Jazz

Wolfert Brederode Trio: Black Ice (ECM 2476)

| Tyran Grillo

Black Ice

Wolfert Brederode Trio
Black Ice

Wolfert Brederode piano
Gulli Gudmundsson double bass
Jasper van Hulten drums
Recorded July 2015, Auditorio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 1, 2016

It wasn’t the notes, it was the silences between the notes. Some music is the very enemy of silence, keeping the sounds coming so that the listener has no time to reflect. But other music, the music she played for herself, was different…
–Simon Mawer, The Glass Room

Following his quartet outings, Currents and Post Scriptum, pianist Wolfert Brederode dips into the font of trioism, joining forces with bassist Gulli Gudmundsson and drummer Jasper van Hulten. It’s a setting in which Brederode feels very much at home, despite the varied ensembles of which he has been a part, both within and without the ECM stable.

Given the vast amounts of energy put out by those preceding albums, “Elegia” involves as a tender welcome. Brederode’s sound-world is no less clearly defined, but here maps its crisp shoreline by the waves rolling onto it. A strum along the piano strings lands us softly into the arid “Olive Tree,” for which the band sidesteps that slow-motion crash in favor of utter restraint. In that restraint, however, lurks the ever-present possibility of fractures, so that every groove courts rupture. That everything holds together is due to fierce communication between the musicians, best expressed in the evocative title track: a smooth, glassine surface across which melodies glide without fear of falling through.

WBT

The patient unfolding of “Cocoon” proves just how dedicated Brederode and his crew they are to keeping their vessel afloat. Solos are few and far between, as they should be, as no voice is intended to dominate. Gudmundsson’s shaded “Conclusion,” the only non-Brederode original of the set, foregrounds its composer in one of few exceptions. The bassist’s presence throughout “Curtains” and “Rewind,” both highlights, is also notable. Likewise van Hulten’s snare in “Fall,” another oceanic mooring.

As with anything Brederode touches, however, primary focus is on message over medium. Where “Bemani” is a tapered ligament connecting soil and sky, “Terminal” is an unsettling illustration of horizontal anxieties. Meant to evoke an airport after hours, its brevity is proportional to its experiential vividness. But nowhere does the candle of evocation burn so brightly as in “Glass Room,” which by its architectural sensitivity treats windows not as portals but as palimpsests of our deepest desires.

Another glorious example of why ECM is the world’s most significant trio archive.

Burkhard Reinartz: Eine Olive des Nichts (ECM New Series 2435)

| Tyran Grillo

Eine Olive des Nichts

Burkhard Reinartz
Eine Olive des Nichts

Burkhard Reinartz conception, reciter
Anja Lais reciter
Bruno Winzen reciter
Recorded August 2013, Rheinklang Tonstudio, Köln
Recording engineer/sound design: Alexander Hardt
Album produced by Burkhard Reinartz
Release date: September 19, 2015

For Eine Olive des Nichts (An Olive of Nothingness), Cologne-based radio director Burkhard Reinartz has curated a personal collage of poetry by Adam Zagajewski, Tomas Tranströmer, and Philippe Jaccottet, as read by Anja Lais, Bruno Winzen, and Reinartz himself. More than a spoken word project, however, it coheres by virtue of music drawn from ECM’s vast back catalog by Eivind Aarset, Susanne Abbuehl, Jon Balke, Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin, the Stefano Battaglia Trio, the Wolfert Brederode Quartet, Ketil Bjørnstad, David Darling, Andrey Dergatchev, Mathias Eick, Sidsel Endresen, Morton Feldman, Food, Michael Galasso, Paul Giger, Jon Hassell, Arve Henriksen, the Benedict Jahnel Trio, Meredith Monk, Arvo Pärt, Michele Rabbia, Trygve Seim, Steve Tibbetts, Tomasz Stanko, the Bobo Stenson Trio, the Tarkovsky Quartet, Steven Kovacs Tickmayer, and the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble, amounting to a play without a stage, if not a film without images.

