John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet Chris Laurence double-bass Rita Manning violin Patrick Kiernan violin Bill Hawkes viola Nick Cooper cello
Recorded February 2006, Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher
When reedman John Surman first collaborated with bassist Chris Laurence and an ad hoc string quartet on 2000’s Coruscating, the end result was a cause for beginnings. Unlikely surprising to the veteran Surman listener yet fresh as sun-dried sheets, the music of that debut opened a chapter in his compositional thinking now fleshed out to the depth of a novel on The Spaces In Between. Indeed, despite the wealth of fine performances all around, it’s the writing that makes this album such a notable entry in Surman’s expansive discography. The folk-infused melodies, and the means by which they are elucidated, shine through translucent curtains of improvisation, at which the bow-wielders now more forthrightly try their hands.
Balances abound. At the larger level, the album works in two halves, spit at the fulcrum of the title track. This playful sojourn for solo violin, brought to evocative fruition by quartet leader Rita Manning, upgrades the album’s wingspan from butterfly to bird, flitting from limb to limb in search of emerging buds. Before this, the set list steeps itself in winter, interlacing embraces and lettings go. Surman etch-a-sketches his own branches in “Moonlighter,” his methodical figurations seeming to describe a return from hard labor. In them is a sense of tragedy, with bass acting as narrator and strings as chorus. More nuanced balances follow. There is the diurnal contrast of bass clarinet (which under his fingers sings incarnate) and soprano saxophone. The latter doesn’t so much add to as emerge from the strings, drawing out warmth of heart from “Wayfarers All” and the crisper “Winter Wish.” As for those strings, they speak in pastoral dialects, their home a hearth among the ice.
Spring abounds on the other side of the album’s titular spaces, with “Now See!” setting tone in bucolic tracings. Only this and “Where Fortune Smiles” rely on the soprano’s inherent buoyancy to speak its own accord, favoring instead the baritone’s relatively challenging bounce. “Mimosa” (originally written for, but never included on, Thimar) elicits the jazziest inflections in this regard, that low reed moving jaggedly yet surely across the plains. This leaves only “Leaving The Harrow,” a song of drifting, of chemical reactions, of moving on.
Although its mise-en-scène is minimal, the emotional complexities of The Spaces In Between reach far and wide. Like the skies above, they welcome every change in weather, rain or shine, as if it were the first.
Joe Lovano tenor saxophone Bill Frisell guitar Paul Motian drums
Recorded May 2006 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Paul Motian: a drummer of such intuition that his kit might as well have been a part of his body. Joe Lovano: a saxophonist who lights the way with darkness. Bill Frisell: a guitarist who turns six strings into a symphony. A trio to die for. Then again, why deprive yourself of the luxury? A trio, then, to live for.
Since first meeting in the context of Motian’s Psalm quintet, this nimble nexus worked its tunes for decades from the inside out with freshness intact. As per usual, most of this session’s thematic material comes to us by way of Motian, whose “Cambodia” joins guitar and drums in methodological harmony. Frisell plays around the melody in much the same way that Motian plays around the beat, each descriptive in his approach (check, for example, the crystalline “Whirlpool”), so that when Lovano’s cautious lyricism slinks into the picture, we welcome him as an alley might welcome a stray cat with a song that defines the night. Such feline moods flow through a good portion of the set list, curling their tails around highlights “In Remembrance Of Things Past” and “K.T.” In the latter tune, Motian makes yin and yang of snare and cymbal.
Yet where he truly shines (if not also shades) is in those tracks penned by others, each a space in which he feels content to lurk in admiration of his bandmates’ sensitivities. From the Rodgers and Hammerstein show tune “This Nearly Was Mine” and the luminous spirals of Monk’s “Light Blue” to Lovano’s “Party Line,” the drummer’s capacities for melody, swing, and subtlety are on full display. He walks on beds of flowers, leaving pollen for many beds more.
