ECM Releases

Christian Wallumrød Ensemble: Sofienberg Variations (ECM 1809)

| Tyran Grillo

Sofienberg Variations

Christian Wallumrød Ensemble
Sofienberg Variations

Christian Wallumrød piano, harmonium
Nils Økland violin, Hardanger fiddle
Arve Henriksen trumpet
Per Oddvar Johansen drums
Trygve Seim tenor saxophone
Recorded October 2001 at Sofienberg Kirke, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Pianist Christian Wallumrød surely turned heads—not around in surprise but downward in reflection—with the 1998 release of his ECM debut, No Birch. After passing through the filter of Trygve Seim’s The Source and Different Cikadas in 2002, Wallumrød retained that project’s frontman (who here guests on tenor), held to his trio’s trumpeter, Arve Henriksen, and to them added fiddler Nils Økland and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen. The newly fashioned Christian Wallumrød Ensemble blossoms in an intimate program of composed and improvised material. Named for the Oslo church in which it was recorded, the album’s titular variations thoughtfully capture the spirit of their venue.

“Sarabande Nouvelle” is the touchstone of the program, appearing once as opener and twice more as variation. It bears a worn stamp of melancholy, as if it has been singing for years without sleep. This is precisely how Wallumrød’s music comes to us: wearing a patina. Thus formed, it holds firmly to an emotionally resolute façade even as it struggles to compose itself on the inside. And so, while the combination of horns and rubato swells lends imaginary power to the introduction, it nevertheless speaks of reality as if it were a sibling. That same sense of family lurks within “Memor,” wherein keyboard aligns with space, opening the floor to barest drumming and whispers of brass, reed, and bow. Wallumrød’s pianism is an arrhythmic heart that, through all the disruptions, maintains enough coherence to sustain life for as long as the blood of sound runs through it.

Forest-hued rumblings unearth the portraiture of “Edith.” With rasp of bark and stickiness of sap, it envisions a tree hanging its fruit over a cliff’s edge. Thus suspended, its sustenance finds balance in danger, and in that contradiction a supreme peace. Such is the tension in which the album’s themes incubate. Here the melancholy so easily ascribed to the music begins to blur and, like the cover photograph, kicks its imaging of the world off kilter. Thus skewed, disparity takes on a life of its own. Conversations flit between the silhouettes, coalescing in the alarm of pathos that is “Alas Alert.” This reverie of reveries is a braid of trumpet, air, and metallic signatures. Økland’s bow elicits the tremor, an indication that something in this body is fallible, something in its murmuring worthwhile. Økland adds further shading to “Psalm” and “Liturgia,” one the crossing to the other’s hatching. These decidedly sacred pieces turn memories into sliders on a mixing board of psychological experience that can be tweaked to suit the needs of every crisis. Such inner adaptability is key to understanding the method behind this record, in which there is no promise but only the fulfillment of something unnamed, if not also unnamable. Never before such delicate dissonance. Never such microscopic inference. The most haunting moments, in fact, come from the album’s ticks: a series of “Small Pictures” that surveys abandoned architectures with a ghost hunter’s eye. Ascending and descending motifs walk an Escherian staircase, leaving only a Möbius strip of gray footsteps to show for their having been there.

“Losing Temple” closes the session’s eyes with introspective pianism, with the fiddle again playing a descriptive role. The flute-like trumpeting from Henriksen is astonishing, the osmosis of his step likewise, which treats every wall as a cinematic gateway. This music fades like leaves with the wind that might never have existed to begin with. Their colors linger all the same.

Yet where the album’s spirit becomes clearest is in its handful of variations, which re-spin their referents in slow watercolor bleeds of storytelling. These are not, however, mere refrains, but parallel universes in which the bodies of iterations overlap without the others’ knowledge. Intelligent without being intellectual, it is music that breathes, for we are the lungs to its air.

