ECM Releases

Keith Jarrett: Radiance (ECM 1960/61)

| Tyran Grillo

Radiance

Keith Jarrett
Radiance

Keith Jarrett piano
Radiance, Parts I-XIII
Recorded live, October 27, 2002 at Osaka Festival Hall
Radiance, Parts XIV-XVII
Recorded live, October 30, 2002 at Metropolitan Festival Hall, Tokyo
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Assistant engineer: Yoshihiro Suzuki

“We are all players and we are all being played.”
–Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett is a composer without a score, a melody with a body. He is a soul in constant transition. Such is life.

In his liner notes, Jarrett tells us he was trying something new with these solo improvised performances (his first in 15 years after an illness-ridden hiatus), forging paths for the most part devoid of melodic and motivic footholds, and fragmenting the epic journeys for which he’d come to be known. Durations of tracks—ranging from from a minute and a half (Parts IV, XI) to 14 minutes (Parts X, XIV, XVII)—speak to the program’s cellular makeup.

Parts I through XIII are cumulative, in the sense that each could not have existed without the other. Jarrett: “I was slightly shocked to notice that the concert had arranged itself into a musical structure despite my every effort to be oblivious to the overall outcome.” That such structure emerged at all is testament to his soul, which lives and breathes for the communication of his art, and to the music he unearths, all the more everlasting for being unplanned. One can hear him thinking through the notes as if they were words in a James Joyce novel, skimming just enough meaning off the top to tell a story but also leaving behind so much to discover during future listens. Passages of controlled frustration blend into heavenly resolutions, though one is always quick to succumb to the other. This is especially true in Part I, which sets a precedent for open reflection, shuffling honesty into a deck without spades.

Occasional mechanical rhythms (Parts II, VIII, and especially the vampy XII) demonstrate the unpredictability of Newton’s clockwork universe, sometimes digging so deep into the earth that they come out the other side and continue onward toward neighboring galaxies. Reveries, on the other hand, are fragrant and abundant (Parts III, VI, IX, XIII). In these Jarrett wanders like the traveler whose satchel has been emptied of its material artifacts yet which overflows with spiritual relics of the journey that emptied it. He takes in the sights along with the sounds, folds each into his tattered scrapbook, and stores their energy for the next concert. As effective as these snapshots are, even more so are the abstract and beguiling ones. In this respect, the heavily sustain-pedaled Part V is a masterful stretch. Here Jarrett turns the keys into putty and flexes the piano’s infrastructure to a breaking point. Part X, for its breadth and sheer melodic force, is another highlight that combines reverence with fearless distortions.

Parts XIV through XVII are excerpted from the concert recorded in full on ECM’s Tokyo Solo DVD, and demonstrate the vignette-oriented Jarrett to clearest effect. There is playfulness in these concluding acts, a dramaturgy of detail and respect for spontaneous character. So easy are they to get swept up in that the urge to sing along may be almost as strong as that which compels Jarrett to emote in just that way. That song becomes our tether to land as the tidal currents of Part XVII take us back to the Mother Ocean, where swims our shared love for the sounds that kept us from sinking in the first place.

Keith Jarrett Trio: Yesterdays (ECM 2060)

| Tyran Grillo

Yesterdays

Keith Jarrett Trio
Yesterdays

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded April 30, 2001 at Metropolitan Festival Hall, Tokyo
Engineer: Yoshihiro Suzuki
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Keith Jarrett

Yesterdays follows Always Let Me Go, The Out-of-Towners, and My Foolish Heart (link to all) as the fourth and final ECM album recorded during Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette’s inaugural tour of the new millennium. Like beads on a necklace, these albums guide a singular thread, a development of attitude and polish, which colors the music of this enduring trio. Pianist, bassist, and drummer respectively buff another set of standards to a sheen of crystalline ebullience.

