ECM Releases

Charles Lloyd/Billy Higgins: Which Way is East (ECM 1878/79)

| Tyran Grillo

Which Way is East

Charles Lloyd
Billy Higgins
Which Way is East

Charles Lloyd tenor and alto saxophones, bass, alto and C flutes, piano, taragato, Tibetan oboe, percussion, maracas, voice
Billy Higgins drums, percussion, guitar, guimbri, Syrian “one string,” various Senegalese and Guinean hand drums, Indian hand drum, Juno’s wood box, voice
Recorded January 2001, Montecito, California
Produced by Dorothy Darr and Charles Lloyd
Engineer: Dorothy Darr
Mastered by Bernie Grundman
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

Billy Higgins. A man brother-in-charms Charles Lloyd once described as having the “dance of life.” A soul with whom, in ensemble contexts, the saxophonist forged a relationship so deep it begged to be loosed, unhindered in the week of playing, documenting, and spiritualizing that manifested as Which Way is East. More than a coming together, it is unencumbered unity, testimony to a higher power…. Call it what you will. For Higgins, its path is Islam; for Lloyd, Vedanta. And for the listener? A two-disc, thirtyfold undoing of expectations that is its own begotten magic.

when lightning strikes
sound emerges from the womb:
a cloud in whom the tallest tree
seeks timely renewal

Together, its eight titled suites form a masterpiece in the most literal sense: a piece—a fragment—of mastery, a flicker of the eternity that nourished its becoming. Through its window we might see fields aflame, ices melting, suns and moons weeping. We might also know our past and future selves, a map of this and other lifetimes. The tools at the duo’s disposal speak of itinerant natures, of traveling minds absorbing local melodies like sponges. In this regard Higgins reveals a side until now obscured, a cocktail mixed from Delta waters, godly praises, and love songs. His interest in song draws from a broad palette of instruments—including the guimbri (three-stringed bass lute of the Gnawa), guitar, Syrian “one string,” plus an array of hand drums from across the continents—and languages (English, Arabic, and Portuguese roll off his tongue in kind). Lloyd fans will have come to expect cameos from winds like the Tibetan oboe and taragato, but may be surprised by his turns on alto (Lloyd’s “secret weapon,” according to Higgins) and piano.

in the forest
being and becoming bloom
shedding different seeds
of the same color

The sound of ancestors spreading wings, spinning flesh from sunlight. This is the impression of the opening suite, What Is Man. From blush of flute to strike of drum, from voice of throat to that of string, Lloyd and Higgins establish a sacred circle, scratched and torn like the skin and muscle of a wounded animal. The tenor’s entrance is shock and satori. The effect is such that, when the free improvisational language of Part 3, “Civilization,” enters our ears, it feels unfamiliar and requires a degaussing of the mind by way of adjustment. The beat and the reed: primal core of jazz. Having gone through that rite of passage, we end in a “Sea of Tranquility.” Lloyd’s tender stroll across the keyboard prefaces the triptych of Divans. An opening salutation melts the doors to a sanctuary of twilight. In the central crypt, skeletons find new reasons to live in geometries of breath and movement.

the lost question
floating behind closed eyes
reveals itself to be an answer
to the stars’ twinkling

Over a rocking plectrum, Higgins drenches worship to begin Salaam. Lloyd’s flute melts into alto, loses itself and finds passage into a cloudy heart. Its contours wrap around a statue of invisible strength, every muscle the manifestation of a song. The last panel, “Tagi,” weds Tibetan oboe and hand drums in an act of ontological possession, a disrobing of wasted thoughts, a dawning of shelter.

must the wind hold hands with sky and land?
must the water divide itself?
neither can be the path
for only the pathless will find their destination

All This Is That: a visceral unfolding of free improv, drums one step removed. “Hanuman’s Dance,” the 13-minute first part, dives into the sonic gene pool with alto ablaze, drums igniting the ether in kind before an audience of disembodied souls. Part 2, “Sky Valley,” is another piano solo from Lloyd that borders on impressionism. “Blues Tinges” follows with an organically crafted song from Higgins. It is a call to mercy, a reclusive meditation, an offering so central that it feels composed on the spot. Last is “Atman Alone Abides.” Featuring hand percussion and Lloyd on taragato, its loosely woven tapestry is a patchwork of wandering and proximity as Lloyd crosses the studio into a corner of night, righting wrongs in flesh and in love.