Art Ensemble of Chicago: Tribute to Lester (ECM 1808)

| Tyran Grillo

Tribute to Lester

Art Ensemble of Chicago
Tribute to Lester

Roscoe Mitchell reeds, flute, percussion
Malachi Favors Maghostus double-bass, percussion
Famoudou Don Moye drums, percussion
Recorded September 2001 at Chicago Recording Company
Engineer: James A. Farber
Mixed by Manfred Eicher and Roscoe Mitchell
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In 1999, jazz lost in Lester Bowie more than one of its great trumpeters; it lost one of its most charismatic voices. Deeply set in the blues yet flushed by affirmation, this celebratory album references the legacy of the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s frontman via languages of his surviving cohorts. Yet while the music has a deep history and pins acupuncture points across the body of the AEC’s vital discography, this experience is self-contained. It is neither a swansong nor a requiem, but an entity that has gained wisdom in passing and uses that wisdom to make most of the here and now. The moment matters.

Although of course Bowie’s charismatic trumpeting is sorely missed, revelations abound in hearing the AEC as a trio. Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors, and Don Moye each foment an entrancing sort of cacophony, building unrepeatable chemistry from base elements. Indeed, Moye’s “Sangaredi,” with its guttural reed work and driving percussive force, is a ritual all its own—a mode of summoning born through loss. That said, to call this a catharsis would be a gross reduction of what’s going on. It is instead a call to spirit, an invocation and teasing of the sutures that keep souls communicating across celestial phases, of which life and death are but two of infinitely more. Overlapping gongs hold us close to that resonant bosom of the cosmos, bow their heads in prayer, and open onto the brief vista of “Suite for Lester.” Its composer’s soprano saxophone blusters through a maze of footsteps, each a gift to which these three wise men give unconditional attention. A switch to flute cuts a swath of sunlight across the darkness. The feeling of hope, by way of classical reference, shines a beacon not of high art but of clarity in the void, not pure but speaking of purity.

In the wake of this rumbling bop, “Zero/Alternate Line” pairs respective tunes by Bowie and Mitchell. The effect is evolutionary, the feeling at once mathematical and diagrammatic. Mitchell’s improvisatory turns flow into the gaps Bowie has left behind like molten titanium into a ring mold. Imperfections become mission statements within a fierce optimism. A solo from Favors against Moye’s cymbal backdrop lends sanctity to the urban pall and gives name to the art of exchange. Moye then takes up the call in monologue, throwing all manner of sprigs onto the water to see what sinks (answer: none of it). Mitchell walks the very line he draws as he goes, touching flame to torch at every turn. Favors counters with “Tutankhamun.” Here bass saxophone gouges out the tiles and makes music of what lies under the floorboards, while a costume change to soprano gives the light a broader spectrum. The rhythm work is straightforward and holds Mitchell to a virtuosic standard he surpasses with gusto. This is the height of the spirit, spoken from the depths of the soul.

The album closes with two freely improvised pieces. The color tracings that open “As Clear as the Sun” betray nothing of the display about to ensue as Mitchell flutters on his soprano like a moth trapped in a street light designed by Evan Parker. It is as if the pick of the previous track has tapped a wellspring of technological exactitude. The shawm-like tone of Mitchell’s playing only serves to distance the music in time. After these powerful 13 minutes of thick description, “He Speaks to Me Often in Dreams” implies transcendence in a characteristically down-to-earth style. Consisting mostly of percussion, with a few breaths expelled for good measure, it pulls the group into its origins, where sound and space pass through one another and back again. From ambient solitude to whiffs of village life, earthen solitude to dream-like contacts, the prophecy proves itself alive and well.

Bowie once said, “We’re just beginning to learn the importance of jazz in our society.” Listening back to his music, and to this made in his honor, it’s clear that his statement still applies. We might also extend his notion to encompass the world, to the universe, to the blush of all existence which dances across the skin of some unknowable divine. Whatever cosmologies we may bring to his altar, we can be sure his electricity still dances somewhere.

Keith Jarrett Trio: up for it (ECM 1860)

| Tyran Grillo

up for it

Keith Jarrett Trio
up for it

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded live on July 16, 2002, La Pinède Gould 42nd Festival de Jazz d’Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, France
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

One of the liveliest of lives for the Keith Jarrett Trio, up for it celebrates two decades behind the wheel of this purring vehicle. Jarrett and his peerless backing flaunt their way through a set of eight tunes, each dropping its own distinct fruit from the branch. Indeed, in the nurturing hands of this trio, what once were chestnuts sprout into mighty trees in and of themselves.

