Jazz

Masson/Vallon/Moret/Friedli: Travelers (ECM 2578)

| Tyran Grillo

2578 X

Travelers

Nicolas Masson tenor and soprano saxophones, clarinet
Colin Vallon piano
Patrice Moret double bass
Lionel Friedli drums
Recorded April 2017, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Lara Persia
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: February 16, 2018

If the blood ties between jazz and beauty were ever in doubt, one would need only spin Travelers to restore faith in that very principle. Swiss reed player Nicolas Masson’s quartet is more than a plush setting for nine original compositions; it’s a veritable life in miniature with its own triumphs and stumbles. One could hardly imagine a more stunning outfit to don while walking down these hallowed halls. Along with pianist Colin Vallon, a formidable bandleader in his own right, Masson joins bassist Patrice Moret and drummer Lionel Friedli for a journey that is equal parts introversion and extroversion. This isn’t some ad hoc studio creation, however. It’s a band 12 years strong. I asked Masson via email what it meant for him to submit such a mature quartet to the engineering scalpel:

“We had already released an album named Thirty Six Ghosts in 2009 on Clean Feed Records but our music had changed quite a lot since and it felt like the right time to document the band at this moment of its evolution. The fact that we have such a long history together helped us get straight to the point in the studio.”

And how, I wondered, did the band come together?

“I was working at the time with my first band, featuring Russ Johnson on trumpet, Eivind Opsvik on bass, and Gerald Cleaver on drums. I wanted to have a band in Switzerland as well (I had just moved back from New York) and was also exploring different styles of music which required a different sound. So I started the band with Patrice Moret, Lionel Friedli, and a guitar player that was soon to be replaced by Colin Vallon on Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos. To me they were the best musicians available in the country for the music I had in mind, and they still are! But more than that—and most important in the end—is our connection on a human level. I feel like we grew up as a band at the same time as we grew up as human beings, and we became that unit. It’s as if the musical concept was replaced over time by the band itself.”

This band-as-bond aesthetic is easily perceptible in the set’s opener, “Gagarine.” In its constantly shifting air currents, the saxophone feels like an extension of itself, sustained by song. This feeling is magnified in “Fuchsia,” wherein synesthetic pleasures unfold with a welcoming combination of precision and freedom. Vallon is a wonder here, his every note the reflection of Masson’s shimmering moonlight.

If descriptions of this music lend themselves so effortlessly to visual analogues, that is perhaps because Masson is also an accomplished photographer. One of his images, in fact, adorns the cover of this album, in addition to a handful of other ECM sleeves.

“Photography always occupied a very important place in my life, a passion surpassed only by music. At one point, I never went to a concert without my camera. It helped me understand music on a different level, through a different prism. At first I wasn’t really familiar with the musicians I was photographing: Randy Weston, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Archie Shepp, Dewey Redman, The World Saxophone Quartet, John Zorn, Tim Berne, Miles Davis (yes!)…and it helped me get intimate with the making of the music. I was observing each of their movements, each eye contact, each interaction happening through my lens, while I was intensely listening. Then I felt I needed to make a choice between music and photography, so at 19 years old I boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway in Moscow and spent almost six months in Asia, taking as many images as possible. These long months away from music were fantastic, but I missed my saxophone too much, so I took a flight from Singapore to Geneva, grabbed my horn, and left for New York City! Over time music and photography became inseparable from each other. I need photography to feed my musical imagination and my musical experiences to guide my eye when I’m away from my instrument. Sometimes I like to think that I hear images and see sounds. Now regarding ECM, it also makes total sense to me since so much care is given to the visual side of any of their productions. It has to be a complete experience.”

Said completeness is made possible by Masson’s attentive bandmates, each of whom brings polishes his own facet of a holistic jewel, and for whom he has written compositions with particular souls in mind. There’s the painterly journey of “The Deep,” which dedicatee Friedli renders a beautiful struggle against the passage of time, and “Wood,” for Moret. The latter’s abstract yet rooted turns are indicative of the bassist’s oceanic sensibilities. Vallon, for his part, is a color mixer and blender whose palette exceeds the bounds of its own habitation, especially in the title track, a masterful duet with its composer. Each of these trusted friends nurtures Masson’s themes as seeds of unexpected growth. The saxophonist himself digs into deepest emotional reserves on “Philae,” a touchstone for its superbly articulated tenor, piecing together a landscape of monochromatic integrity.