the whole body ensues, ensnares
washes itself of the soil
bathing in tears
drinking the life back in

Disc 2 begins with Desire, another triptych of immense proportions. Grounded in that same elemental force as “Civilization,” Lloyd’s tenoring describes a magical scene. Restless and skittering, its flora wither at the touch of the closing “Chomolungma.” The title here is an old Tibetan name for Mount Everest, and indeed its 13-minute excursion finds deep traction in every upward step, towering its exposition like that fabled peak with snowy veins flowing.

dreams of the sunflower
leave their impressions on clouds
would that I could feel them
press into my back

Devotion takes a more earthen tone with just a touch of grander mystery. The backwater poetics of “My Lord, My Lord” share the air with “Windy Mountain” in a powerful journey of self-discovery and selfless discovery, working a twisted pianistic core.

through surface and tunnel
over and under land
she guides, waiting
on the other side

Light of Love connects a range of dots, from Brazilian love songs (“Mi Corazon”) through barely spoken walkabouts (“Beloved, Chimes at Midnight”) to introspective song (“Take A Chance”). Each is part to a whole, a measuring of time by the breath of a sleeping child.

in a former place
amor becomes armor
dropped down the well
a dragonfly turned to stone

The curls of “Perfume of the Desert” float Lloyd’s tenor on a bed of reed and ash to begin the final Surrender. Across oceans and tributaries, it unties ribbons in every head of hair and with them weaves the soft basket of “Forever Dance” before folding into the wordless pitch of “Bis,” a solitary snap to close the lapel of doubt.

trust that someone is watching
trust that someone is listening
feel the eyes as hands
feel the eyes as ears

Which Way is East is unequivocally the profoundest statement of either musician. It belongs alongside Keith Jarrett’s Spirits as a phosphorescent example of pure expression. So sincere is it, you’ll forget you’re listening to a pair of jazz greats and know instead that you’re in the presence of sagacity beyond the circumscription of any genre. It is, then, more akin to a field recording, cast far like a fishing hook and reeled in bearing the fruit of the river…and a eulogy along with it. Within four months of these sessions, Higgins was gone from this world, though he remains by the power of such audible traces as these. Having once referred to the recording of Which Way is East as “two guys sittin’ on top of a mountain,” he is surely on that mountain now, looking down on us mortal folk from a vantage point higher than a thousand Everests, the dance forever on his tongue.

Lloyd Higgins
(Photo by Dorothy Darr)

John Taylor Trio: Rosslyn (ECM 1751)

| Tyran Grillo

Rosslyn

John Taylor Trio
Rosslyn

John Taylor piano
Marc Johnson double-bass
Joey Baron drums
Recorded April 2002 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Plenty of pianists are capable of technical brilliance, but so few bring selfless mastery to melody and negative space. Bill Evans progenitor John Taylor does just that, and this first leader date is a stained-glass window in sound. Bassist Marc Johnson (a latter-day discovery of Evans) and drummer Joey Baron (formidable veteran of John Zorn’s Masada quartet) join the British pianist for a set of mostly Taylor-penned tunes. From note one, one may note this as a defining ECM appearance by the ever-smiling Baron, whose adaptive style adds just enough color to Taylor’s monochromatic balancing acts.

“The Bowl Song” introduces us to the trio’s pliant sound. Johnson channels Steve Swallow in the album’s first solo, leaving us enchanted and primed for a webbed version of Irving Berlin’s “How Deep is the Ocean,” of which rubbings on piano strings guild the night with deeper secrets of this immortal standard. Taylor proceeds with archaeological care, his voicing stretching one tendril at a time from the brine. Here and throughout, Baron enacts a breezy restraint, his snare poised and patient, letting the groove establish itself without push. Despite, if not because of, the rhythm section’s resoluteness, Taylor spreads a deck of quick changes to keep things interesting. His lovely teetering of chromatism and octave bliss turns the tune into a hardly recognizable form of itself, an entity of spongy texture and purpose.

From amorphous beginnings, “Between Moons” gels another worthy braid. Taylor shows command of effect and affect in equal measure, while Baron’s smooth tom rolls and Johnson’s lantern flame predict a primrose finish. The title track is the session’s galactic sun. Its chambered clockwork reveals a lullaby, a swath of perpetual motion rounded and secured as if by light through a prism of dark and darker.