Jarrett leads the trio in a rollicking good time with “If I Were A Bell” (Frank Loesser). Proceeding with airy confidence, the trio floods the ether with reflections sublime, sophisticated, and piquant, Peacock and DeJohnette holding the line as few rhythm sections can. Thus supported, Jarrett manifests some of his most delightful playing on record. “Butch & Butch” (Oliver Nelson) gets an invigorating treatment that reaches new levels of tasteful abandon. Each musician feeds off the others in a golden braid of inspiration. Jarrett hangs the most sparkling, whimsical ornaments from this many-spindled tree, while DeJohnette fires on all cylinders in his solo dives.

As incendiary as these three can be, it’s in the ballads where they stoke the deepest hued fires. Ballads are also where Jarrett extends the breadth of his flavors with some of the most creative intros in the business. Take, as one of countless instances, the pentatonic lilt that smoothes into as heartfelt a rendition of “My Funny Valentine” as the seasoned fan is likely to hear. Yet there is more to this ballad than meets the eye, as Jarrett & Co. run off its cliff into a scintillating hang-glide. Even Peacock, a normally grounded player, gets airborne in his hollow-boned solo. “Someday My Prince Will Come” is another standby to which Peacock adds so much life. Whether in solo or support, he flirts with the keys in rich, figural language. DeJohnette, meanwhile, builds a house of cards and hits each out of the air with his sticks as it falls into new deck order. The greatest of the album’s hits is undoubtedly “Autumn Leaves,” a tune that seems to sprout a new limb at Jarrett’s command with every iteration. In this especially coordinated take, it effervesces like never before and morphs into the title closer, a Jarrett original of spunk and verve that links back to the ritually minded improvisations of Always Let Me Go.

Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple From The Apple” is, along with “Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West” (by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet), a newcomer in the trio’s arsenal. The first breezes along with carefree ebullience, grabbing just enough wind in its sails to reach the island it seeks. The second stops to light up a smoke in a sparsely populated part of town. With suitcase at the feet and a Want Ad section tucked under the arm, our hapless protagonist takes in the prospect of a new day in stride. Such gritty realism is the truth behind Jarrett’s mastery. As transcendent as he is, his playing rests on a foundation of complicated experience, fatigue, and uncertainty: the mothers of all invention.

Mathias Eick: Skala (ECM 2187)

| Tyran Grillo

Skala

Mathias Eick
Skala

Mathias Eick trumpet
Andreas Ulvo piano
Audun Erlien electric bass
Torstein Lofthus drums
Gard Nilssen drums
Morten Qvenild keyboards
Tore Brunborg tenor saxophone
Sidsel Walstad harp
All compositions by Eick
Recorded December 2009 and January 2010 at Cabin Recorders, Bugges Room, and Pooka Studio, Oslo
Engineers: Even Enersen Ormestad and Audun Ofstad Borrmann
Mixed May 2010 at Rainbow Studio by Jan Erik Kongshaug, Manfred Eicher, and Mathias Eick
Produced by Mathias Eick and Manfred Eicher

Mathias Eick follows up his melodically charged leader debut, 2008’s The Door, with something delectable. This time he fronts an expanded, smoother band that includes saxophonist Tore Brunborg within a nest of Scandinavian talent. Ever at their center is Eick, whose threefold role as composer, performer, and arranger takes on fuller idiomatic body.

Eick
(Photo credit: Andreas Ulvo)

Skala shares key aspects with its predecessor. It is another set of eight originals, which too can be divided into three acts of two, three, and three scenes, respectively. Act I likewise opens with the title track and, like its earlier counterpart, only seems to grow more translucent as instruments are added. Yet the similarities end there, for the music is something else entirely. Here is a musician who not only has listened deeply to others on the path to enriching his compositional breadth, but has also listened to himself, taking into the account all the work done before so as to tattoo new shapes into the same skin. And so, while his trumpet draws more smooth, echoing rainbows, the sky it inhabits is groovier in color. Channeling the catch and release of the Jan Garbarek Group at its best, he activates a unified band sound. Brunborg’s tenor, burnished like a well-shined shoe, steps confidently into the optimistic expanse set before him and assures us that all the wrongs of the past will turn to gold in the morning sun. All along, the pliant bass work of Audun Erlien keeps things moving toward “Edinburgh,” in which Eick strays just enough to stretch his palette, the band expanding and contracting in anticipation of his gorgeous marginalia.