Unlike Re: ECM by Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer, in which ECM snippets were stretched into barely recognizable washes of ambience, or, at the other end of the spectrum, Christian Reiner’s bare readings of Friedrich Hölderlin on Turmgedichte, here a haunting medium between the two is struck. Interwoven with the poets’ reflections on their art and pockmarked with plenty of nostalgic moments for label listeners, this montage of creations and creators speaks with a timeless quality, as if one could enter and exit it at any moment and it would continue flowing, with or without us.

Reinartz

Even without a shred of German recall, ECM completists and adventurous listeners alike will find purchase in this project’s deft blend of speech and sound. One can also appreciate the intimacy with which the poetry is read—so intimate, in fact, that one feels like they shouldn’t be there, as if the words were intensely private, fogging the mirrors between conscious and unconscious awareness.

The mixing of samples is seamless, passionate dip into the label’s oeuvre. Whether in the nocturnal tinges of Hassell’s “Blue Period” and Darling’s “Darkwood IV” or the sun-drenched excursions of Tibbetts’s 12-string, in the downward rhythmic spirals of “Modul 42” by Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin or the poignant elegy of Stanko’s “Dirge For Europe,” the inner lives of familiar tunes reveal fresh perspectives of association. Much like the poetry they surround, meanings in this music are suggested by their connection to lived experiences, and through those connections invite us to graft our own.

Ferenc Snétberger: Titok (ECM 2468)

| Tyran Grillo

Titok

Ferenc Snétberger
Titok

Ferenc Snétberger guitar
Anders Jormin double bass
Joey Baron drums
Recorded May 2015 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 21, 2017

Hungarian guitarist Ferenc Snétberger returns to ECM after an enchanting solo concert debut, now exploring 13 originals with an expansive trio. In that sense, bassist Anders Jormin and drummer Joey Baron are more than mere allies called upon to flesh out skeletal tunes, but musicians whom Snétberger has clearly admired from afar and who now mesh seamlessly with his acoustic nexus. The centering of a nylon-string classical guitar where normally an electric might be creates conversational sonorities with Jormin, while Baron acts as interpreter for their linguistically variant modes of expression.

The album opens and closes with a total of five spontaneous tracks, each exploring a unique plane of the trio’s many-sided synergy. The last of these ends with the bandleader by his lonesome, slinking off into the night with great expectations in tow. Between those exes on the map, the listener is treated to a dotted line winding along superbly thought-out terrain. Both “Kék Kerék” and “Rambling” reveal an artist who lives by that frequent traveler’s credo: anything goes. That said, their paths are anchored by wholesome melodies that feel predictive of their course.

From here, the set develops in stages, moving from the intimacy of “Orange Tango” (noteworthy for Jormin’s song-like bassing) and “Fairytale,” through the sun-kissed foliage of “Álom” and the lullaby of “Leolo” (dedicated to Snétberger’s grandson), and on to the jauntier “Ease,” in which the trio moves so effortlessly as to seem blood-related. All of these gestures come together in the dance that is “Renaissance,” wherein ancient and future impulses find common ground.

Titok is yet another of those albums that would never have existed without the faith of producer Manfred Eicher, whose choice of musicians, sequencing of tunes, and encouragement of freedom are felt from start to finish, making it one of the most indispensable releases of 2017.

Iro Haarla: Ante Lucem (ECM 2457)

| Tyran Grillo

Ante Lucem.jpg

Iro Haarla
Ante Lucem

Iro Haarla piano, harp
Hayden Powell trumpet
Trygve Seim soprano and tenor saxophones
Ulf Krokfors double bass
Mika Kallio drums, percussion
NorrlandsOperans Symfoniorkester
Karin Eriksson concertmaster
Jukka Iisakkila conductor
Recorded October 2012 at the Concert Hall of NorrlandsOperan, Umeå, Sweden
Tonmeister: Lars-Göran Ulander
Engineer: Torbjörn Samuelsson
Mixed in Stockholm by Torbjörn Samuelsson, Manfred Eicher, and Iro Haarla
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 26, 2016