Horace Silver’s “Strollin’” blossoms with free-blowing fragrance, carrying its symbolic weight in gold down pathways toward reminisced-about times and places. Although Jarrett’s wings may be almost as fast as a hummingbird’s, they are living proof of mind over matter, if not mind as matter, doing more than putting feet to ground as the title would imply. Peacock likewise enamors the scene with an emotional rather than physical leap in his solo. “You Took Advantage Of Me” returns from its appearance on My Foolish Heart with even greater sanctity, while the title track, tender as tender can be, holds its heart in its pocket so that it may never forget where it came from. Peacock builds a fluid, chromatic ladder in his duly heartfelt solo before an enchanting finish from the keys. “Shaw’nuff,” a Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie joint, launches into its vamp with the resolve of a high diver. There is fantastic, sparkling energy here that bears out in a concise and to-the-point narrative style. The forlorn ballad “You’ve Changed” works its craft in subtlest ways. Originally a song of needing to move on but not knowing how, here it cups a more hopeful carnation in its hands. Peacock does wonders with this tune, as does Jarrett in the afterglow. Parker’s “Scrapple From The Apple” makes a welcome cameo in the trio’s set list after a debut appearance on up for it and elicits pure trio magic. Harold Arlen’s “A Sleepin’ Bee” is a steady, mid-tempo tune that adds a dose of whimsy to this Tokyo performance. Peacock and DeJohnette sit deep in the pocket, adding copious amounts of fibrillating swing. “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” is another soft tune which glows like an ember in memory of a doused fire, of the feeling of togetherness that once convened around it. After these blue notes, the upbeat take on “Stella By Starlight” (recorded during soundcheck) that ends the album pours fresh sunshine onto the scene, inspires some fine drumming, and puts Jarrett in a restrained yet joyful mode, ending smoothly and unexpectedly on a whim.

Track for track, a solid outing, with soft spots in all the right places.

(To hear samples of Yesterdays, click here.)

Keith Jarrett Trio: My Foolish Heart (ECM 2021/22)

| Tyran Grillo

My Foolish Heart

Keith Jarrett Trio
My Foolish Heart

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded July 22, 2001 at Stravinski Auditorium, Montreaux with Le Voyageur Mobile Studio
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Produced by Manfred Eicher

My Foolish Heart may just be, between Still Live and Somewhere, the missing piece of the Keith Jarrett Trio’s Triforce. Recorded live in Montreux in July of 2001, it shows the trio—both in general and this specific—in brightest light. The bounce of “Four” kicks things off with so much panache that anyone even thinking of laying fingers to keyboard might just want to crawl into a hovel and listen in awe. The tune is, of course, by Miles Davis and draws lines of history back to Jarrett’s association with the Prince of Darkness, flipping that nickname into an exercise in luminescence. The feeling of togetherness practically shouts its decades of experience from the rooftops and calls any who will listen in ecstatic gathering. Peacock almost flies off the handle from all the excitation, but reins in his enthusiasm just enough to build his first solo of the night with architectural integrity. DeJohnette, too, revs the engine a few times without losing traction.

This formula works wonders in subsequent takes on Sonny Rollins’s “Oleo” and two Fats Waller tunes (“Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose”), imbuing the stage, respectively, with flow, flourish, and ragtime charm. At once progressive and nostalgic, these fast-fingered excursions attract wonder like magnets. The emotive genius of Jarrett’s sidemen is extraordinary throughout. “The Song Is You” is another instance of revelry that unpacks entire fields’ worth of implications in single sweeps, in which DeJohnette’s skills blossom most blissfully.

“You Took Advantage Of Me,” a Rogers and Hart show tune, finds a holistic place in the Jarrett set list and obscures none of the whimsy of its absent lyrics. From the florid we move to the tough love of Thelonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser,” which pours a stiff drink indeed. Jarrett spins like a top, inspiring gorgeous circling from DeJohnette and a pin-cushioned solo from Peacock. It sits comfortably alongside “Five Brothers,” an earlier Gerry Mulligan tune that oozes 1950s charisma: monochromatic, debonair, and veiled by cigarette smoke. The trio ends somberly with a quietly spirited “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry.” More than any other portion of the concert, Jarrett’s infallible respect for melody comes to the fore and paints for us a picture so realistic, it might as well be a photograph, a moment in time, a memory to cherish.