Nothing in the album’s first half, however, compares to the pulchritude of its second. This is where unity manifests, where the impressionism of Kenny Wheeler’s “Ma Bel” and the balladry of Ralph Towner’s “Tramonto” can walk hand in hand toward the masterful syncopations of “Field Day.” Each is a fully formed pearl, shucked and illuminated with endearing pathos. Like the skipping record of the album’s final chords, it fills a child’s room with safety, so that visions of a broken world cannot help but shed their barbs upon entering.

<< Suite For Sampler – Selected Signs II (ECM 1750)
>> Andersen w/Tsabropoulos and Marshall: The Triangle (ECM 1752)

Eberhard Weber: Endless Days (ECM 1748)

| Tyran Grillo

Endless Days

Eberhard Weber
Endless Days

Eberhard Weber bass
Paul McCandless oboe, english horn, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone
Rainer Brüninghaus piano, keyboards
Michael DiPasqua drums, percussion
Recorded April 2000 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Electric bassist Eberhard Weber, one of the most recognizable depth-sounders of European improvisation, with Endless Days continues the journey charted so boldly across ECM’s fertile map. True to form, he breaks the jazz mold that searches him, instead making use of orchestral sweeps and precisely notated forms. Solos, per se, are few and far between. The only exceptions are “A Walk In The Garrigue” and “Solo For Bass,” the latter of which presages Weber’s sure-to-be-seminal Résumé. With liquid touch, he dances, turns on a molecule, and settles into warmth.

The instrumentation of Endless Days is as intimate as its sound is expansive. Multi-reedist Paul McCandless, keyboardist Rainer Brüninghaus, and percussionist Michael DiPasqua—all longtime allies—comprise a quartet of unveiled lyricism. The seesawing keys of “Concerto For Bass” fade in on a lush vista as only Weber can articulate. Skittering percussion hurtles us across a tessellation of water and land as an oboe cranes its neck, birdlike, in anticipation of a storm. A soft keyboard drone provides ample soil for Weber’s pliant germinations, which in characteristic fashion build majestic tidal waves from mere ripples in “French Diary.” Here DiPasqua and McCandless flank an itinerant piano to the rhythm of an internal clock before ending in a pinprick of light, adding a new star to the shadows of “Nuit Blanche.” This cinematic piece emotes through a sepia veneer of whisky and unrequited love, dripping like a tree after rain. “Concerto For Piano” brings the band up to full speed. Playful touching of the keys adds unexpected angles. The title track has the makings of a folk song unfolding in real time, fashioning from its cellular vocabulary set a full-bodied text. This program of otherwise new material ends with a throwback to Weber’s Little Movements, reworking from that 1980 album its opening composition, “The Last Stage Of A Long Journey.” Flowing arpeggios float the leaves of Brüninghaus’s pianism along an unbroken river and find their angelic alter ego in McCandless, whose soprano saxophone draws a thread from heart to ritual.

Eternally refreshing in Weber’s work is the comfort that titles are immaterial—so evocative is his sound-world that it tells us a different story every time, a story so familiar it seems to emanate from the listener. All that’s left to ask: What stories will it convey to you?

<< Thomas Larcher: Naunz (ECM 1747 NS)
>> Claudio Puntin/Gerður Gunnarsdóttir: Ýlir (ECM 1749)

Anouar Brahem: Le Voyage de Sahar (ECM 1915)

| Tyran Grillo

Le Voyage de Sahar

Anouar Brahem
Le Voyage de Sahar

Anouar Brahem oud
François Couturier piano
Jean-Louis Matinier accordion
Recorded February 2005, Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The music of Tunisian oud virtuoso Anouar Brahem and his trio with pianist François Couturier and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier is like a magical box of movable type in which the letters form alluring, coherent stories no matter how one arranges them. The printing press this time around may be of similar make to the preceding Le pas du chat noir, but the themes are even more narratively inflected by virtue of the trio’s evolving magnetism. The strength of Brahem’s visual imagination comes strongly to the fore whenever he sings. Although wordless, his voicings on “Les jardins de Ziryab” and “Zarabanda” fold water into sand, painting cycles of intervallic bliss. The chant-like quality of his melodizing buoys Matinier’s soaring exegeses, thus providing an aerial view of the album’s intimate topography. Further whispers abound in the album’s opener, “Sur le fleuve,” which establishes a signature sound of lilting pulse and unseverable braid. As in the gentle persuasions of the title track, Brahem’s suspended steps give his associates just the shade they need to unravel their filmstrips without fear of overexposure. Each of the oudist’s wistful solos is a message in a bottle, Couturier’s chording the foamy currents it rides, and Matinier’s cries those of the recipient standing on a distant shore.