Finnish pianist, harpist, and composer Iro Haarla is the only artist to have made that triangle of talents an equilateral one. Five years separate this and her last ECM project, Vespers, carrying over from it a certain allegiance to cold landscapes while erasing a break into the clouds above it to let through spiritual sunrays. Described by Haarla as “the struggle between darkness and light,” Ante Lucem is a house unto itself, inhabited by figures frozen in time yet harboring thoughts of fire. Its doorway is “Songbird Chapel.” Although scored for symphony orchestra and jazz quintet—the latter including trumpeter Hayden Powell, saxophonist Trygve Seim, bassist Ulf Krokfors, drummer/percussionist Mika Kallio, and Haarla herself—this inaugural section treats the orchestra not as a backdrop for improvised cartographies but rather as a body wholly comprised of individual voices. The effect is such that even the distinct soloing of Seim’s tenor feels connected by ligaments to its surroundings.

Cellular metamorphoses abound in “Persevering with Winter,” wherein Krokfors draws an arco thread through icicle-rich forest (an effect recreated by Kallio’s synesthetic percussion) and Powell swells in and out of focus as if caught between perceptions of reality. The third section—“…and the Darkness has not overcome it…”—opens with Seim’s duduk-like tone flexing its bones in the stillness of a setting sun. Here the quintet takes center stage, fleshing out internal conflicts with the fortitude of a theological assembly. Thus we come to “Ante Lucem – Before Dawn…” For this, the orchestra and quintet occupy different bands of the audible spectrum, in what amounts to a musical representation of the Passion, beginning in the garden of Gethsemane and ending with the glory of resurrection.

Throughout, whether on harp or piano, Haarla brings a cinematically binding force to every shift of terrain. Her sense of drama is realistic, of timing precise, and of divinity barely veiled. All of which makes Ante Lucem a resonant statement of faith in a time of faithlessness.

Trygve Seim: Rumi Songs (ECM 2449)

| Tyran Grillo

2449 X

Trygve Seim
Rumi Songs

Tora Augestad vocal
Frode Haltli accordion
Svante Henryson violoncello
Trygve Seim soprano and tenor saxophones
Recorded February 2015 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 26, 2016

A natural intersection of musicians, bound by the mysticism of Rumi, Rumi Songs is saxophonist and composer Trygve Seim’s love letter to a poet whose influences broke the world wide open when rendered into English by Coleman Barks, whose translations are used almost exclusively throughout. For this project Seim welcomes accordionist Frode Haltli and cellist Svante Henryson, both members of his larger ensemble, alongside vocalist Tora Augestad.

The introductory “In Your Beauty” sounds like breathing itself. It also establishes the melding of accordion and cello, the purity of Augestad’s singing, and the aching lyricism of Seim’s reed. From this bud emerges the petals of “Seeing Double,” which checks off love, borders of the flesh, and self-questioning: all constant themes in Rumi’s poetry. Although the instrumentation stays the same in number, it widens in scope, as Seim allows his freedom to shine forth without hesitation.

Rumi Portrait
(Photo credit: Knut Bry)

Where “Across The Doorsill” is more playful, detailed, and surreal in that way children might usually be, “The Guest House” has a mature and mournful tinge, as underscored by Henryson’s bow. Linguistically, it speaks in right angles and architectural forms, much like its titular structure, at the same time rounding its back with the skill of an experienced yoga practitioner into one methodical pose after another.

While there are jewels of optimism to be unearthed here, such the droning lullaby of “Like Every Other Day” and the latticed groove of the tango-esque examination of desire that is “When I See Your Face,” the general mood floats somewhere between dreaming and brooding. “Leaving My Self” is the most haunting song of the collection in this respect. A curious rendering of parental sacrifice and interstitial love, its accordion acts as drone for the cello’s snaking lines. Seim is noticeably absent this time, taking in the wind. Even “Whirling Rhythms,” an instrumental inspired by Seim’s pilgrimage to Konya to see Rumi’s tomb for himself, has about it an air of darker contemplation.