For all the album’s listlessness, an undeniable clarity of expression abounds. We hear this especially in “Onetwo,” both for its thematic fortitude and presence of mind, and in the concluding title ballad. From strings of ordinary things, it weaves extraordinary pictures. The free spirit that moves this trio surfaces nakedly in these swan minutes, turning postcard into movie and recollection into reality.
Christian Wallumrød piano, harmonium, toy piano Nils Økland violin, Hardanger fiddle, viola d’amore Arve Henriksen trumpet Per Oddvar Johansen drums
Recorded September 2004 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
A Year From Easter is the third ECM leader date for pianist Christian Wallumrød. Nourished on the same label’s diet, his skills as an improviser (and as a composer) have sprouted fields of their own making and artfully striate the colors of fiddler extraordinaire Nils Økland, trumpeter Arve Henriksen, and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen into the present spectrum. Wallumrød has always folded his aesthetic along tactile creases, but the chambering of Easter finds him unusually palpable.
The triangular melody of “Arch Song” sets the stage accordingly, scanning its laser of pathos across the barcode of “Eliasong” (and its deeper sequel) with equal precision. From gray to shining gold, Henriksen’s elliptical reasoning morphs over harmonium, an instrument Wallumrød plays to further, glassy effect on “Lichtblick.” With the gentility of breeze through poplars, his keyboarding—regardless of instrument—puts lips to candle and blows just enough to make things flicker. Such is the bearing of “Stompin’ At Gagarin,” a delightfully programmatic piece that emits Wallumrød’s east-leaning aura. His understated feel for arrangement and storytelling is clearest in such tunes, as also in “Japanese Choral.” Here, over an icy surface, keys and horn unfold with chromatic purpose, misted like a Kenji Mizoguchi still.
Indeed, cinematic feelings abound. Like a crafted visual story, the slow figurations of “Wedding Postponed” build into dynamically richer constructions as more characters are introduced. Similar impulses mark “Horseshoe Waltz,” of which the pianism beams an attic of clattering relics. Pizzicato strings scuttle along the hard wood, carving rays of light into the air by freshly liberated dust plumes.
Yet the album’s focus remains out of doors, the title track being a representative example. With its warming skies and leaf-lined pathways, it leads us to the sacred spaces of tunes like “Psalm” and “Neunacht,” both like hymns reverse engineered to their stained-glass origins. Such is Wallumrød’s approach: conjoining cells of color by the solder of his crafting. In the latter solo piano piece, block chords process like candle-bearers from rear to fore, making way for linear melodies and violin sketches. Rasping across the night, his motifs swing ably from tree to barren tree, leaving ashen poetry in their wake.
John Abercrombie guitar Mark Feldman violin Thomas Morgan double-bass Joey Baron drums
Recorded December 2008 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher
John Abercrombie’s moody quartet gets a reboot on Wait Till You See Her, swapping out bassist Marc Johnson with a young Thomas Morgan (in his ECM debut) while retaining violinist Mark Feldman and drummer Joey Baron. Just as the previous outings were exercises in atmosphere, so this 2008 session is a paragon of subduedness, for even at its most swinging (checkpoint: “Anniversary Waltz”), Wait maintains a cautious fusion of reflection and fire. The results are in no way pedantic, but instead shine with robust physicality.
To offset the buff, “Sad Song” opens the album’s mostly Abercrombie-penned journey on a slow note. Whereas in the past, Abercrombie and Feldman took turns at the melodic helm, this time around the guitarist breathes more independently, freeing Feldman to converse with the band’s newest addition. Indeed, violin and bass diagram their conversations softly and with tact, skating across a surface burnished to ebony sheen by Baron’s brushing. Abercrombie proceeds non-invasively, a firefly writing its somber blues through an open shutter. Couched in the chamber aesthetics of “Line-Up,” for another, the Feldman-Morgan circuit fizzles with pizzicato sparks, but returns to a feeling of quietude like a baby to mother’s embrace.