Ensuing atmospheres range in density: from the enigmatic “L’Aube,” as fragile as a mirage, to the restless abandon of “Cordoba,” each samples a different time and space in a sepia-tinted world of streets and blurred visages. Sometimes, the directions are clearer, as in “Eté andalous,” which begins in the mountains and flows down to the mainland. Other times, the music’s robust heartbeat finds balance in meditative poses and parabolic expression. Whether running across the plains of “Nuba”—each dig into the oud’s lower register a puff of kicked-up clay—or drowning in the insomnia of “La chambre,” these are ever-thoughtful alternate realities.

Rounding out the disc are three of Brahem’s most requested tunes, freshly realized. “Vague” and “E la nave va” form a diptych (the former revived from its appearance on Khomsa). With the regularity of a train warning sign, two red eyes alternating winks in the night, it crosses hands until one body is indistinguishable from the other. “Halfaouine” (cf. Astrakan café) is a brief yet luminescent passage of cascading beauty, the swirl of grounds at the bottom of a coffee cup.

The Anouar Brahem Trio wears a skin of gold, sings with a tongue of silver, and moves in gestures invisible. And whatever it chooses to communicate, one can always be sure its language needs no translation.

Charlie Haden/Egberto Gismonti: In Montreal (ECM 1746)

| Tyran Grillo

In Montreal

Charlie Haden
Egberto Gismonti
In Montreal

Charlie Haden double-bass
Egberto Gismonti guitar, piano
Recorded July 6, 1989, Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, Salle Marie-Gérin-Lajoie, Université du Québec
Recorded by La Chaîne culturelle de Radio-Canada
Recording and mixing engineers: Alain Chénier and Michel Larivière
Editing and mastering: Denis Leclerc
Recording and mixing producer: Daniel Vachon
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

Twelve years after it was recorded at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, this landmark performance by legendary American bassist Charlie Haden and Brazilian guitarist-pianist Egberto Gismonti at last saw the light of day in 2001. The concert marks the sixth of eight organized by the festival in celebration of Haden’s ongoing legacy. Haden had plenty of experience playing with Gismonti as part of their Magico trio with Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, yet the distillations offered here are entirely of another plane.

From the Magico songbook the duo plays “Palhaço” (a trio staple by Gismonti), as well as the Haden-penned “Silence.” Both feature Gismonti’s astonishing pianism, balancing florid biospheres with ponderous asides, Haden all the while drafting the terms of endearment by which every page turns. Haden the composer also reveals the set’s deepest piece: “First Song.” Featuring Gismonti on acoustic guitar, its intuition soars for all its quietude. A pleasant street scene, a childhood memory, a favorite scent in the air…exchanging glances in a melodic triangle. Such trade-offs mark the session for its selfless ingenuity. So, too, the jangly undercurrents of opener “Salvador” and “Em Familia,” both of which reference Gismonti’s work with Academia de Danças and, as such, reflect a bold unity of purpose. The latter’s invigoration grabs scruffs and throws us skyward, even as it gives us wings to fly. And fly we do into quiet pockets of cloud, each the eye of a storm where the leaves barely tremble to the tune of Gismonti’s masterful harmonics. Also notably from the Academia repertoire are “Maracatú,” a study in contrasts, and “Frevo,” in which pointillism at the piano inspires dramatic, resonant depths from Gismonti’s partner. “Don Quixote” (previously featured on Duas Vozes with percussionist Nana Vasconcelos) closes with an elegy-turned-anthem, a shifting ocean of temperate love.

Although there is much to admire in Gismonti’s prodigious guitar playing, it’s at the piano where his musicality truly shines. How wonderful to get so much of it here. And no bassist crafts melodies quite like Haden. He keeps the earth in mind, even when there is nothing but sky ahead of us, scaling the ladder from light to dark and back to light while Gismonti filigrees his playing like a frame around a picture. In Montreal is a must-have for fans of these unique talents, who together forge a distinctly “global” sound: not world music, but music for the world.