“June” begins Act II with a haunting plot twist, joining the pianism of Andreas Ulvo and Sidsel Walstad’s harping in peaceful communication: proof that even the album’s darkest hour keeps its finger on the pulse of luminescence. “Oslo” counters with majesty, throwing itself into a groove akin to those of Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin. Concise and self-assured, its inner workings reveal Eick’s communal spirit, which felt distant behind The Door. “Joni” (as in Mitchell—one of Eick’s many popular touch-points) makes for a flowing companion. The Lyle Mays-like pianism drops a screen for Eick, who doubles on marimba in a display of cinematographic imagination.

Act III awakens with the stretch of urban reflection that is “Biermann” and ends with “Epilogue,” the latter a catalyst for escape. Between them is “Day After,” which looks at the world through rose-colored glasses and jumps from the peak of Brunborg’s solo into bliss. Building molecules from atoms, the reedman muscles its way between clouds, a lightening bolt in search of its originary spark.

It would be no exaggeration to say that on this album Eick has brought back the luscious aesthetics of those seminal ECM records from the 70s and 80s, when Solstice and the Pat Metheny Group were charting territory so new it could only seem familiar. Skala is proof that a silver lining needs no cloud to shine. A treasure, through and through.

(To hear samples of Skala, click here.)

Mathias Eick: The Door (ECM 2059)

| Tyran Grillo

The Door

Mathias Eick
The Door

Mathias Eick trumpet, guitar, vibraphone
Jon Balke piano, Fender Rhodes
Audun Erlien electric bass, guitar
Audun Kleive drums, percussion
Stian Carstensen pedal steel guitar
Recorded September 2007 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Peer Espen Ursfjord
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Mathias Eick

Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick makes his ECM debut with The Door. Label mainstays Jon Balke (piano) and Audun Kleive (drums), along with Nils Petter Molvær associate Audun Erlien (bass), forge a memorable session of lyrical crystal.

The Door can be divided into three parts. The first begins with the title tune and ends with its follow-up, “Stavanger.” Both mark their passage by way of Balke’s unmistakable threading. Strumming the inner strings like a giant zither, he welcomes the rhythm section’s appliqué as might a stained glass window welcome light. Over this, Eick draws his arcs into neighboring lands. Both tracks achieve a remarkable thing: sounding sparsest when the band volumizes its playing, and densest when it treads quietly. Such are the unexpected turns of the album’s flight path, which cleaves trumpet through Balke’s flurry of snowflakes, catching every nuance of the band’s thermal and disappearing in a pinpoint of light just above the horizon line.

For the central three songs, Stian Carstensen (last heard at the bellows on Trygve Seim’s Different Rivers) augments the band with pedal steel guitar. His fluid keening maps the backdrop with its feline prowl and adds a visceral, mournful edge. Of this portion, “October” is a thematic highlight, if not also a low shadow. Situated between “Cologne Blues” and “December,” it scans a city in blackout, working through painful memories in want of the positives that engendered them to begin with. Despite the frigid climate, there is also great movement, a rolling and crashing of waves that recalls The Sea.

The final act is comprised of three further scenes. “Williamsburg” is, like the album as a whole, a tessellation of form and content, which through the voice of Eick’s horn unravels clock parts and rearranges them as a holistic composition. The easygoing nature of this track settles into the album’s moral tinge. “Fly” reaches even higher, soaring into fadeout with the crackle of parchment. This leaves only “Porvoo” to make sense of the traces. Its trio of horn, piano, and brushed cymbals imagines a protracted spelunk into the depths of a solitary mind.

On that last point, what amazes about Eick’s music is the hermetic seal of its arranging. Regardless of how many instruments accompany him, he stands alone. His soulful soliloquizing embraces the listener with its performative strengths, patterning the world over with tree branch and sky. And while the overall narrative seems blanketed in snow, beneath that wintry crust its mementos are still dissolving from last year’s thaw. The effect is sure to please fans of Molvær and Manu Katché, both of whom lead without being lead, saying everything through contact of body and technology.