Despite the looseness of the music, its focus finds epitome in Morgan’s bassing. Be it the laser precision of “Trio” (a tent on the album’s camping grounds that leaves no room for violin) or the dreamy tension of the Rodgers & Hart show tune from the album gets its title, Morgan keeps the spine activated while the rest of the body drifts in and out of consciousness. A notable drifting out takes place in “I’ve Overlooked Before,” which from coolly ambient beginnings draws mysteries in charcoal. Through these reefs Abercrombie moves aquatically, his strings the tendrils of a jellyfish, stretching and compressing to the pulse of the tides. Feldman, ever the dolphin, darts through the currents and lures some of Abercrombie’s most mellifluous playing from the coral. In both “Out Of Towner” and “Chic Of Araby,” the second of which closes shop, the feeling of connection among the quartet is especially intense. To a camel’s gait, Abercrombie snakes through Feldman’s direct hits like a sidewinder, leaving a trail of esses to show for his carriage. For our part, all we can do is follow, tracing our listening along that perfect path in admiration.
John Abercrombie guitar Mark Feldman violin Marc Johnson double-bass Joey Baron drums
Recorded June 2006 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Congress of John Abercrombie, violinist Mark Feldman, bassist Marc Johnson, and drummer Joey Baron is back in session with The Third Quartet. Like its predecessors, this junior outing is a master class in atmosphere and navigation—only now, Abercrombie points his compass toward a decidedly nostalgic north. While much of that retrospective feeling is already encoded into the guitarist’s Jim Hall influences, his toolkit now rattles with screwdrivers marked Ornette and Evans. The former is a crosshead, fitting snugly into “Round Trip” by way of the rhythm section’s deft interplay. The latter is a flathead, and in the somber “Epilogue” finds its groove in a looser sort of lyricism. The rest of the set list comes from Abercrombie’s pen, which gives pliant skeletons for his band mates’ fleshings-out.
Opener “Banshee” combines the free and the composed. From nebulous beginnings, a quivering violin treads intermittent guitar buzz until the two unify in one thematic vessel, crossing currents onto the shore of “Number 9.” With the slack-jawed lyricism of a Bill Frisell tune, its love potion courses faithfully through the veins. And as Feldman gallivants through winter trees with the fire of moonlight, it’s clear that he is once again the celestial force of the band. His watery—though never watered down—tone conforms to every shape even as it defines new ones. Whether flowing through the duo intro of “Vingt Six,” in which he shares windswept dialogue with Abercrombie before the rhythm section appears, intimate and reassuring, or moving with feline flexion in “Wishing Bell,” he guides us downriver into another season with every sweep of his bow. He can be as loose (as in the intensifying “Bred”) as he can be frenetic (“Elvin,” which pays tribute to Coltrane drummer Jones), but is always attentive to the infrastructure through which he percolates.
Not to be out-nuanced, Johnson holds his own as a master of description. His solos tend toward the compact, although their implications are anything but, for even when they guide us back to the head, improvisational echoes remain. He matches Abercrombie’s rainbow arcs with trails of footprints below, and gilds the progressive swing of “Tres” with charm. Lest we forget the leader’s impact, however, Abercrombie ends with “Fine,” an overdubbed duet of steel-string acoustics that regresses to his duo albums with Ralph Towner. It is a backward glance turned inward, an elegy for someone not long passed.
The Third Quartet chambers a tender heart, delicate as a morning glory yet just as sure to bloom with the coming of dawn. Such certainty is hard to come by in a sound-world built on spontaneity, but here it is.
John Surman baritone and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet Howard Moody church organ
Recorded January 2006 at Ullern Kirke, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Since their first collaboration on Proverbs and Songs, Ivan Moody (then as conductor, here as organist) and reedman John Surman have established an affinity that manifests itself vividly throughout this duo session under the evocative title Rain On The Window. Recorded in the Ullern church of Oslo, the program includes mostly originals and improvisations, the two exceptions being renditions of the English folk song “O Waly Waly” and the Negro spiritual “I’m Troubled In Mind.” The latter two bring earthiness and grit to the album’s textural palette. Both also feature Surman on baritone saxophone, as do a number of pieces, including “Stained Glass” and the brief yet memorable “Dancing In The Loft,” a free improvisation that showcases Surman’s eminently recognizable approach to the instrument. All of these and more are laid at the altar of “Pax Vobiscum,” a baritone prayer that ends the album. Like a phoenix from the ashes of Moody’s dense embers, Surman’s lyricism sings, reborn, in light of day.