<< Heino Eller: Neenia (ECM 1745 NS)
>> Thomas Larcher: Naunz (ECM 1747 NS)

Iva Bittová: s/t (ECM 2275)

| Tyran Grillo

Iva Bittová

Iva Bittová

Iva Bittová voilin, voice, kalimba
Recorded February 2012, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Characterizing the music of Iva Bittová as resistant to definition both describes it perfectly and does it a disservice. The former, because her minimal tools of violin and voice elicit a museum’s worth of colors, moods, and brushstrokes. The latter, because every listener will emerge from that museum with a unique image in mind that is anything but indefinable. Despite her many creative personalities—which encompass acting, performing, and composing—she has achieved notoriety by no small feats of expression. Still, don’t be mistaken: this is no “avant-garde” artist. She’s not upsetting paradigms, but deepening their self-awareness.

“The violin accompanies me all the time,” says Bittová of an instrument that has centered her musical life since the early 1980s. “It is a mirror reflecting my dreams and imagination.” Yet she is, above all, a singer. Whether through vocal folds, bow, or physical gesture, her voice strikes flint to stone and blows a tangle of weed until it glows. So potent is said voice that it inspired fellow Czech composer Vladimír Godár’s Mater (documented most recently in a 2007 release for ECM New Series), a multilayered cantata on women-centered texts of which Bittová is both sun and satellite.

Iva

This self-titled solo album finds Bittová in her element in a series of 12 numbered “Fragments,” and because fragments imply a whole, it makes sense to speak of the album as such. Like a work of masterful anamorphosis, its image emerges only by submitting oneself to its perspective. Twelve is, of course, a mystical number. It defines the modern clock, marks the end of childhood, numbers the Bibical apostles, and zodiacally divides the heavens. Here it is a riddle that harbors many more.

The album begins and ends with her voice slaloming through the delicate signposts of a kalimba. Here and throughout there is harmony and tension, starlight and soil. At one moment, her voice and bow may unify. At another, her feet go their separate ways, divorced from body and destination. Pizzicato gestures seem to pluck hairs from the scalp of the night, while arco gestures get lost in mazes even as Bittová draws them. Sometimes: her voice alone, spoken and then sung, so that incantation becomes chant becomes lullaby in one fluid swing. Sometimes: the violin alone, crossing every bridge without ever touching feet to plank. Sometimes: a river’s flow through black forest, hints of love and travel.

To be sure, ghosts of a Slovakian heritage breach the fabric of time that veils her, but the freshness of her storytelling makes it all feel uncharted. For while she does adapt the music of Joaquín Rodrigo in Fragment VI and sings texts by Gertrude Stein and, notably, Chris Cutler in others (III and VII, respectively), she renders these sources personal and organic through her crafting. Words like “gypsy,” “folk,” and “tradition,” then, might as well be gusts of air, so intangible are they in her sound-world. That being said, her art is certainly rooted in a worldly sense of time and plays with that notion as would a hummingbird flirt with a backyard feeder. Her sound is resilient to climatic damage, for it has already absorbed so much of the oxidation that gives it character, and her tone is never brittle, even at its thinnest. In fact, the album’s strongest moments are to be found in her unaccompanied singing. From gentle cuckoo to shaman’s possession, her voice cycles through many (after)lives and makes this world of social details begin to feel other-cultural.

Here is an artist whose sense of architecture is wholly translucent, whose persona is her crucible, and whose music is an embodied practice, a mimesis personified to the point of healing.

(To hear samples of Iva Bittová, click here. See this review as it originally appeared in RootsWorld magazine.)

Trygve Seim: Different Rivers (ECM 1744)

| Tyran Grillo

Different Rivers

Trygve Seim
Different Rivers

Trygve Seim tenor and soprano saxophones
Arve Henriksen trumpet, trumpophone, vocals
Håvard Lund clarinet, bass clarinet
Nils Jansen bass and sopranino saxophones, contrabass clarinet
Hild Sofie Tafjord french horn
David Gald tuba
Stian Carstensen accordion
Bernt Simen Lund cello
Morten Hannisdal cello
Per Oddvar Johansen drums
Paal Nilssen-Love drums
Øyvind Brække trombone
Sidsel Endresen recitation
Recorded December 1998, January and December 1999 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Trygve Seim, Christian Wallumrød, and Øyvind Brække
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

Breathe, and you know that you are the world.