To my ears, this music is deeply connected to memory. Masson agrees:

“I do rely on memories to find inspiration: visual, aural, olfactive, light, shapes, past experiences, sensations of places I’ve been to, people I’ve known, and so forth. I’m not exactly sure why, but it’s true that when I write music, most of the time a reminiscence is at the root. Maybe that’s common with people who have lived through indelible experiences early on in their lives.”

In these respects, both “Almost Forty” and “Blurred” seem to play with the idea of recollection and its way of filling in the gaps when reality cannot quite fully be captured. The first of these is a tender ballad that pushes the blood flow of Friedli’s cymbals through Moret’s thick arteries as the life force behind Vallon’s transformation of the keyboard into canvas, while the second finds the clarinet paving the way for a softer landing.

Such clarity of storytelling makes ECM an ideal home for this band, as in the nocturnal shading of “Jura.” It’s a solemn yet trustworthy way to end the day, kissing the present moment goodbye to welcome slumber. Says Masson of working with producer Manfred Eicher in this context:

“It’s such a privilege to let someone so uniquely gifted and experienced tell us if we’re going in the right direction or if we should try to expose things differently. It feels like working with one of the greatest filmmakers. You bring the story, the dialogues, and the actors, and he takes you on location, brings the cameramen, the lights, the right lenses and cameras, and offers his vision to help you realize your project. He keeps you on the right track and isn’t afraid to tell you when you’ve overplayed something. I feel very fortunate to have had the privilege to work with him, I am certainly looking forward to next occasion.”

And so are we, on the other side of the screen.

Louis Sclavis: Asian Fields Variations (ECM 2504)

| Tyran Grillo

2504 X

Louis Sclavis
Asian Fields Variations

Louis Sclavis clarinets
Dominique Pifarély violin
Vincent Courtois violoncello
Recorded September 2016, Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Mastering: Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: March 17, 2017

Although clarinetist Louis Sclavis has longstanding partnerships with violinist Dominique Pifarély and cellist Vincent Courtois in respective contexts, here they record for the first time as a trio. Each musician contributes to the overall compositional palette, and with each other’s greatest strengths firmly in mind. Sounding at times like chamber music, and at others like lullabies for an exhausted jazz fanatic, Asian Fields Variations is a robust thesis, fully proven.

Sclavis’s writing oozes atmosphere. Amid the arid currents of “Mont Myon,” throughout which drones metamorphose into melodies and vice versa, a melodic firmament switches places with an improvised fundament, and by that exchange speaks to the grander order of things in which this music unfolds. The bass clarinet monologue of “Pensée Furtive” likewise listens within to describe that which occurs without. But then “Asian Fields” opens a new window. There’s an open secrecy to its aesthetic, as if rendering a scene in charcoal normally done in ink. Courtois unpacks some particularly deep implications in his pizzicato solo, leaving Pifarély to bounce joyfully within each new geometric standard applied to the frame. And where “Cèdre” is a virtuosic showcase for all three, there’s nothing extraneous to hide its intentions. Here, as also in the closing “La Carrière,” a flexibility of emotion prevails, allowing every motif room to inhale, exhale, and inhale again.

The sound-world of Courtois is a graver mixture of dissonance and consonance. His balancing of the two in the unaccompanied “Done And Done” is absorption incarnate. “Fifteen Weeks” and “Les Nuits,” both for the trio, are mosaics of near-overlapping memories, each instrument an actor in idiosyncratic dramas. Pifarély’s “Figure Absente” is a violin solo of quasi-Baroque fascinations and Romantic exegeses. It is text and footnote in one. His “Sous Le Masque,” by contrast, is a play of hidden shadows and implications. Thus is left only the group improvisation “Digression.” Located at the album’s exact center, it speaks with the assurance of friends debating over issues that, while never resolved, make them closer for it all.