Yet in spite of the recording’s sacred leanings, there is a refreshingly agnostic sheen to its musculature, as attested by Surman’s ingenious sopranism. Between the geometry of “Circum I” and the klezmer-like flourishes of “Step Lively!” there is plenty of gradation to be found. Some portions of the program (specifically, “The Old Dutch”) cast their nets back into childhood, when the calliopes of distant carnivals still mingled with the breeze. At times Surman’s tone matches Moody’s with its clarity and fortitude, while at others it looks through a glass darkly. Moody even goes solo in the inward spiral that is “Tierce.”
Like the title track, the record as a whole makes stars of raindrops and connects them in virtuosic constellations. The listener need be no astrologist to appreciate their interlocking stories, for each is told as if for the first—and the last—time.
Gianluigi Trovesi piccolo and alto clarinets, alto saxophone Marco Remondini violoncello, electronics Stefano Bertoli drums, percussion Filarmonica Mousiké Orchestra winds and percussion Savino Acquaviva conductor
Recorded September 2006, Teatro Serassi, Villa d’Almè, Bergamo
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Assistant: Giulio Gallo
Edited and mixed by Gianluigi Trovesi, Manfred Eicher, Savino Acquaviva, Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
The mind of multi-reedist Gianluigi Trovesi is a storehouse of refraction, the lens of a human kaleidoscope in whose turning we can see many zeitgeists, each gushing with its own color. For Profumo di Violetta, Trovesi dives headlong into a sea of operatic favorites, treading waters at once romantic and troubled. With sources ranging from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo to Puccini’s Tosca, his meta-commentary manages to draw fresh catch from an overfished pond. Buoyed by a wind and percussion orchestra in the grand “banda” tradition of his native Italy, Trovesi taps his memories as a boy growing up around these ad hoc configurations and from them coaxes shoots of ingenious contrast.
It’s easy to appreciate the boldness of this project, which spreads the melodramatic jam of tragedy across hunks of improvisatory bread. In the latter vein, Trovesi is very much the Mad Hatter, altering familiar motifs as might a furniture restorer strip a bench to expose long-neglected grain. In the process, however, one comes to realize that his penchant for humor is not without its serious edge. Take, for instance, his rendition of the famous “Largo al factotum,” which turns a tongue-tying chain of Figaros into a field of dots connected by the fuzz of a heavily distorted electric guitar. A far cry from the tuxedo-and-evening-gown aria, it nevertheless boils over with intuition. Such brilliant grandiosity is part and parcel of the album’s sweep.
Bookended by a Prologue and Epilogue, Profumo unfolds across wild stretches of the imagination. The program proper is broken into six sub-suites, of which “Il Mito” (The myth) drops us into the path of Orpheus. Here Trovesi binds a Toccata and Ritornello of Monteverdi with his own compositional veining, so that the sonority of the old touchstones and the whimsy of the new may interlock in flight. In this regard, the butterfly kisses of “Musa” massage away the fatigue of interpretation, allowing Trovesi’s taunting clarinet in “Euridice” to work its way like sugar through the nervous system. His height of range on the instrument is piercing, tickling the clouds until they loose jazzier droplets.
From the underworld to the overdressed, Trovesi and his cohorts escort us to “Il Ballo,” for a dance that is as grand as it is brief. This leads further into “Il Gioco Delle Seduzioni” (The game of seduction), a triptych of early Baroque and contemporary transparencies. From the convivial to the parodic, Trovesi navigates its burrows with eyes closed and whiskers extended, playing with feet aflame while maintaining control of his dance at every bend.