Different Rivers marks Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim’s emergence from the ECM wings as a leader in his own right. Well versed in the label’s vital documentation of European improvising (not least of all through his life-changing tenure with Finnish drummer Edward Vesala), Seim draws upon those influences to pool his talents for the present disc, which deepens the free spirit of his so-called Trondheim Kunstorkester. Trumpeter Arve Henriksen—notably, a close associate of Christian Wallumrød—and a host of Scandinavian talents round out an ensemble of remarkable depth and poise.

Seim’s three duets with Henriksen are the album’s acupuncture points, each a vitalization of the whole. The breathy meditations of “Bhavana” and the flutter-tongued percussiveness of “Between” both spin on fluid axes, but it is “For Edward” that breaks its gravitational ties and flows outward into the universe. Seim’s shakuhachi tone reveals superb control of his reed, a sound honed by oneness with its source. Like two cranes calling to one another in the night, never able to find a way across the Milky Way between them, he and Henriksen paint bridges of artful listening in lieu of earthly travel. Even when they are surrounded, as in the title track, they are ever swimming toward something galactic.

The trumpeter reveals his vocal skills in opener “Sorrows.” In wispy arpeggios he lurks, stranger among a crowd of consenting instruments. The effect is ghostly, sirened by keening higher reeds. With the exception of “Search Silence” (a curious little flicker of geometry), the album’s remainder samples a likeminded palette. The subconscious beats of “Ulrikas Dans” brush on a light gesso for bolder horn strokes. Seim’s piercing harmonics lend an angelic touch, and his tenoring on “The Aftermath” spins a charm bracelet of wispy melodic cells. This life further into the sun-swept plains of “African Sunrise,” giving name to the aching land. Drummer Per Oddvar Johansen’s flint-strikes incite a conflagration in Seim’s playing, ending on scream. I daresay this and “Breathe” are two of the finest tracks in the ECM catalogue. The latter is a mission statement, a parable on the profundity of simplicity. Amid the band’s resonant atmospheres, vocalist Sidsel Endresen recites a powerful wakeup call. She finds a process in every wing-flap, every sprout and blossom, as blurry horn textures translate word into life.

The strengths of Seim’s compositions, and of those interpreting them, lie in their control and dynamic range. Their roots are as deep as their branches are tall, softly aflame with autumnal themes. Case in point: “Intangible Waltz,” which follows Henriksen’s patterns through thick forest and barren field alike. Its central whisperings between drums, accordion, and trumpet work wonders under the microscope. No matter how calm and thin its layers become, it allows visions of a dancing light to seep through.

Seim’s is a viscous music; don’t expect to swing. Meditative and ashen, every track of Different Rivers feels as if it was recovered from the archives of a lost culture, of which only this music remains to represent it. Let the rebuilding begin.

<< Ralph Towner: Anthem (ECM 1743)
>> Heino Eller: Neenia (ECM 1745 NS)

Ralph Towner: Anthem (ECM 1743)

| Tyran Grillo

Anthem

Ralph Towner
Anthem

Ralph Towner classical and 12-string guitars
Recorded February 2000 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Once the luminescent 12-string of Ralph Towner opens the ears to the thoughts of “Solitary Woman” (aka “Alia’s Theme,” composed for the 1992 film Un’altra vita), there’s no turning away from the guitarist’s captivation. Towner’s ability to tell a story is uncanny: we know his characters as if they were ourselves but are at pains to describe them in retrospect. His is a music that must be lived, and relived, to be known. The modal approach of the album’s opening gambit proves revelatory in its percussive and emotive variety and compresses so much of what marks Towner’s mastery into one piece. Like nearly the rest of the album, it looks back also to an adroit compositional mind, one that recognizes the equal value of improvisation as a tool of expression.

Most the album features classical guitar. The title track gives solemn praise to the musical act itself. The sweep of Towner’s evocative sensibility is compass-like. Down the helical twirl of love and loss that is “Haunted,” he slides into “The Lutemaker.” Something of a sonic equivalent to James Cowan’s novel A Mapmaker’s Dream, it is a concise yet somehow beautifully varicose embodiment of its subject matter. It feels so real one can almost smell the workspace, hear the luthier’s plane singing. “Simone” is another of the album’s mysterious figures, her face familial yet also obscured by the ripple of shadow that she wears like the night. “Gloria’s Step,” by the tragically short-lived Scott LaFaro, is yet another and links Towner back to the Bill Evans circle in which he trained. It receives a studious and impassioned rendering at Towner’s fingertips and leads into the gallery of “Four Comets,” which along with “Three Comments” comprises one of two handfuls of sparkling miniatures. The former’s six-stringed sky becomes the latter’s 12-stringed loom, both spaces through which creative shuttles weave their constellations for others to decipher.