Two encores further express the trio’s balance of wind and water. “On Green Dolphin Street” whisks on by with such ebullience that it hardly leaves a trace of its passing, while “Only The Lonely” tears the heart in two and mends it in just over six minutes. Yet nowhere is the telepathy of this trio so nakedly conveyed than in the title tune, which sways, full-figured and proud, with all the rustle of a willow tree. The combination of singing pianism and melodic rhythm support hides a perfect scar in its core. There’s a song to be sung here, and its name is: YOU.

Keith Jarrett: Paris/London – Testament (ECM 2130-32)

| Tyran Grillo

Testament

Keith Jarrett
Paris/London – Testament

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded in concert
November 26, 2008 at Salle Pleyel, Paris
December 1, 2008 at Royal Festival Hall, London
Producer: Keith Jarrett
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

“Communication is all. Being is all.”
–Keith Jarrett

Since the release of his endlessly influential live record The Köln Concert, Keith Jarrett has done more than any other at the keyboard to clarify improvisation’s infinite shape. When basking in the music that pours from his fingertips, it’s easy to wax poetically from one’s armchair about the effortless brilliance with which he seems to play. Yet Jarrett wants us to know that the process is not all intuition, for often—as is true of the concerts documented here—the physical and emotional challenges are intense, unrelenting. In his liner notes, he lays out the taxing nature of his efforts, saying, “It is NOT natural to sit at a piano, bring no material, clear your mind completely of musical ideas, and play something that is of lasting value and brand new.” He further mentions that the role of the audience has always been of the “utmost chemical importance” and is more apt to change the dynamics of the performance than any technical concerns, such as those that permeate the lore of Köln. Whether it’s a concert hall, a microphone, or the ether itself, every adlib needs an ear.

On November 26, 2008, Jarrett put this theory into practice when he took the stage at Salle Pleyel in Paris for the first of two ad hoc solo concerts. Although a noticeably bipolar performance, it also draws many intersections of contact between extremes. Over a glorious 70 minutes of music in eight parts, Jarrett works an asana of fixation and letting go and touches hand to heart in sporadic gestures of deference. Like water set to boil but which is turned down at the last moment, it skirts the edge of conversion from liquid to gas. At some moments Jarrett’s spontaneous motifs funnel into a single dream of flight, realized in his unbridled feeling for thermals that only he can see. Such depth is palpable in Parts III and VIII, both of which make sweeping peace of untapped wisdom, now opened like a book to reveal an as-yet-unwritten past. With every shake of the snow globe, Jarrett seeks new patterns. Whether in the mournful procession of Part V or the jazzier syncopations of VI, we can feel a working-through that gnaws the edges of philosophy. The final section synthesizes what came before. At once elegiac and scintillating, it finishes with a deluge of ephemeral signifiers.

The London concert, recorded five days later, is clothed by even more intense variety. One can not only hear but feel the debates raging inside Jarrett, who with Part I renders the rib cage a ladder to radiance and catches an eddying wind in Part II, kicking up leaves and dry soil. In this concert, too, the sheer breadth of Jarrett’s sweep is staggering in a way rarely heard since the early concerts. From Part III to the concluding XII, every step of this journey flirts with optimism, though gnarled eyes mark the wood grain periodically along the way. Gospel progressions infuse spiritual longing with living resolution, fingers digging into every chord like hands into soil, while Parts VII and X vamp across vales of blues. In likeminded vein, Parts IV and VIII hark to the divine tracings of Köln in some of his most unmitigated playing since that fateful performance. Sparkling and transcendent, they cascade over themselves in a constant rebirthing process. This is what lies at the heart of his craft: a total oneness with the elements. It’s like discovering the inner workings of a clock you once believed ran on magic, only to realize that in those gears lies the deeper magic of the ingenuity that set them running.

No such program would be complete without some jazzier flashpoints, and these we get in Parts VI and XI, both of which feel like ballads lost from the American Songbook that have wandered into view after a long redemption. Though haggard, they convey perseverance through their melodies. Close to elegies but ultimately wishes fulfilled, they touch with a caress that feels like mountains and sky.