Keith Jarrett: A Multitude of Angels (ECM 2500-03)

| Tyran Grillo

2500-03 X

Keith Jarrett
A Multitude of Angels

Keith Jarrett piano
Concert recordings October 1996
Modena, Teatro Comunale / Ferrara, Teatro Comunale
Torino, Teatro Regio / Genova, Teatro Carlo Felice
Played, produced and engineered by Keith Jarrett
Mastering: Christoph Stickel and Manfred Eicher at MSM Studio, München
An ECM Production
Release date: November 4, 2016

Fate is retrospective. It lies hidden for any number of years—in this case twenty—before cracking a smile just broad enough to enter our field of vision. Whether courted by demons or offered by angels, events have a way of feeling inevitable when serving as targets of remembrance. In these solo concerts, recorded October 1996 in four Italian cities, Keith Jarrett reminds us that fate can be as beautiful as it can be terrifying. In the album’s liner note, the pianist calls this a pinnacle of his career as a solo improviser. But the keyword there is the indefinite article, for it must be one pinnacle of many in a horizon filled with them. These being the last solo concerts he would give before a then-undefined disease locked his body into temporary submission, they also unlocked a self-awareness that even Jarrett would need time to discover.

Part I of his performance at Modena is so comforting that listeners cannot help but become more deeply aware of their own selves. Like an old friend with whom you pick up right where you left off, it feels immediate and true. Jarrett embraces us with gentle assurance, asking nothing more from us than the same in return. As he transitions into a groovier romp midway through, punctuating the ether with all the experiential knowledge he has in grasp, he whispers of a reverie yet to come. As always, his is the voice of an artist marveling at his own transmission. Part II, as often happens in a Jarrett solo sequences, contrasts flowing lyricism with abstract denouement—no less welcoming than the more hummable forays. His probing nature creates an atmosphere of exploration, of a willingness to scour every last inch of soil in search of archaeological clues to the nature of these sounds. It only feels spontaneous because for being unearthed after so much hibernation.

Part I of Ferrara is one of the most visceral journeys Jarrett has ever recorded. Throughout its 44-minute traversal, we encounter an entire biography, spun and re-spun until shames are filled with virtues. This anthem of the soul paints a twilit dream of such thin altitude that it can only break itself toward fulfilment of knowledge. This is a crowning achievement of alchemy, by which the piano’s tempered steel medium metamorphoses into a golden message of liberation. This is followed by an upbeat Part II, for which Jarrett digs so deep that it’s all we can do to shine a light into the proverbial tunnel to catch a glimpse of his feet as he slips from view.

Torino’s brooding opening reveals a geometric puzzle that can only be solved by mixing it. Through its process of productive error, Jarrett becomes more complete, walking as much as dancing through stages of learning. Part II likewise obliterates introverted theories with extroverted practice, turning complex shapes into universally translatable phrases, hammered into place by stomping feet.

Genova’s first part, freest of them all, is a kaleidoscope turning in the hands of a future self. As Jarrett cascades down the waterfall of his own acceptance of whatever notes may come, he follows rather than leads the way into a river of diaristic currents before Part II travels upstream to the source. An anthem for all time, devoid of time.

This four-disc set might be worthy of the adjective “monumental” if only it wasn’t so intimate. If anything, it’s humility incarnate. This is clearest when Jarrett’s encores take form as tried-and-true melodies. Whether in his loving rendition of “Danny Boy” in Modena or aching “Over the Rainbow” in Genova, he plays to show us who we are at any given moment. Even in the unnamed encores we find something human to hold on to, alive with outstretched hands. Such is this music’s ability to grow as we grow, so that the most timeworn phrase becomes new when we add more pages to the books of our lives.

Mathias Eick: Ravensburg (ECM 2584)

| Tyran Grillo

Ravensburg

Mathias Eick
Ravensburg

Mathias Eick trumpet, voice
Håkon Aase violin
Andreas Ulvo piano
Audun Erlien electric bass
Torstein Lofthus drums
Helge Andreas Norbakken drums, percussion
Recorded June 2017 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: March 2, 2018

Since stepping through The Door into ECM bandleader status, Mathias Eick has decorated every room of his new abode with its own character. Where Skala felt like a kitchen filled with organic ingredients and Midwest a study plastered with maps and well-read books, for Ravensburgthe Norwegian trumpeter and composer has built a welcoming family room, as blueprintedin the opening track. For Eick, however, it’s clear that family is more than a question of blood; it’s also the sum of parts greater than what we know from direct experience.

