest form. And because so much happens on Joy In Spite Of Everything, his latest for ECM, you’ll want to return to it time and again to puzzle through its many twists and turns. The band is accordingly something of an ad hoc congregation. The album documents the first time that saxophonist Mark Turner, guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Jesper Bodilsen, drummer Morten Lund, have ever been in the same room, and with their charismatic leader armed at the helm with nine original tunes, the results are spectacular.

Bollani never ceases to impress with the underlying consistency of execution he brings to even the most disparate music. His ballads glow by virtue of an inner fire, while his up-tempo numbers breeze coolly on by. But the new sound of “Easy Healing” may be something of a surprise. One half-aware listen, and you might swear it was an outtake from Charles Lloyd’s Voice In The Night. The instrumental combination—and within it Frisell’s John Abercrombie-esque picking, Bollani’s kaleidoscopic solo, and Bodilsen’s brief unpacking—in tandem with the closely miked engineering puts you in the center of it all.

Slow dances are hard to come by this round, but find a worthy ambassador in Turner, who graces two of the album’s most reflective sides: “Les Hortensias” and “Vale.” His soulful unpacking of the first, a gorgeous rubato picture brushed as finely as the drums, is by far the album’s highlight, while the second weaves its solos through a gnarled forest. Turner is, of course, just as comfortable on the hot plate, leaving his wheels on the runway of “No Pope No Party” with no intention of ever coming down. And as Lund balances power and sensitivity, Frisell walks a tightrope of his own between melodic defiance and evolution. The guitarist further shares moonlight with Bollani throughout “Ismene,” which would seem to evoke a fairy frolicking along the cusp of a leaf-cupped pool but which might just as well be a love song.

A sprinkling of other tunes rounds out the set. Bollani’s nimble fingers clutch the spotlight of “Alobar E Kudra.” Its angular groove is most representative of the album’s name. “Teddy” is a happy-go-lucky duet for guitar and piano that might seem out of place were it not so brilliantly executed. And the title track is the fleetest of them all, throwing the circle back on Lund, who shuffles the deck at every turn of this trio excursion.

I was delighted to encounter “Tales From The Time Loop,” which names a 2003 book by David Icke. Having read and listened to almost everything ever written by the world’s most controversial author, I couldn’t help but smile to see him referenced on an ECM record. Of the many theories put forth by Icke, his vision of a holographic universe is one of the more intriguing, and finds a musical equivalent in these smooth travels (this album’s title further echoes his message of infinite love). Every cell of the rhythm section’s bustling interactions suggests infinitely more within, setting up a chain of arresting illusions. Bollani’s very presence reminds us of why we arrived in the first place: to go and see what happens.

(To hear samples of Joy In Spite Of Everything, you may watch the EPK above or click here.)

Ketil Bjørnstad: Sunrise (ECM 2336)

May 17, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Ketil Bjørnstad
Sunrise

Kari Bremnes vocal
Aage Kvalbein cello
Matias Bjørnstad alto saxophone
Bjørn Kjellemyr double bass
Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen percussion
Ketil Bjørnstad piano
Oslo Chamber Choir
Egil Fossum conductor
Recorded April 2012 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
An ECM Production

A bird of prey is trapped
deep inside me. Its talons
have ripped into my
heart, its beak has
driven itself into my chest,
and the beating of its wings
has darkened my sanity.

Norwegian pianist-composer Ketil Bjørnstad seems to be in one of the most creative phases of his career. Increasingly, he has turned to the human voice as an expressive outlet for his ever-songlike writing, and it was only a matter of time that those forces should reach the level of a choir, a medium for which he was asked to write music in commemoration of the Nordstrand Musikkselskap Choir’s 70th anniversary in 2011. Having already engaged with the life of Edvard Munch in his 1993 literary biography Historien om Edvard Munch and set the painter’s neglected words to music on the album Løsrivelse, he naturally returned to those same texts for Sunrise. Yet Bjørnstad’s self-styled cantata is more than the portrait of an artist. It is an affirmation of light.

Munch wrote flashes of prose in preparation for many of his paintings. Bjørnstad characterizes the texts chosen for this monumental work as dealing unanimously with existentialist dilemmas. In addition to Munch’s paratextual writings, Bjørnstad was intimately acquainted with his 1909 mural The Sun, under which the young pianist saw many greats play at Oslo’s University auditorium, the Aula, where it hung. In that painting, notes the composer, “one can clearly discern the degree to which Munch struggled with and against the forces of life, and how deeply and endlessly he yearned for enlightenment and reconciliation.” The same holds true for the music he has written into its aura.

Most attractive about Sunrise is its breadth of idiomatic conviction, which is most vividly clarified in the four songs written for singer Kari Bremnes, with whom Bjørnstad worked on the aforementioned Munch cycle. She is joined by Bjørnstad at the keyboard, alto saxophonist Matias Bjørnstad (no relation, it seems), and bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr on “Moren” (The Mother), which depicts the haunting scene of a young boy who holds his mother’s hand in anticipation of going outside but is blinded by the light of spring once they open the door. Bremnes’s oaken alto lends heart to every word it envelops. In the montuno-flavored “Stupet” (The Cliff), for instance, she evokes a jagged cliff and the dangerous ocean churning below like a death wish. The naturalness of her shading lends intuitive dimensionality to the near-pop groove of “De fineste nerver er rammet” (The Most Delicate Nerves are Affected) and a lover’s wicked thoughts in “Åpent vindu” (Open Window), for which cellist Aage Kvalbein provides the lamplight and Bjørnstad a certain temptation beneath the floorboards.