Most impressive about the Paris and London concerts is their scope. Jarrett’s hands wander independently of one another while also keeping at least an artery pulsing between them. Jarrett knows the piano like he knows his own voice; for him they are one and the same. He does not surrender to what he creates, for surrender implies an advantage of which to be taken. The beauty of it all is that one need listen only once to live off the memory for a lifetime.

(To hear samples of Paris/London – Testament, click here.)

Keith Jarrett Trio: The Out-of-Towners (ECM 1900)

| Tyran Grillo

The Out-of-Towners

Keith Jarrett Trio
The Out-of-Towners

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded live July 28, 2001 at State Opera, Munich
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Mastering: Morten Lund, Masterhuset
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With the insight of legitimate hypnotists, Keith Jarrett and his trio regress seven tunes with a flair for the unexpected. Recorded live at Munich’s State Opera in July of 2001, an especially productive year for the band, the performance whispers into life with a piano intro before waxing nostalgic in a sunny rendition of “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me.” Jarrett, of course, shines at every turn, but his phenomenal rhythm section has rarely sounded more luminescent. Light in their step and playful in their virtuosity, Jarrett’s sidemen exude effortlessness. Peacock is worth singling out in this opening tune, in which he departs from his usual twang in favor of a smoother, subtler extroversion. He reverts to his tried and true in a rendition of “You’ve Changed” that turns to melted butter in the trio’s hands. With Jarrett’s delicate anchorage behind him, the bassist picks away at edifice of the song’s confusion to a core of resolve. Jarrett pours on the honey for the rejoinder, DeJohnette all the while brushing like the wings of a dying insect, swishing to the rhythm of a broken heart. Brushes turn to cymbals in an effervescent take on Cole Porter’s “I Love You,” which finds the drummer running a parallel course of emotional freedom alongside Jarrett. Artful solos abound.

The freely improvised title cut is a gem. Over its 20-minute vamp, the trio plays with such looseness that it can only cohere by sheer depth of listening. Peacock is the conductor of this epic train, DeJohnette adding dynamite charge to the rails throughout the ride. The follow-up is a crystalline “Five Brothers.” This tune by the great Gerry Mulligan is the very definition of smooth. Jarrett’s punch and charisma here exhaust the barriers around his concluding solo, a heart-stilling rendering of “It’s All In The Game.” Thus sworn by sunset, he walks into a darkening horizon, where rests the origins of these gifts, so selflessly given, which like the figures on the album’s cover are almost gone from view the moment we realize they were within us all along.

Terje Rypdal: Lux Aeterna (ECM 1818)

| Tyran Grillo

Lux Aeterna

Terje Rypdal
Lux Aeterna

Terje Rypdal guitar
Palle Mikkelborg trumpet
Iver Kleive church organ
Åshild Stubø Gundersen soprano
Bergen Chamber Ensemble
Kjell Seim conductor
Recorded live July 19, 2000 at Molde Domkirke
Recording engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Album produced by Manfred Eicher

Regarding the modern Lux Aeterna (Eternal light), György Ligeti’s setting of the Latin text comes foremost to mind. Made famous by way of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (incidentally, my first exposure to Ligeti’s music), it did, of course, through that association take on cosmic aspects that may or may not have been originally intended. Although Ligeti was an earlier influence on Norwegian guitarist-composer Terje Rypdal’s take recorded here, the latter’s mapping processes are as distant as the faintest star. It is a setting in the truest sense, nesting one vocal movement among four others in a large-scale work that defies idiomatic description.

The first movement, subtitled “Luminous Galaxy,” is a serenade to the universe. Rypdal’s epic arranging skills and attention to color clear the sky of all pollution and distraction, leaving a naked belt, a cleft in the chin of darkness. The strings of the Bergen Chamber Ensemble (under the direction of Kjell Seim) reach heavenward even as their intentions burrow into the soil, spreading fingers and toes in pursuit of a shared, nameless goal. A celeste adds handfuls of stardust to the palette. Palle Mikkelborg then takes to the stage, almost startling in his surety. Warmed by the horse-haired fire around him, his echo-processed trumpet describes a vaulted architecture, of which windows and doors are galaxies unto themselves. The dialogic relationship established here at the outset encompasses so much space that the bulk of existence seems within reach. Swaying key changes mimic the flapping of a dress in the wind, the swirl of Jupiter’s eye, the quiet circumscription of Saturn’s rings. Through it all, the light of many suns coalesces in planetary alignment. And then, another entrance as a church organ (played by Iver Kleive) throws all satellite transmissions into paroxysms of static with its volcanic breath. It looses a subterranean call, rumbling more than singing, and bows in a gesture so luminous that only the pitch of night can contain it.