Recalling the puzzles famously produced in this album’s eponymous Southern German town, each tune contributes its own piece, uniquely shaped yet vital to the whole. “Children” is another anchoring corner and adds a new thread to Eick’s sonic tapestry: his singing voice, a natural development for one who always seems to have approached the trumpet as an extension of the throat. In addition to its melodic earworm and nostalgic overlay, this tune fits together the new band’s own seamless puzzle. In the resulting landscape, violinist Håkon Aase is the stream to Eick’s river. Where the latter carves deeper grooves into the earth, the former traces paths through thickly settled forests and other places where a finer trajectory is required. Pianist Andreas Ulvo rolls with the adaptive rhythms of hills and mountains, while drummer Torstein Lofthus and percussionist Helge Andreas Norbakken render every rock and plant with sentient care. Last but not least is electric bassist Audun Erlien, providing the pliant tendons of the far-reaching “Friends” and “August.” The latter’s pianism is also noteworthy for translating the babble of cultural division into a musical language anyone can understand.

“Parents” continues the genetic conversation in fruitful directions, moving with the fortitude of a protector while curling inward in the shape of a lullaby. Eick and Aase trace a helix of improvisational bliss across this sky, further striating the rhythm section’s wonders in “Girlfriend” and “For My Grandmothers,” each a soft arrow shot into the future and the past. But nowhere is the story arc so clearly etched as in the title track, where pulses of dreams crack the egg of reality until its yolk becomes indistinguishable from the sun.

Eick is a rare soul, a musician whose themes are as perennial as they are personal. His politics flow beneath the skin’s surface where no violence may be inflicted by or upon them, thus allowing listeners to come as they are yet leave as they never thought to be.

Roscoe Mitchell: Bells for the South Side (ECM 2494/95)

| Tyran Grillo

2494|95 X

Roscoe Mitchell
Bells for the South Side

Roscoe Mitchell sopranino, soprano, alto and bass saxophones, flute, piccolo, bass recorder, percussion
James Fei sopranino and alto saxophones, contra-alto clarinet, electronics
Hugh Ragin trumpet, piccolo trumpet
Tyshawn Sorey trombone, piano, drums, percussion
Craig Taborn piano, organ, electronics
Jaribu Shahid double bass, bass guitar, percussion
William Winant percussion, tubular bells, glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba, roto toms, cymbals, bass drum, woodblocks, timpani
Kikanju Baku drums, percussion
Tani Tabbal drums, percussion
Recorded September 2015 at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago by David Zuchowski
Mixed May 2016 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines by Gérard de Haro with Steve Lake
Mastered by Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Steve Lake
Release date: June 16, 2017

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Roscoe Mitchell presented a cornucopia of trios at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in conjunction with the exhibition The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now. Said exhibition included percussion set-ups favored by Art Ensemble of Chicago legends Don Moye, Malachi Favors, Lester Bowie, Don Moye, and the reed-favoring multi-instrumentalist himself, all incorporated into the present double-disc recording.

Mitchell is the alpha and omega of this project, spearheading a series of designated trios to explore different organs of his immense compositional body. With Hugh Ragin (trumpet) and Tyshawn Sorey (here on trombone), he offers “Prelude to a Rose,” a somewhat funereal dirge that pops a cathartic blister about midway through.

With Jaribu Shahid (double bass) and Tani Tabbal (drums), Mitchell presents an unabashedly soulful sermon in “Prelude to the Card Game, Cards for Drums, and the Final Hand.” By force of his muscular alto, he punches holes in the time cards printed and cut by Shahid’s thick bowing before Tabbal turns the very concept of time inside out in an extended soliloquy, leaving a brief trio to throw some light at the end of the tunnel. Mitchell continues down that same introspective avenue in “Six Gongs and Two Woodblocks.” For this he’s joined by James Fei (reeds, electronics) and William Winant (percussion) for what may just be the album’s most brilliant turn of events. Its balance of outer and inner is at the very core of what Mitchell does best as a composer.