“L’innamoramento” houses the two-part title piece. Trovesi’s homage to Verdi’s doomed La Traviata heroine belies its love through melodic time travel. Here the emotional overload of opera is compressed to diamond clarity. “Il Saltellar Gioioso” features album highlight “Salterellando.” Anchored by snare and cymbal, and threaded by Trovesi’s grungy altoism, it sets off a ripple effect that lingers long into the spiraling “La Gelosia” (Jealousy).
The performance ends with “Così, Tosca,” which for all its eclecticism breathes with consistency. Trovesi’s soulful pitch-bending traces every contour of an underlying drone with care. A subtle harrumph in the brass only serves to brighten the felicitous interweaving of breath and sonority that is his reverie, diving headlong into an incendiary finish that grovels with profound favor. Indeed, the album might just as well be called “Profondità di Violetta,” for all its depth of thought, arrangement, and execution.
Bravissimo.
(To hear samples of Profumo di Violetta, click here.)
Anat Fort piano Gary Wang double-bass Roland Schneider drums
Recorded February 2009 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Anat Fort returns to ECM, now with the members of her working trio: bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider. Together they put a decade of working experience into And If, which burrows deeper into the compositional soil tilled on A Long Story. With that album in mind the trio pays homage to Paul Motian—whose encouragement led to the first ECM collaboration—in two tracks dedicated to the master drummer. The first begins the disc with poetry metered by the heart, beating in response to life’s changing climates. Like the passing of one thought to another, it shuffles melodic impulses farther down the line. “Paul Motian (2)” closes the circle, taking inspiration from its namesake by never once succumbing to the pitfalls of predictability. Such tenderness justifies imagery like that of “Clouds Moving,” which proceeds with Vince Guaraldi-like ebullience in the ground line while luminous harmonies in the right hand draw rivers catching sun during flyby. Schneider’s feel for cymbals admirably fills Motian’s absence, as do his brushes beneath Fort’s arcs of flight in “Minnesota.”
Although the album is not without a clipped feather or two (the fleeting “If” and “Nu” balance tenderness and swing, respectively), for the most part it spreads its wings broadly. One cannot help but detect a classical tinge to the wind beneath. “En If” is but one example. Its mastery builds off primary colors, awaiting the light of day to mix variations between prose and poetry. The former we get from Fort’s storytelling fingers, while the latter flows effortlessly from the rhythm section.
“Something ’Bout Camels” revisits material from Fort’s label debut, given here a flowering treatment. The daybreak of Wang’s arco introduction canopies a desert sleeping soundly. A settlement stirs: eyebrows twitch, bodies stand upright, legs move, hands work, and the beats of earthen carriage guide wheels to turn. Schneider’s bassing droops, swishing away the flies with its tail and folding the wind into parchment, that it might calligraph Fort’s footfalls.
Yet nowhere does the trio come together so effortlessly as it does in “Lanesboro.” This ballad in a classic mode is the epitome of gorgeous. Like water over rocks, it conforms to the shapes of its progression with unforced, organic flow. The lyrical support completes Fort’s picture with understated bliss.
“Aggressive but never forced” describes the music of Noel Johnston to a T. His is a veritable wall of sound across which is graffittied a diagram of fire, sweat, and professionalism. The Dallas area-based guitarist grew up in Southern California, where he began his musical training on violin from an early age before switching to cello at 7. In spite of his keen abilities with a bow, his fingers yearned for a pick. Hip to the fact that his passions as a performer lay elsewhere, Johnston laddered through the garage band toolkit from the bottom up, as it were: starting with drums, moving on to bass, and at last settling on guitar. A life-changing encounter with those six amplified strings came through the iconic work of Eddie Van Halen—so much so that when he plugged in an electric and played a power chord through a distortion pedal for the first time, he knew his fate had been sealed.