In the closing “There Is Some Kiss We Want,” Seim switches to soprano. An enchanting creation, it yields a stanza that best expresses the relationship at hand of sound and text:

At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face against mine
“Breathe into me”

Ketil Bjørnstad: A Suite Of Poems (ECM 2440)

| Tyran Grillo

2440 X

Ketil Bjørnstad
A Suite Of Poems

Anneli Drecker voice
Ketil Bjørnstad piano
Recorded June 2016 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Ketil Bjørnstad
Release date: May 18, 2018

Following his song cycles Vinding’s Music and Sunrise, pianist and composer Ketil Bjørnstad expands his ECM presence once again with new settings, this time of words by Norwegian-Danish author Lars Saabye Christensen. Christensen’s verses, written in different hotel rooms and sent to Bjørnstad from around the world, seem destined to take form as the humbly titled A Suite Of Poems presented here.

Bjørnstad’s characteristic feel for texture, mood, and atmosphere is in peak form. In contrast to, say, his duo albums with cellist David Darling, which despite their sparse instrumentation speak of vast landscapes, now the spaces offered to us are astonishingly intimate. Quintessentially so is program opener “Mayflower, New York,” which paints a city recently kissed by rain and the lone tourist moving his pen in its sprawl. Like “Kempinski, Berlin,” it’s filled with small moments, each more personal than the last, as our proverbial traveler balances depth and weightlessness through the music itself. A perennial theme of travel is, of course, explored throughout the album, but so is its inextricable relationship to temporality. In “Duxton, Melbourne,” a tender musing on life’s unstoppable progression, vocalist Anneli Drecker winds her voice around hesitations, missed opportunities, and empty calendars to insightful effect.

A Suite Photo
(From left to right: Lars Saabye Christensen, Ketil Bjørnstad, Anneli Drecker; photo credit: Maria Gossé)

The fatigue of travel is also likened to time passages, and nowhere so poignantly as in “Palazzo Londra, Venice.” Here the narrator looks at his own unrecognizable face in the mirror, unable to connect with the self as he used to. Similar anxieties, as fed through fantastical imagery, haunt “Vier Jahreszeiten, Hamburg.” Ultimately, however, the focus is on details: the lost umbrella of “Mayday Inn, Hong Kong,” the forgotten ashtrays of “Lutetia, Paris,” and the handkerchiefs of “Savoy, Lisbon.”

On the somber end of the spectrum are “L’Hotel, Paris” and “Palace, Copenhagen.” The latter tells of Christensen’s (?) first time stepping into a hotel—on June 23, 1963, to be precise—and finds the boy scared and uncertain of the future. The piano writing is especially passionate, drifting from minor to major as Drecker sings of “the Danish sun behind us whipping up the rain from the cobblestones.” This contrastive dynamic is repeated in “The Grand, Krakow,” the suite’s most hopeful yet shaded turn. Other selections reveal a playful side to Christensen’s wordcraft, and Bjørnstad’s evocation of it. “Astor Crowne, New Orleans” is one whimsical example, in which Drecker navigates a bluesy drinking song.

The suite ends with “Schloss Elmau,” a piano solo that acts as both vessel of remembrance and farewell, a bidirectional portal that inhales the past and exhales the future, all the while praying for respite beyond the reach of any clock.

Re: Seoul (ECM 2365)

| Tyran Grillo

Re Seoul

Re: Seoul was produced in limited numbers to accompany the 2013 exhibition “ECM – Think of your ears as eyes” in the South Korean capital. A historically rich selection distinguishes it from other compilations, as does its artistic associations. From the Gary Burton Quartet’sSeven Songs For Quartet And Chamber Orchestra (ECM 1040) are unearthed two tracks. “Three” epitomizes that album’s Mike Gibbs focus, serving as a limber vehicle for Steve Swallow’s bassing, while the darker strings of “Nocturne Vulgaire” transition into Swallow’s own “Arise, Her Eyes.” Together, they polish facets of a gem whose occlusions are unlike any other. Because Seven Songs had yet to be reissued on CD at this point, the hard-to-find Seoul disc was even more a treasure.