Even with pen laid aside, as in “Dancing in the Canyon,” a group improvisation with Craig Taborn (piano, organ, electronics) and Kikanju Baku (drums, percussion), he’s still the catalyst for an otherwise impossible chemical reaction. His sopranino dances as if it’s on fire and the only way to keep itself from turning to ashes is to sing until its throat runs dry. The sheer musicality of this unscripted dive inward is lucid to the extreme.

The album’s remainder is as shuffled as its musicians, for throughout it Mitchell recasts his trio actors in new roles and configurations. From the picturesque latticework of “Spatial Aspects of the Sound” to the nearly 26-minute blend of ambience and explosions that is “Red Moon in the Sky,” the latter segueing into the AEC’s calling card, “Odwalla,” played by the entire nonet, sound is substance. Connective tissue along the way spans a world of apparent influences, from Pierre Boulez and Iannis Xenakis to Anthony Braxton and Edgard Varèse. Taborn (electronics) and Shahid (bass guitar) unearth haunting ore in “EP 7849,” while in the title track Ragin slings precise arrows of piccolo trumpet over the “percussion cage” Mitchell created for the AEC and which is resurrected here to wonderous effect by Sorey. But even at its most explosive, as in the drums- and piano-heavy “The Last Chord,” there’s more Genesis than Revelation at play. Let there be music.

Peter Erskine Trio: As It Was (ECM 2490-93)

| Tyran Grillo

As It Was.jpg

Peter Erskine Trio
As It Was

Release date: July 1, 2016

On paper, drummer Peter Erskine might have seemed like an unusual leader for a piano trio, but once the sounds of his collaboration with pianist John Taylor and bassist Palle Danielsson made their acquaintance with uninitiated ear canals, there was no denying their efficacy as a unit. Erskine followed a trajectory all his own to enter the ranks of ECM, having already established his reputation with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, Maynard Ferguson, and Weather Report before breaching ECM waters in sessions with John Abercrombie, Jan Garbarek, and Kenny Wheeler. The latter association brought him into fateful contact with Taylor and Danielsson, and their interactions as a touring band paved the way for the four albums featured on this Old & New Masters set. And so, when it came time to craft his first ECM leader date—1992’s You Never Know—the choice of sidemen was obvious. “Side” being the operative word here, for John Kelman aptly describes the band in his superb liner notes as an “equilateral musical triangle.” By then Danielsson and Taylor were both ECM veterans: the former via landmark recordings with saxophonist Jan Garbarek and pianist Bobo Stenson, the latter via another unorthodox trio with singer Norma Winstone and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler known as Azimuth. Says Erskine in those same liner notes of the band documented here: “The trio seems, by its mathematical and geometric natures, to offer the most possibilities where interaction meets form, and openness meets density.”

You Never Know

You Never Know (ECM 1497)

John Taylor piano
Palle Danielsson double bass
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded July 1992 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With this first recording in the company of his European trio, Erskine made a lasting, if subdued, statement of intent. Its contours feel familiar, its moods even more so, and its overall feeling is one of peace and quiet passion. Considering the talent girding every corner of this triangle, it might seem unfair to single out one musician above the rest, but Taylor’s richly harmonic style is difficult to leave unpraised. Not only that, but his compositional contributions make up the bulk of a set awash in tuneful elegance. Take, for instance, the nine-and-a-half-minute opener, “New Old Age,” which seems to tell the story of a life in full circle. Taylor’s motive is the album’s heartbeat. Danielsson expands its EKG line and paves the way for Erskine’s airy considerations. This pattern repeats a cycle of experience, spinning the wheel of time and landing on “Clapperclowe.” This lively tune, softened by a montuno twang, features massage-like patter from Erskine. Another Taylor notable is “Evans Above,” a soulful Bill Evans tribute that sets the pianist dancing on clouds as he glides across landscapes past and present. Danielsson’s exquisite solo, flexible as a gymnast, is a glowing centerpiece. “Pure & Simple” might as well be called “Pure & Cymbal” for Erskine’s astute punctuations, each chiseling away at Taylor’s meteoroid on its path of sonorous fire.