Johnston’s talents are as broad as his travels. At age 10, his family uprooted from the Golden State and replanted Down Under. After spending his teens in Australia, he attended college at USC, where teachers encouraged the budding guitarist to get some hardcore jazz under his belt. As an aspiring studio musician, they told him, one had to be a musical chameleon. Johnston took to the challenge like a squirrel to a feeder. An open mind and an insatiable desire to evolve got him into the renowned jazz program at the University of North Texas. Idols Johnston had long admired had passed through its hallowed halls, and it was only natural that he should follow in their finger taps. Of his influences the list is equally varied: everyone from Kenny Wheeler and Dann Huff to Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell, Tribal Tech and King’s X to Metallica and Whitesnake—each left a pin of conquest on the map of his development.
Although accustomed to a life on the move, Johnston found a home in the Dallas-Fort Worth scene, where he soon became a vital fixture. He has since been featured on over 40 albums—three as a leader, two as a co-leader. He has performed and/or recorded with local and international musicians alike, among them Joey Baron, Sheila E., Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano, Monica Mancini, Adam Nussbaum, Gary Willis, Lucky Peterson, and Kenny Wheeler, to name but an illustrious few. Of late, he can be seen alongside local jazz icon John Adams and on the Daystar (Christian television network) daily live program The Marcus & Joni Show. These and other developments—a regular teaching job at UNT, marriage, home, and a family—have secured him in the Lone Star State for good. With so many blessings poised like a whammy bar, Johnston has been fortunate to bend the pitch of his career to whatever tune suits him. His most recent studio effort, Salted Coffee, is the result of much refinement. With so many commitments warranting his attention, Johnston has taken full advantage of precious downtime to compress original melodies into diamonds he can be proud of: his songs, his sounds, his passions immortalized on disc, activated by lasers as precise as the music they read.
Although the title of Salted Coffee arose out of a caffeine-related practical joke, the music behind it is seriously electric. For his latest studio album, Noel Johnston is the first to admit a lack of agenda. These are simply songs he wanted to explore, songs he liked, songs he wanted to create. That said, we may easily read a deeper continuity in the set list, which proceeds from peaks to valleys and back again in a rollercoaster ride of melody and mood.
As an experienced producer, composer, and educator, Johnston is no stranger to the bandleader’s role. Salted Coffee proves him more than capable of breezing through the attendant challenges—and with such fine support in bassist Jeff Plant and drummer Jason “JT” Thomas, to boot. Together, the trio maps expansive territories, blasting its unique brand of heat across the cool surface of Joe Henderson’s classic tune “Inner Urge.” There’s a touch of the cosmic to the proceedings, as if the very life force of the music were trying to communicate with alien races. The Johnston original “Bat Tips” is another heavy hitter, the title of which comes from a favorite palindrome, reflected in the Möbius chorus and speech-inflected syncopations. A dark flier, indeed.
The album isn’t all steam and smoke, however, as attested by its downtempo turns. The Nat Simon standard “Poinciana” shows the band at its most laid back. Smooth and unerringly focused, it finds Johnston in a lilting mood, Plant even more so as he paints a fretless bass solo à la da Vinci. Yet even here the band cannot help but succumb to the music’s inherent drive, letting its inner force build as it will before coming down gracefully, spirit very much intact.
Guest keyboardist Shaun Martin gleams the cube on the funky halfpipe of “Big 8008,” another Johnston-penned joint, and further via Hammond organ on a cover of the Beatles’ “Because,” for which the band reaches the album’s profoundest heights of inspiration. Percussionist Greg Beck adds his own distinctive sheen to three tracks to round out the set. The latter include the grungy title track, which kicks off the album by launching the listener into a heartfelt universe of 80s glam throwbacks, and the ominous “Dark Blues,” a cinematic excursion that turns night into day. Lastly, the descending chords of Johnston’s wryly-named “The Fall” cantilever themselves into shadowy emotional territory. Plant’s mellifluous playing, combined with JT’s brushwork, put a cap on this gorgeous realm of contrasts.
The album’s clever mixture of metal grandeur, melodic ingenuity, and technical virtuosity make for one sharp cocktail indeed, and the breathing room it affords comes selectively and exactly when needed. The end effect is one of depth, appreciation, and good vibes.
Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 