Rypdal explains the meaning behind “Fjelldåpen” (Baptized by the mountains): “For some reason now forgotten I wanted to teach my parents a lesson. I was 9 or 10 years old. I found a track used by sheep—very steep—and climbed the mountain fast. Once on top for a while I felt a very special connection to the mountain (and still do). At first I felt quite brave, but then a forceful wind started to scare me. And this feeling I’ve tried to capture in the second movement—you can hear when the wind is coming.” Rypdal goes on to say that he came down from the mountain to find that nobody had missed him: the world had gone on turning without him. The profundity of this realization at such a young age—the knowledge that one may be nothing more than an arbitrary arrangement of dark matter—is captured achingly in the composer’s lonely electric guitar as it leaves a trail of fuel to the mountain’s apex. Only when he surveys his achievement does he hold his axe to the sunset and light that trail with its fire. And as the world goes up in flames and licks the sky with its profound indifference, Rypdal shreds, balancing his trademark melodic lasers with the mercury of their fragmentation. His feet lift from the peak and float him beyond the clouds.

Hence the third movement, “Escalator.” Here the strings flow unlike earthly water, moving from land to mountain: a return to origins. Mikkelborg makes a subtle return. Spilling from a caesura in the very firmament, the trumpet liquefies and returns to a solid state in the musician’s hands, already itching with muscle memory to coat the landscape with elliptical grammar.

The fourth movement, “Toccata,” is an interlude for organ that twists the frame until all beings expire as they are, leaving only ruins behind. There, beneath tattered banners and dilapidated thrones, before the corpses of servants and skeleton-inhabited armor, a wordless sermon emerges with the force of a jumping spider. Distant flutes sing the praises of an idyllic age, when maidens and warriors needed no excuse to weep for love. This luxury of beauty plays out tearfully in the windowless corridor of this most titanic of instruments.

The titular movement ends the work with the voice of soprano Åshild Stubø Gundersen, introduced in points of contact and unison with electric guitar. Gundersen is captivating in her fallible tone, whereby she reveals the imperfections that make outer space such a ageless vessel for fascination. The difference between media blurs over time, so that Rypdal and the singer emote on almost exactly the same wavelength. The relationship between throat and pick feels entirely organic, less a shift between than a transfusion from one sonic entity to another. The organ sustains a drone and drops single notes like the signal tones in Close Encounters of the Third Kind—only here, the answer comes from within, from the trumpet (the messenger of peace), from the very rhythms of the heart by which all things cohere and expand. Descending chords—a recurring motif in Rypdal’s classically minded outings—leave their footprints clearly in mind. Thus spent, the densest matter spins into diffusion, leaving only the core theme intact, billiard-struck toward a black hole, silent and waiting.

Saluzzi/Danielsson/Saluzzi: Responsorium (ECM 1816)

| Tyran Grillo

Responsorium

Responsorium

Dino Saluzzi bandoneon
Palle Danielsson double-bass
José Maria Saluzzi acoustic guitar
Recorded November 2001 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Responsorium is for all intents and purposes a companion album to 1997’s Cité de la Musique. The kinship is suggested not only in the instrumentation (bandoneón, double bass, acoustic guitar), but also by the similar composition of cover art, in which angled sunlight pours through glass and gives warm indications of a world beyond. Joined again by son José Maria, and replacing Marc Johnson with Palle Danielsson on upright, Dino opens the set with a dedication to his brother and fellow bandoneonista Celso (who can be heard on Mojotoro). The rhythmic impulse is uniquely his own and shines in every unexpected turn of phrase. “Mónica” treads even deeper into the forest, leaving a trail of crumbs for the hungry. It, too, feels like a dedication, perhaps to a child, and treats the bandoneón as a body from which to emanate virtue. Bass and guitar carry that virtue through mountains and valleys, leaving traces in every river it crosses. On the subject of crosses, “Responso por la muerte de Cruz” bows its head in reverence to the divine in the human, if not also the human in the divine. José Maria’s steady fingers take on most of the emotional load. His sensitivity arches over Danielsson’s low stitching with forlorn comfort.