Turning to the sections for choir gets us into some potentially divisive territory. Bjørnstad is clearly not a choral writer, as attested by the fact that the vocal arrangements were done by Egil Fossum, who also conducts the present recording. Certain sections are more memorable than others, such as “En rovfugl har satt seg fast i mitt indre” (A Bird of Prey is Clinging to My Inner Being), which opens the entire cantata with the unlikely ante of a steel drum, courtesy of percussionist Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen. Like a warped church carillon as heard through the screen of memory, it breeds a prayerful cello to greet the dawn. The choir opens its lips to greet the titular bird, which traps itself in the chest but which by the grace of song is placated by God’s azure stare. Subsequent moods and images range from the apocalyptic [“Alfa og Omega” (Alpha and Omega)] to the frivolous [“Livets dans” (The Dance of Life)]. Other elements feel more derivative, such as the hints of Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio in “Adskillelsen” (The Separation).

More interesting to consider are Munch’s sentiments, revealing as they do a conflicted mind desirous of peace, splashing color across the human psyche as if it were the truest canvas. In “Intet er lite” (Nothing is Small) is nestled his meta-statement: Nothing is small, nothing is large. / We carry worlds inside us. Words to live by for both the painter and his thoughtful composer. Wordless singing beneath the cello’s commentary accentuates an underlying yearning. Even the jazzier inflections of “Joden elskede luften” (The Earth Loved the Air) enhance the starkness of Munch’s inner world, a place where trees uproot themselves and turn into human beings: Everything is alive and in motion. / Even at the center of the Earth / there are sparks of life. This leaves us to bask in the promised “Soloppgang” (Sunrise), which unites musicians and singers in an optimistic flourish that is hard to come by in Bjørnstad’s work.

Overall, there is a rustic, hymnal quality to the choruses, which suits the material well enough. More exciting, however, are the three “Recitatives” and “Intermezzos” signposting the program. The former elicit some of Bjørnstad’s most unchained playing on record in bursts of cathartic free improvisation, while the latter weave the piano into melodic shadows of cello or saxophone, each a thread gathered from an open wound and spun into new flesh. Like the protagonists of “Som i en kirke” (As if They Were in a Church), they reveal a gravid awareness of mortality, seeing creation as a church unto itself, and nature as God’s tabernacle.

(To hear samples of Sunrise, click here.)

Ketil Bjørnstad: La notte (ECM 2300)

May 16, 2015 | Tyran Grillo

Ketil Bjørnstad
La notte

Ketil Bjørnstad piano
Andy Sheppard tenor and soprano saxophones
Eivind Aarset guitars, electronics
Anja Lechner violoncello
Arild Andersen double bass
Marilyn Mazur percussion
Recorded live July 21, 2010 at Molde International Jazz Festival
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Mixed March 2012 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug, Ketil Bjørnstad, and Manfred Eicher
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Ketil Bjørnstad has been a formative presence on a wide variety of ECM releases. Since 1993’s Water Stories, his recognizable pianism and compositional voice have left indelible marks on the label’s catalogue. Age has fortified the intimacy of his melodic formations, whether in his darkly alluring collaborations with cellist David Darling or in projects with singers. La notte, however, represents a return to form, while also taking his craft in unexpected new directions. The result of a Molde International Jazz Festival commission and recorded live in 2010, Bjørnstad’s eight-part suite is a self-styled “soundtrack to an inner film.” It’s also his most sublime creation to date.

Bjørnstad has always been literary in his music, just as he has always been musical in his literature, but cinema has also been an integral influence. Here he pays natural homage to Michelangelo Antonioni, citing the Italian director’s “slow, rhythmic authority” as an early source of musical inspiration. To bring that moving vision to life, he has assembled a powerhouse band of saxophonist Andy Sheppard, guitarist Eivind Aarset, cellist Anja Lechner, bassist Arild Andersen, and percussionist Marilyn Mazur. Together, they create a musique verité of raw forces.

Harnessing such forces requires no small amount of finesse and patience, as demonstrated in the slow progression from Parts I to II. Between the low, arco bass and electronic hum, there is little to grab hold of in the beginning. Even as Lechner’s cello and Bjørnstad’s piano engage in proper dance, Mazur’s tracery is still far away. Only when Sheppard lights up the sky with his tenor does the band’s full gravity take effect. Into that shift from liquid to solid, we might read the robustness of Antonioni’s characters and the fleetingness of their environments, if not the other way around.

Mazur and Sheppard are, in fact, the stars of this performance, although, duly invigorated as they are by Bjørnstad’s finely grained writing and flexible architecture. The saxophonist opts for soprano in Parts III, V, and VII, taking off with un-caged melodies. Having learned from Icarus’s example, his wings are impervious to the sun, which he proves to be a reflection anyway when he leaps into the sky as if it were an upside down pond, sending ripples toward every horizon. Mazur, for her part, accentuates the jazzier shades of this spectrum, acting as a buffer zone for Andersen’s bold cartography. With Bjørnstad, the latter two become a most formidable trio, the central nervous system to Aarset’s coronal guitar and Sheppard’s ecstatic flailing. The presence of these bandmates rubs off on Bjørnstad, whose solo in Part IV magnifies the suite’s red thread with a fullness of expression such as he has rarely elicited before. When Lechner joins him, it feels more than logical. Their relationship is this music’s very foundation, prefiguring Parts VI and VIII as well and making broken images whole again by the glue of remembrance.

This is a must-have for fans of any of anyone involved, but especially of Bjørnstad, who on this stage reaches new heights, and depths, spreading his energies across the toast of inspiration into a brighter tomorrow.

(To hear samples of La notte, click here.)

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