Stephan Micus: Towards the Wind (ECM 1804)

| Tyran Grillo

Towards the Wind

Stephan Micus
Towards the Wind

Stephan Micus duduk, bass duduk, kalimba, steel-string guitars, 14-string guitar, shakuhachi, dondon, sattar, voice
Recorded 1999-2001 at MCM Studios

In the late 1990s, musical nomad Stephan Micus crossed paths with a little Armenian double-reed flute known as the duduk, a mournful instrument with a long history. Micus compares the duduk with the shakuhachi: the two share a spirit of simplicity. In them the breath is audible, almost exaggerated, and sings across species. Yet while the Japanese bamboo flute comes with preinstalled with a rich solo repertoire, the duduk in its many registers is not usually played alone. “Padre,” for example, bears dedication to Micus’s father, Eduard, who passed away during the album’s recording. This duduk solo folds itself into the bittersweet gratitude by which nature abides, a profound translation of breath into memorial. And “Before Sunrise” gives even the bass duduk something to say beyond the droning for which it is typically employed. At Micus’s lips it touches the earth with hands as if they were feet. It walks with renewed balance into a nearby forest, clears a space of prayer among the detritus of a long season, and lights the sky with its campfire. In those embers lie the stirrings of “Morning Breeze,” a kalimba solo that trembles like an eye fluttering into wakefulness.

“Flying Horses” introduces 12 dondon, so-called “talking drums” from West Africa. With them are three steel-string guitars and shakuhachi. The latter dives into a body of water like the frog of Matsuo Bashō’s famous haiku:

The old pond—
A frog leaps in,
And a splash.[*]

The amphibian in question is played by the shakuhachi, which enlightens us to the presence of aliveness itself: mere being, vivid and thrumming. The dondon add a wave of invigoration, a music of distance that lowers us into secret temples. “Birds of Dawn” reveals the crosscurrents of the album’s title by means of a fuller assembly: 2 kalimba, duduk, 6 shakuhachi, 3 dondon, 2 sattar. Yet it doesn’t evoke flight as the cover photograph would imply, but rather a milling about, a wading in the water, talons pressing the earth for sustenance. “Virgen de la Nieve” features the 14-string guitar, an instrument that Micus designed in the early eighties and was last heard on East Of The Night (JAPO’s final release). Its light shines from cloud-breaks after a storm onto a dilapidated castle, while “Eastern Princess” paints for us a memory of the kingdom that once flourished in its walls. This pairing of steel-string guitar and voice reveals the reality behind Micus’s so-called “fantasy language” (he rarely employs lyrics, per se, when singing), an embodied meaning that needs no semantic cage. This is one of his most astonishing creations, if only for the rudiments of its means. He ends with another broad palette, “Crossing Dark Rivers,” which revives the 14-string guitar alongside 3 shakuhachi and 7 duduk, the latter of which make for a cinematic reveal. Before that reveal, the music pulls its feet through thick sediment under cover of night, holding above its head a single bag with a few choice belongings and hoping to pass undetected into personal asylum. The flutes complete the picture as figures emerging from the trees, arms extended in welcome and embracing the solidarity that has made the journey forever worthwhile…for in that refugee slumbers an unborn child whose own crossing has yet to bless this world with its cry.

(For more on the history of this album and its instruments, please check out Mitchell Feldman’s lovely notes on the same, which were an invaluable resource for me in fleshing out this review.)

[*] Trans. Makoto Ueda.

Enrico Rava: New York Days (ECM 2064)

| Tyran Grillo

New York Days

Enrico Rava
New York Days

Enrico Rava trumpet
Stefano Bollani piano
Mark Turner tenor saxophone
Larry Grenadier double-bass
Paul Motian drums
Recorded February 2008 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

New York Days brings Enrico Rava full circle to its eponymous city, a major flashpoint in the Italian trumpeter’s long and geographically varied career. Joined by the other two sides of the TATI triangle—pianist Stefano Bollani and drummer Paul Motian—along with bassist Larry Grenadier and, in his first ECM appearance, tenorist Mark Turner, Rava fronts a set of nine originals and two group improvisations. The latter are, in a sense, the glue that holds the album together, representing as they do the precision of this ad hoc quintet’s molecular makeup. These freer spells glow gas-stove blue in the night, their hearts forever aimed at honesty.