Erskine himself contributes one tune: the sublime “On The Lake.” Its still and reflective sheen obscures a bass that moves like an evolutionary mystery beneath Loch Ness, even as home movies of children swimming, lovers canoeing, and friends gathering at the water’s edge flicker to the rhythm of the composer’s brushes. Three ballads by Vince Mendoza (whose tunes were heard to such great effect on John Abercrombie’s Animato) brings out the trio’s tenderest side, as in the 360-degree support of “Amber Waves.” And how can the empathic “Heart Game” not move us? It tugs and never lets go. If synergy is your bag, look no further than the trio’s closing rendition of “Everything I Love.” This Cole Porter joint is a window through smoke and time and practically bursts with effervescence at Taylor’s touch.

You Never Know would seem to have ushered in a new era for ECM, setting standards yet again for quality of recording, performance, and audience consideration. A dulcet and memorable date that lingers like the notes of a home cooked meal.

<< Aparis: Despite the fire-fighters’ efforts… (ECM 1496)
>> Hal Russell/NRG Ensemble: The Hal Russell Story (ECM 1498)

… . …

Time Being

Time Being (ECM 1532)

John Taylor piano
Palle Danielsson double bass
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded November 1993 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Once the lyricism of “Terraces” eases its way into our hearts, we know we’re in for a sublime experience on Time Being. Erskine’s sensitivity behind Danielsson’s equally considered solo, peeking above the horizon like the edge of a flock in silhouette, reveals sensuous technique through the cymbals and butterfly snare of “For The Time Being,” the responsive brushwork of “Phrase One,” and the dance-like movements of “Palle’s Headache” and “Evansong.” Yet it is Taylor, playing the piano as a blind man might touch a face, who makes this date the melodic gem that it is. We hear it in “If Only I Had Known,” sparkling blurrily in a visual language all its own. Taylor continues to take in every movement of leaf and shade in “Page 172,” which feels like a dream an old windup clock might have, a child’s automaton stretching its hands toward darkness. For “Bulgaria” he takes some thematic cues from folk music of the same. The Bobo Stenson feel on this track pays lovely tribute to the milieu from which he has grown. Danielsson paints a complementary impressionism, putting full heart into every brushstroke of “Liten Visa Till Karin” and in the fluid rustle of “Pieds-en-l’air,” ending a cordially realized set.

These images speak to us in indications, each a fragment of a mosaic beyond even the musicians’ comprehension. It is that same font into which all great improvisers dip, a limitless well that proceeds and recedes simultaneously, churning sentiment at the edge of a pond where inhibition ends and light begins. This is jazz of delectable subtlety that will embrace you, and another masterpiece from a trio that grew in leaps and bounds with every release.

<< Jarrett/Peacock/Motian: At The Deer Head Inn (ECM 1531)
>> Gavin Bryars: Vita Nova (ECM 1533 NS)

… . …

As It Is.jpg

As It Is (ECM 1594)

John Taylor piano
Palle Danielsson double bass
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded September 1995 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In this follow-up date to 1994’s Time Being, Erskine, Danielsson, and Taylor hone their salute to the Bill Evans and Paul Bley schools in their most transcendent short story collection yet. Each of these three narrators lends nuance to the arc. Taylor embodies a sense of perpetual motion quite different from that of Erskine, who in “The Lady In The Lake” evokes with his brushes a quiet train ride. Where the pianism is impressionistic and rounded, the drums are precise and crisp. So, too, in “Esperança,” which through shifting seasons reveals a brocade of sentimental journeys. Danielsson is more than the tuneful support of “Glebe Ascending,” though even in this album opener we get intimations of the interactivity to follow. His engaging filament runs through tunes like “Woodcocks” and “Touch Her Soft Lips And Part,” leaving a trail of footsteps alternating in charcoal and pastel. And what of Erskine? Look to “Episode” for your answer. This urgent piece hits the ground running and stumbles through city streets, whispering of metal and wind and skin. I submit to the defense also “Romeo & Juliet,” which like the classic play begins in innocence before culminating in Erskine’s tragic catharsis of a solo.