The album gets its first boost in “Dele…, Don!!” The spirit of the tango is alive and well in this configuration. One might even hear the feet hitting the floor were it not for the sheer delicacy of the playing, for it is in its ability to float massive traditions in but an inch of water that the trio’s brilliance shines. Each player thus brings a unique stamp to the record. Whether it’s Danielsson’s shadowy punctuation (“Cuchara”), José Maria’s pliant voicing (“Reprise: Los hijos de Fierro”—note also his effortless soloing in “La pequeña historia de…!”), or Dino’s narrative ingenuity (“Vienen del sur los recuerdos”), there’s plenty to admire and re-admire in the spokes of this melodic wheel. And indeed, in the end, as the credits roll languidly across the screen of “Pampeana ‘Mapu,’” those unaccompanied bellows have more to say than an entire orchestra, able as they are to forge a choir of themselves. What they lack in speech they make up for in song, and with that song comes the drizzle of a force so genuine that it might just go on singing forever. There’s only one way to find out: listen.

Steve Kuhn: Promises Kept (ECM 1815)

| Tyran Grillo

Promises Kept

Steve Kuhn
Promises Kept

Steve Kuhn piano
Krista Bennion Feeney, Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, Richard Sortomme, Karl Kawahara, Barry Finclair, Helen Kim, Robert Shaw, Carol Pool, Anca Nicolau violins
Sue Pray, Vince Lionti, Karen Ritscher violas
Stephanie Cummins, Richard Locker, Joshua Gordon celli
Carlos Franzetti conductor
David Finck bass
Recorded June and September 2002 at Edison Studios, New York
Recording engineer: Gary Chester
Assistant: Yvonne Yedibalian
Remix and mastering by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Recording producer: Arthur Moorhead

Promises Kept is something of a watershed moment in the career of pianist Steve Kuhn, who sees the album as the fulfillment of a lifelong wish. Kuhn has always been known for possessing a keen ear for sonority, but here that trait is expanded by the string ensemble—with arrangements by Argentine composer Carlos Franzetti—into which he christens his steadfastly original vessels. Because at Kuhn’s fingertips the piano acts more like an orchestra, the appearance of strings feels less like an addition and more like an audible manifestation of what his playing already holds dear.

Connections to classic ECM sessions abound, including Remembering Tomorrow, Motility, and Playground. Yet their reconstitution here feels like an involution rather than an evolution. This is by no means a bad thing; it lends insight. The pianism of “Lullaby” is thus melodically fortuitous and ushers in the assembly as if by a benevolent emperor’s hand—which is to say, with robust yet gentle authority. “Life’s Backward Glance” is the quintessential Kuhn tune, a touchstone of the pianist’s repertoire making here its fifth label appearance. The piece’s inner sanctum is water-colored one beam at a time in hues of cello and double basses. It welcomes Kuhn at its center as the sun to a planetary system, forming through quiet fission a divine connective tissue across space and time. This tells the story of his relationship to music perhaps better than any other.

“Trance” references the 1975 album of the same name. Whereas in that version the theme seemed almost to leap from a dream fully formed, here the eyes open slowly after a farther-reaching intro from strings and carry in their reflective surfaces most of the music’s weight in strings hammered, not bowed. Another vital moment in Kuhn’s compositional development, it showcases his lyric sensibilities—as does the album as a whole—without kitsch, sugar, or sap. We do, however, get a sprinkle of “Morning Dew” to whet our appetite for natural wonder. This newer tune spreads its sparkle as widely as the wind floats pollen. Its companion is the title track, a memorial to Kuhn’s parents that heaves with a palpable mixture of mourning and gratitude, and faithfully traces the undulating trajectory of grief.