“Raffish” is a perfect example of Towner’s crystalline brand of jazz, at once deferential to past masters (hence the album’s title) and overtly countercultural in its sometimes-overwhelming optimism. The angularity here is refreshing. “Very Late” is another architecturally sound track. Its title bleeds from the music and reaches a steadying hand toward “The Prowler,” a programmatic gem. “Goodbye, Pork-Pie Hat” reprises the 12-string one last time, bringing the album back to its resonant beginnings in an especially intimate rendering of this classic Charles Mingus tune.

There is a depth of refrain in Towner’s music, and on Anthem it is alive with a direct philosophy that feeds also into the engineering. It is, quite simply, one of the finest solo guitar recordings to come out of ECM’s studios. Its balance of distance, finger action, and breath control is as erudite as that of the artist it documents. When medium and message are so well unified, who could ask for more?

<< Crispell/Peacock/Motian: Amaryllis (ECM 1742)
>> Trygve Seim: Different Rivers (ECM 1744)

Crispell/Peacock/Motian: Amaryllis (ECM 1742)

| Tyran Grillo

Amaryllis

Amaryllis

Marilyn Crispell piano
Gary Peacock bass
Paul Motian drums
Recorded February 2000 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With Nothing ever way, anyway, the trio of pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Paul Motian degaussed the sonic landscape. With this, its follow-up, the trio redefines itself. If in that debut Crispell proved the sonority of her craft as an improviser, here she proves the craft of her sonority. Whether evoking river’s flow or faucet’s drip, there is such palpable structure to her playing that one can almost live in it.

“Voice from the Past” gazes back to Gary Peacock’s 1982 album of the same name while also trudging forward in anticipation of what sigils it might inscribe by virtue of its fresh passage. Even the composer seems compelled to drown in his own creation, allowing Crispell’s porpoises to shake their bottlenoses in slow motion to the rhythm of Motian’s tide. Conversely, Peacock stands out in the pianist’s title track, which for all its prettiness cages a lonesome heart. There is a feeling of nature as entity, as if it were somehow able to brush away the veneer of our sadness and flow resolutely into its cause. “Requiem” is another dip into classic Peacock, this off his 1987 effort Guamba, again played here as if for the first time. Peacock takes the foreground as an artist grabs a paintbrush: which is to say, swiftly but respectfully. Yet even when composer and process sync with expectation, as they do also in “December Greenwings” (referencing 1979’s December Poems), Crispell is not to be overshadowed, for she brings a tree’s worth of blossoms into full view. As a melodic first responder, she unpacks Peacock’s compact phrases with obvious delight, and in her own “Rounds”—which connects the dots back to her 1983 album for Cadence, Spirit Music—she blankets our vision with flurries of brilliance. Strong as his drumming is in this track, Motian’s own compositional voice grabs even more attention in the trio’s slippery rendition of “Conception Vessel” (which titles his 1973 album) in conjunction with “Circle Dance.” The latter in particular elicits some of Crispell’s profoundest atmospheres, channeling Keith Jarrett at his most sacred. Motian’s “Morpion” solidifies the triangle by muscling its wide mane down connecting avenues of shine.

During sessions, producer Manfred Eicher further bid the musicians to improvise in the spirit of seeing what might take shape. Striking is how distinct the results are from their surroundings. “Voices” lays out a bed of bass and drums, one resonating and the other in a state of decay, and gives the piano an amorphous tree up which to climb. “Silence” is an album highlight, a real stunner that leaves us hanging from a branch of Zen-like irresolution. “M.E.” naturally pays tribute to Eicher, without whom it would not have taken shape and whose miraculous influence echoes through every touch of finger and brush, here and beyond. Another flask of inspiration drained and refilled to the last drop. “Avatar” is similarly gauze, fecund, and free. Pure magic, but with the bonus of “Prayer” (by clarinetist Mitchell Weiss) providing the final kiss to ensure the spell’s completion.

The most significant revelation of Amaryllis for ECM devotees is Crispell, who underscores the fortuitousness of having “crisp” in her surname with a string of performances that are exactly that. She is an expert at deep listening, and can provoke only the same in we who listen in turn.

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