As It Is eschews the formulaic, instead kneading instruments and gestures into uniform dough. Just when Taylor seems to launch into an extended monologue, Danielsson rises from the deep to overtake it even as Erskine throws a commentative thread through every loophole. The resulting tumble is fluid and soft. Despite the breadth of its sweep, the music operates at a microscopic level. This is top-flight jazz, recorded, composed, and packaged with artisanal endearment.

<< Ketil Bjørnstad/David Darling: The River (ECM 1593)
>> Franz Schubert: Trio in Es-Dur/Notturno (ECM 1595 NS)

… . …

1657 X

JUNI (ECM 1657)

John Taylor piano
Palle Danielsson double bass
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded July 1997 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

ECM’s fourth and final album by the Peter Erskine Trio, JUNI best realizes the balance between fullness and sparseness the three had been seeking since their debut. An underlying Bill Evans influence—lifeblood of everything this trio plays—is even more nakedly portrayed. “The forming of this trio was partly a reaction to a lot of stuff that’s out there,” notes Erskine. “There’s so much music that’s just thrown at you, and it’s loud and it has no real dynamic range and all the spaces in the music are filled up. I wanted to oppose that trend.” To that end, if not beginning, Erskine and company enable a delicate asymmetry in which transformation is a necessary condition of life. Whereas before they created epic swaths of watery goodness, this time they concentrate on a subtler array of themes and moods.

Taylor again contributes the most tunes and opens with his wavering “Prelude Nr 2.” Raindrops seem to fall from his fingers in an abstract introduction, dark though chambering a shining heart. “Windfall,” previously heard on Journey’s End by the Miroslav Vitous Group, plots a smoother, Brazilian-flavored journey. Supple flowers grow wherever Danielsson treads, and his rounded solo foils Taylor’s dialogue with Erskine to remarkable effect. “Fable” rounds out the Taylor compositions with a ray of golden light and feathered shadow evoked by him and Danielsson respectively, and strung by the restless air currents of Erskine’s brushes. The latter add paternal love to the plush emotional exchanges of Danielsson’s “Siri,” in which Taylor is the true standout.

Erskine himself counters with a twofer of his own, including the fragmentary and whimsical “The Ant & The Elk” (notable for his subdued yet popping aside) and “Twelve,” from which the album gets its title (jūni means “twelve” in Japanese) and which evokes the barest whispers of swing, maintaining purposeful ambiance even at its most straightforward. “For Jan”—by Kenny Wheeler, for a relative of the same name—reflects Erskine’s work with Taylor in Wheeler-led ensembles. From a skittering drum intro it unfolds into a sparkling anthem with gorgeous slides from Danielsson, who polishes the edges of Taylor’s keys.

Like the second hand of a schoolroom analog clock, “Namasti” (Diana Taylor) passes smoothly through the minutes with precision. Its face may be secular, but its implications are spiritual and take things for the illusions that they are.

JUNI thus brands a perfect yin yang onto Erskine’s résumé. He holds the world on a wire, eliciting a most sonorous gravitation. He is the sun of these sessions. May his light touch your heart.

<< Giya Kancheli: Lament (ECM 1656 NS)
>> The Hilliard Ensemble: Lassus (ECM 1658 NS)

Arild Andersen: In-House Science (ECM 2594)

| Tyran Grillo

In-House Science

Arild Andersen
In-House Science

Arild Andersen double bass
Paolo Vinaccia drums
Tommy Smith tenor saxophone
Concert recording by ORF, September 29, 2016
at PKS Villa Bad Ischl, Austria
Recording producer: Michael Radanovics
Engineer: Alios Hummer (Radio Österreich 1)
Mixing/mastering: Jan Erik Kongshaug and Arild Andersen
An ECM Production
Release date: March 23, 2018

The swirling, majestic world of bassist Arild Andersen’s trio with drummer Paolo Vinaccia and saxophonist Tommy Smith is difficult to contain, which is probably why it’s best captured in a live recording. On In-House Science, we’re treated a 2016 performance from Austria. Over the course of six Andersen originals, sensations ranging from reflection to full-blown transformation are handled with equal commitment.