As if the preceding weren’t contemplative enough, “Adagio” clears the slate and writes love letters to Introspection with a capital “I.” In this self-imagining, Kuhn speaks his craft into being through wordless language. Likewise, “Celtic Princess” communicates in images and impressions. The painterly feeling is as light as the touch of brush on gesso. The keyboard’s array of colors lends believability to the emerging scene. And just when the sheer magnitude of this beauty has grown unwieldy, “Nostalgia” enlivens the proceedings in its own unusual way. It wanders with no other purpose than to wonder, to appreciate the privilege of putting feet to dirt, to swim the “Oceans In The Sky” that follow with whispers and propelling strokes. The winds of change are as powerfully represented here as they are quelled in the concluding “Pastorale.” If the album’s initial stirrings were an awakening, let this be the promise of slumber kept, for it is only in the embrace of a dream that Kuhn’s sound-world reaches fullest vibrancy.

The end effect is one of jazz under a magnifying glass, given shape through the beauty of close attention in both the playing and the listening.

Steve Tibbetts: A Man About A Horse (ECM 1814)

| Tyran Grillo

A Man About A Horse

Steve Tibbetts
A Man About A Horse

Steve Tibbetts guitars, percussion
Marc Anderson percussion
Marcus Wise percussion
Jim Anton bass
Recorded 2001 in St. Paul, Minnesota
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Eight years separate 1993’s The Fall Of Us All and A Man About A Horse, during which time Steve Tibbetts met with an accident that required him to have surgery on his right hand. Before the procedure, the story goes, the reclusive Minnesotan laid down all the guitar parts for A Man About A Horse in his home studio, thus leaving a skeleton as solid as his was uncertain. This apocryphal information matters little, however, once “Lupra” reaches its hands, zombie-like, from the soil. The tap of tabla and twang of acoustic guitar engage in intimate conversation, seeming to diagram hitherto unheard regions of the guitarist’s postmodern terrains. The continental drift of his sound is as tectonically aware as ever: sparkling, sure, and ceremonially poignant like the flames on the album’s cover. This teetering session indeed holds on its kindling shoulders a giant cauldron, in which the listener becomes like the fabled frog, unaware of the lethal heat flowering around him. Spirits beckon from behind the beams of the “Red Temple,” wherein slumber the relics of a nameless saint: the faintest sliver of fingernail, a baby’s-breath of hair…each the element of an alchemy that can only be taught through sound. “Black Temple” magnifies the possibility of transformation by polishing its sole crucible to an ember’s glow. Whether in the earthen percussion or transcendent sustains, echoes of The Fall Of Us All permeate every decorated wall, if in a more contemplative mode.

The ambience intensifies in “Burning Temple,” neither exploding nor imploding but shining like a distant sun in search of a planet. The weight of feet sifting through the crumble leaves tracks and trails, and it is over these Tibbetts and his band trace their peace-bringing hands. The scene is crystal clear, as the title of “Glass Everywhere” would seem to imply. The destruction wrought upon the site is internal, and it is along this emotional landscape that the herds of the musicians’ imagination run like the buffalo. The search for reasons continues, forever one step behind the answers. But there is no charity anywhere in the world to mend the damage done. Rather, the music itself becomes the mechanism by which this assemblage coheres into offering. By now, the heat has become so strong that our little frog legs can no longer kick for all the shock. The raw becomes the cooked: a point of no return.

A way out reveals itself in the twisted metal of “Lochana,” in which an electric guitar cries with all the ache of the prairie. A glass eye in the face of “Chandoha” acts as telescope into the private fears that lurk in the backdrop. The air abounds with fragrance, the guitar a match touched to incense. All of which presses “Koshala” into a diamond of such finality that it’s all Tibbetts can do to keep up with its fluttering heart. The delicacy of tabla and sweeping accents of guitar paint an adobe-hued theory of existence at large. With the very landscape as its brush, it emotes in global self-portraits of light. Here emerges a lone sojourner, one who ranges like the Gunslinger of Stephen King’s Dark Tower, unaware of the tangled web of bodies in which he is destined to be enmeshed. And really, destination is something we can always count on in the Tibbetts experience, for we are there the moment we take our first step.