Even deeper textures await in the opening tracks of Ralph Towner and John Abercrombie’s Five Years Later (ECM 1207). The two guitarists, playing acoustic and electric instruments, respectively, stretch a blemish-less canvas while simultaneously painting it. With a flowing care more commonly associated with string players, they render every phrase in slow, circuitous motion. As if to unmask that metaphor, “Runes,” from Keith Jarrett’s Arbour Zena (ECM 1070), treats its orchestra like some ancient body of water, its surface so reflective that bassist Charlie Haden must walk around it to keep the scene intact, even as Jarrett runs his fingers across it.

Two standouts from the Sam Rivers album Contrasts (ECM 1162), at this point also on the cusp of a reissue, show the saxophonist and bandleader in top form. Both “Circles” and “Solace” represent the album’s freer side and give trombonist George Lewis plenty of room to roam over the rhythm section of bassist Dave Holland and drummer Thurman Barker. This is deeply considered music that erases every footprint it leaves behind. That same description carries over without a skip in the Miroslav Vitous Group’s self-titled album (ECM 1185), from which we are treated to yet another significant unearthing, this time of the bassist’s original “When Face Gets Pale.” Here John Surman unleashes a powerful baritone, while the saxophonist’s own “Sleeping Beauty” lays those tensions to rest. Rounded out by Kenny Kirkland on piano and Jon Christensen on drums, this is a spirited dyad of waking dreams.

Yeahwon Shin’s “Lullaby,” a logical selection from her ECM debut (ECM 2337) that pairs the Korean singer with pianist Aaron Parks in one of the tenderest improvisations in the label’s entire oeuvre, sits comfortably alongside Norma Winstone’s “A Breath Away.” The latter setting of a Ralph Towner tune, taken from Dance Without Answer (ECM 2333), brings us somewhat full circle, best expressing the Seoul exhibition’s subtitle, “Think of your ears as eyes,” for in that sentiment exists ECM’s deepest ethos, one as much inspired by moving imagery as by recorded sound.

Miroslav Vitous: Music of Weather Report (ECM 2364)

| Tyran Grillo

Music of Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous
Music of Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous double bass, keyboards
Gary Campbell soprano and tenor saxophones
Roberto Bonisolo soprano and tenor saxophones
Aydin Esen keyboards
Gerald Cleaver drums
Nasheet Waits drums
Recording producer and engineer: Miroslav Vitous
Recorded March and May 2010, February and March 2011 at Universal Syncopations Studios
Assistant engineer: Andrea Luciano
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 10, 2016

The bass of Miroslav Vitous has been a hub of creative activity since making its ECM debut on 1979’s collaboration with Terje Rypdal and Jack DeJohnette. In the intervening six years since leaving Weather Report, he had deepened his voice on the instrument, taking his arco dialects into more fluent directions than ever. Unlike its soft companion, Remembering Weather Report, which evoked the feel of his seminal band, this latest redux dives headlong into the cofounder’s originals that made Weather Report shine. Fascinating not only for its audacity, but also for its assembly, it pairs drummers Gerald Cleaver, occupying the left channel with saxophonist Gary Campbell, and Nasheet Waits, occupying the right with saxophonist Roberto Bonisolo. Rounded by Turkish keyboardist Aydin Esen, the sound is best realized on the tune “Seventh Arrow,” in which both sides of this improvisationally free equation flip on a glowing equals sign. Along with “Morning Lake,” which unleashes a quiet army of melodic water skeeters, it references Weather Report’s very first album from 1971 on Columbia.

The music of Joe Zawinul is a touchstone of the program, which opens with “Scarlet Woman Variations” in a necklace of reiterations as threaded by an electronically enhanced Vitous and the clarion sopranism of Campbell. In that same spirit the sextet takes on a reshuffled “Birdland Variations,” wherein joy abounds. Like the two “Multi Dimension Blues” of Vitous sandwiching it, it finds beauty behind closed eyes and open hands. Best described in Vitous’s own words as “two galaxies or universes pulling and affecting each other,” the two tandems therein create more than they replace. Esen’s atmospheric touches in “Birdland” evoke more of the same, only now with a more nostalgic feel that’s still fresh as a sunrise. Wayne Shorter’s “Pinocchio” gets an even freer treatment that traces the present band’s luminescence with astronomical precision.