What begins as a soft awakening in “Mira,” courtesy of Andersen’s sunlit tone, turns into a blinding sunrise as Smith unleashes a fiery sermon. Toward the end of the tune, a hint of uplift dies as quickly as it’s born: a signal, perhaps, to remind us that getting inside the heads of listeners is far more vital than making them nod in agreement. That being said, there’s something about the way in which these three powerful characters merge so democratically from the fog of egotistical possibilities. They follow as much as lead, take in as much as elicit, and fall into loose interpretation as much as strict. That they’re able to triangulate them so selflessly all is not only remarkable; it’s downright laboratorial. Hence the album’s title, which is split between two tracks that, together, encapsulate Andersen’s powerful ethos while also expanding its parameters. In “Science,” he and Vinaccia connect to form a Möbius strip of sonic fuse, while Smith traces its endless spark more thrillingly than the possibility of any explosion. The passionate degaussing that follows from Andersen is an album highlight, as much the exhalation to Vinaccia’s inhalation as the other way around. And while “In-House” builds on similar principles, its fluency is deepened by Smith’s growling ruptures of translation. Again, bassist and drummer turn the spotlight inside out, making sure that every particle is given a voice. This is art that fulfills the promise in compromise.

Between those two mountainous zones we get the temperate valleys of “Venice,” “North Of The North Wind,” and “Blussy.” The first is a prize fight between antiquity and modernity, Vinaccia mapping every punch and parry with his kit. The second is an ambient turn inward, its electronically sequenced bass telling a love story between land and water, and the ever-changing border of their contact. The last is a modern classic of Andersenian muscle, and gives Smith more than enough fuel to fly his rocket through the stratosphere without ever losing contact with home base.

I was brought to this album by the yesterday’s sad news of Vinaccia’s passing, for which today has been a time of solemn remembrance yet vibrant listening. May he continue to be heard.

Wolfgang Muthspiel: Rising Grace (ECM 2515)

| Tyran Grillo

Rising Grace

Wolfgang Muthspiel
Rising Grace

Wolfgang Muthspiel guitar
Ambrose Akinmusire trumpet
Brad Mehldau piano
Larry Grenadier double bass
Brian Blade drums
Recorded January 2016, Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 28, 2016

Nearly three years after making his ECM leader debut with Driftwood, Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel returns to the studio, expanding that trio into a quintet. Carrying over bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade, he adds the potent variables of pianist Brad Mehldau and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. The result is exponential.

Muthspiel is that rare artist who makes arpeggios sound like melodic leads rather than backbones. Cases in point are the title track and “Triad Song.” In both, the band attracts character traits that are to define the album’s master narrative. Muthspiel and Grenadier move in lockstep, while Akinmusire keens, Mehldau sings, and Blade shines like gold in the morning sun. Their flowing sound, studded with occasional peaks, catches the glow of a humbly creative lighthouse.

As composer, Muthspiel focuses on the little things, and in so doing makes them feel all-encompassing. Such highlights include “Intensive Care” for Muthspiel’s nylon-stringed questions and Mehldau’s lyrical answers, “Supernonny” for Akinmusire’s robust exposition, and “Boogaloo” for its riskier details.

The set is fleshed out by dedicatory masterstrokes. “Father And Sun” examines a relationship that is earthly, spiritual, and uncontainable. Its atmospheric integrity, domestically inclined, finds heartfelt analogue in “Den Wheeler, Den Kenny.” This loving tribute to trumpeter Kenny Wheeler especially references 1976’s Gnu High, a longtime inspiration for Muthspiel. Here, the soaring of that classic album is met with an elegiac crawl across a barren landscape. “Wolfgang’s Waltz,” a tune written by Mehldau specifically for this album, finds its own father soloing with a storyteller’s grace between the binding of an adhesive groove. All of which makes Rising Grace a gracious (indeed) experience filled with love, hope, and extended kinship.