The lion’s share of the set list is balladic in nature, starting things off smokily with “Lulù.” Bollani emerges in an early wave with unforced persuasion, lending context to Rava’s Poseidon lyricism. In this tune one feels the city after hours: the shine of rain-slicked asphalt, the whoosh of empty taxis, the flicker of untended streetlights. But then…a surprise from Turner, whose horn implies snatches of club life within earshot. By the intermingling of “Certi Angoli Segreti” (an album highpoint), it’s clear the reedman has his telescope pointed to a star we’ve never been able to see through all the dazzle before. His arpeggiations are the light of its fission, the mere presence of which inspire pointillist heights in Rava, and in the pianist an uncannily classical sparkle.

The contrast between the two horns is unusual. Rava and Turner hardly mesh throughout the album’s 77-minute duration. They are two strangers in the night whose soliloquies overlap in complementary ways. Their distinct tonal signatures require them to seek out instances of harmony. The resultant dialoguing further bears the stamp of Rava’s deep love for cinema. Quintessential in this regard is “Interiors,” which sounds like the theme song to a Woody Allen film never made. Its nameless tragicomic protagonist wanders alleyways in the wake of that which can never be requited. The mastery of Turner’s protraction here, the fog of his expressionism, makes monochrome of color. The listener is all the richer for being made privy to such naked depth-soundings.

Bollani also works the shadows throughout in ways that cannot be overestimated. Through the solemnity of “Count Dracula” and the heavy nostalgia of “Lady Orlando,” his gestures leave heavy traces. Furthermore, he blows bubbles through “Outsider” and “Thank You, Come Again,” exceptions to the album’s brooding sanctum. Whether anchored by a restless Grenadier in the former’s straight-laced fantasy or spurred along by Motian’s fine-grained timekeeping in the latter, he is the yeast in the brew.

Rava is, then, not so much the leader as the hub of this outfit. He speaks with a narrative voice as charcoal as Bollani’s is pastel, fragments the beat with the same fearlessness as Motian, extends his roots as thirstily as Grenadier, and exhales with as much fluidity as Turner. Such affinities embody what ECM is all about: bridging continents and creating new ones along the way. Like the classic “Blancasnow” (in its most sensitive treatment yet) that caps off this unforgettable experience, it fades into white, every footprint the start of a new path.

(To hear samples of New York Days, click here.)

Lloyd/Hussain/Harland: Sangam (ECM 1976)

| Tyran Grillo

Sangam

Sangam

Charles Lloyd tenor and alto saxophones, tárogató, bass and alto flutes, piano, percussion
Zakir Hussain tabla, voice, percussion
Eric Harland drums, percussion, piano
Recorded live May 23, 2004 at Lobero Theatre, Santa Barbara, California
Engineer: Dom Camardella (Sound Design Studio)
Produced by Dorothy Darr and Charles Lloyd

“When the spirit is blowing, I know I have to hoist my sails to catch the breeze,” says Charles Lloyd. Indeed, the Memphis-born saxophonist and spiritual walker has left footprints in many a patch of earth, each with its own song to sing. Yet nothing has leveled the playing field of his already vast history with such vitality as Sangam. The name of this fruitful side project, which Lloyd shares with tabla legend Zakir Hussain and prodigious jazz drummer Eric Harland, connotes “confluence, a meeting place, a gathering or coming-together, literally or metaphorically.” This recording—Lloyd’s first live outing for ECM—thus takes the post-Higgins era in a profound new rhythmic direction while also paying homage to the worldliness that Lloyd’s late ally brought to their journeying hearts.

This new trio rides the same wave, shares the same breath, and, as the title of “Dancing on One Foot” implies, moves through the same body. Hussain’s unmistakable groove and Harland’s brushwork set the scene, through which Lloyd wanders with his favored tárogató in hand, stitching the universe. Hussain attends to tuning as would a painter to color, matching tone and thickness to suit each canvas and subject in kind. This is especially apparent in “Tender Warriors,” an emblematic piece for the group that features Lloyd’s all-too-rarely employed alto, as well as in “Nataraj.” In “Guman,” the album’s only tune not written by Lloyd (it is by Hussain), its composer sings hand in hand with flute, weaving and veining the arid plains with the concert’s most intimate pathways.