In “Acrobat Issues,” Vitous rebinds an old book with burnished leather, leaving the gold stamping to the dialoguing tenors and the final stitching to his drummers. Hearing their interplay so beautifully recorded will give those familiar with Weather Report much to celebrate, while to those not it will serve as the eyepiece of a time-honored microscope looking in on a watershed moment of jazz history.

Thomas Strønen: Lucus (ECM 2576)

| Tyran Grillo

2576 X

Thomas Strønen
Lucus

Thomas Strønen drums
Ayumi Tanaka piano
Håkon Aase violin
Lucy Railton violoncello
Ole Morten Vågen double bass
Recorded March 2017, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 19, 2018

Time is a blind guide….
To remain with the dead is to abandon them….
One becomes undone by a photograph,
by love that closes its mouth before calling a name….
–Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

Since its ECM debut in 2015, drummer and composer Thomas Strønen’s “Time Is A Blind Guide” has grown by apparent parthenogenesis into a project of malleable form. On Lucus, that form assumes a variety of shapes, intersecting in the same limpid pool of night. As a treatment of celestial expressions, the material is as much suggested as composed, trusted to flourish in fortifying hands. Strønen kindly explained to me via email TIABG’s continued growth:

“Time Is A Blind Guide has more and more become an autonomic organism with its own musical life. Different constellations (duos, trios, etc.) appear within the ensemble, and the material is treated with more freedom and stronger interplay. Variations in how the pieces are preformed have grown and a stronger personal language has been developed, to the point where we manage to form ideas into our own world, thus allowing us to widen our musical expression.”

Strønen’s sense of widening expression wraps its amorphous arms around “La Bella,” which by its triangulation of violin (Håkon Aase), cello (Lucy Railton), and malleted drums elicits a feeling of circulation given blood by the piano (Ayumi Tanaka). This quiet yet resolute introduction, itself an awakening into moving imagery, embodies a cinematic process: a projection of light onto uniform surfaces where freedom dances to the tune of a faintly outlined script. “Friday” is potent in this metaphorical regard. From its montage of recollections emerges a story to which only listeners may add a beginning and an end. Bassist Ole Morten Vågen taps into the very spine of this music, while Tanaka’s presence, a relatively new addition to the TIABG nexus born from live performances, is magical in these turns of phrase. Her gestures elicit speech without words. And while there are no solos to speak of, save for Strønen’s narrative stroke of brilliance in “Baka” and Vågen’s intro to “Tension,” as organs of the same body, each has its function, singing with the whole in mind.

“Fugitive Pieces,” referring to the novel from which Strønen adopted the band’s name, is an intimate and poetic character study, given wings by instruments of touch. The title track, too, separates filaments of interpretation from emotional moonbeams. So much of what happens in the horizontal regressions of “Release” or the more detail-oriented rhythms of “Wednesday” is built on foundations wrought in the foundry of live performance:

“We have toured a lot over the past year, having played in the US, Brazil, Japan, and Europe. This, combined with rehearsals, has contributed to the way we play today. We knew the material well and recorded the whole album within a day and a half. The music was written with the acoustics of the studio in mind and that has also lead to us wanting to play more concert halls and larger concert rooms than small clubs.”

Producer Manfred Eicher, as always, had a hand in what transpired, giving that extra puff of wind needed to satisfy even the most tattered feathers:

“I wasn’t surprised but rather happy that Manfred had great belief in the record. He also contributed strongly in studio, communicating ideas and details that shaped the compositions. He quickly understood what I aimed for and was a strong force during the recording.”

If inclinations of that force of, and desire for, space weren’t already apparent, they step forth most boldly in “Truth Grows Gradually” and “Weekend,” both of which unfold as stories told out of time. Like the album as a whole, they are a chronology of the soul, wrapped and unwrapped until nothing but truth remains.