Also remarkable are the ways in which Hussain and Harland communicate throughout. One might expect, in such a young configuration, that Harland would be feeling his way through the shadow of his fellow rhythmatist, when in fact he meets Hussain in creative brotherhood. Lloyd’s tenoring is, though, a force to be reckoned with, imbuing a range of mountains and valleys with snow and flora, respectively. “Tales of Rumi” is among the more epic statements in this regard, a portal to infinite others. Here the trio enacts a transfiguration, a triangle within a triangle within a triangle: the album’s title made manifest. Through it all, Lloyd fast-forwards through eons of cosmic history (were it not for Hussain’s playful quotation of Rossini’s William Tell overture, we might hardly associate the music with Earth). The title track, too, is a thematic tour de force, sandwiching Lloyd between the drummers with commonality and freedom. Even when Lloyd is invisible, the other senses tell us he is there. “Hymn to the Mother” and “Lady in the Harbor,” each a soulful dirge, handles emotions as if they were fragments of a broken window. Piece by piece, they reconstruct the prism, so that in “Little Peace” they can dance without fear. Theirs is a butterfly effect, whose catalysts are life, love, and laughter.

Three sages light up the night with the memory of a solar flare. Responsive as responsorial, they render jazz at a universal level. Sangam has the power to bleed the offshore accounts of our needless indulgences dry and redirect their provisions to those who need them most. It is an anthem, a tumbling of the social ladder to a horizontal plane.

Three as one. One as three.

Enrico Rava: TATI (ECM 1921)

| Tyran Grillo

TATI

Enrico Rava
TATI

Enrico Rava trumpet
Stefano Bollani piano
Paul Motian drums
Recorded November 2004 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In between The Third Man, trumpeter Enrico Rava’s duo project with pianist Stefano Bollani, and Easy Living, which nestled both musicians in a quintet of astonishing synergy, the duo welcomed late drummer Paul Motian into the studio for an album of flickering yet intense balladry. TATI continues Rava’s great journey on ECM, this time paying homage to legendary French actor and auteur Jacques Tati (1907-1982).

This set of 12 mixed tunes is a retrospective on at least two fronts. First, with classics like Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” and Rava’s own “Cornettology” burnishing the trio’s sound to a coppery sheen, one can’t help but note the cigarette smoke of old cinema in the air, moving from black and white to color and back again. Motian is mostly cymbals, with the barest touch of snare grazing the edge of the occasional footprint. Second, the album puts leader and sidemen on the same plane, so that each bears equal weight. Their glorious take on “E lucevan le stelle” from Puccini’s Tosca is a perfect example. What begins as a stunning display of Rava’s lyrical gifts, shooting through the night like an arrow, in the second half swivels in favor of Bollani and Motian, Rava ornamenting only as needed. That said, there’s hardly anything minimal about this music. It is, rather, dense with implication and stories yet to be told.

The wonder of this combination of musicians is especially obvious in tracks like “Golden Eyes,” Bollani’s “Casa di bambola” (Doll’s house), and “Fantasm.” The latter is one of three tunes by Motian and finds Rava shaking his horn like the brush of a drunk calligrapher. “Birdsong” and “Gang of 5” are the others, both pianistic reflections that speak of French impressionism. Although the connection between Rava and Bollani is so complete that the drums aren’t necessary on paper, Motian’s contributions are indivisible within the album’s holistic approach. The burnished quality of the recording matches every lilt and imbues this unprecedented meeting with further sanctity.

If not for its title, we might never associate TATI with the fumbling, if endearing, Mr. Hulot. It speaks, rather, to the child-like practicality of Tati’s heart, that comedic compass which swept its needle toward a shared community of laughter and social commentary. Flashes of his playfulness do come out now and then (e.g., on “Jessica Too”), but for the most part it remains hidden, implied. Either way, this release is as masterful as he was, to be savored as a bottle of wine that keeps refilling itself between listens.