Jazz

Yves Robert: In Touch (ECM 1787)

| Tyran Grillo

In Touch

Yves Robert
In Touch

Yves Robert trombone
Vincent Courtois cello
Cyril Atef drums
Recorded March 2001 at Piccolo Studio, Paris
Engineer: Vincent Bruly
Mixed at Studio Ferber, Paris by Jeff Ginouves, Manfred Eicher, and Yves Robert
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Before In Touch, Yves Robert had inhabited ECM’s wings on only two occasions: as a commentative presence on Heiner Goebbels’s Ou bien le débarquement désastreux and as a pliant sideman on Louis Sclavis’s Les Violences de Rameau. Here the French jazz trombonist dips into the leader pool, emerging with two fascinating sidemen of his own: cellist Vincent Courtois and drummer Cyril Atef—an interdisciplinary combination of instruments, to be sure, but one that lends itself well to the label’s fluid ethos.

Robert gives rise to this self-styled “imaginary baroque” by means of dark seeds and careful germinations. The title piece and its two variations thus triangulate the program, keeping its structure in place, pins of a lepidopteran sound. From first stirrings, the album’s subtitle (“48 Minutes of Tenderness”) makes intuitive sense. Robert’s low animations flow beneath the surface, transporting secrets along breathy avenues toward a non-abrasive core. Passing the extroverted architecture of “Let’s lay down” and on to the introversions of “La tendresse” (incidentally, also the moniker under which the trio performs), this chain of touchstones and drop-off points opens snaking lines from trombone and cello over a rasp of brushed drums. The harmonies are familiar, prelude to the cracks that soon appear, each a bar of light from a venetian blind. Robert’s mastery is full, if subtle, engaging the cello’s central line in a push and pull of harmony. Lungs and fingertips share a dance floor, working their respective crafts with microscopically attuned confidence to Courtois’s bass-like metronome. This inspires scat-like denouement from Robert, at last ending with beautiful duo action between Courtois and Atef that is equal parts Ligeti and Varèse. Colorful drumming further lays down an inspiring primer for Courtois in “L’air d’y toucher,” in which a strong groove emerges with vivid melodic detailing. All of this funnels into the fascinations of “Basculement du désir” and “L’attente reste,” both veils of marginalia floating in the wind.

Bear in mind that In Touch may not be for you. But if you’ve ever found yourself wandering down opaque alleys in search of a haunting, alluring sound, then it may be just what you need.

<< Paul Bley: Solo in Mondsee (ECM 1786)
>> Tomasz Stanko Quartet: Soul of Things (ECM 1788)

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)

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)

Bobby Naughton Units: Understanding (JAPO 60006)

| Tyran Grillo

Understanding

Bobby Naughton Units
Understanding

Perry Robinson clarinet
Mark Whitecage flute, basset born
Richard Yongstein or Mario Pavone bass
Randy Kaye or Laurence Cook percussion
Bobby Naughton vibraphone, piano, clavinet
Recorded October 30, 1971 in concert at Yale University and at Blue Rock Studio, New York
Engineer Eddie Korvin
Originally produced in USA by Otic Records, a musicians’ cooperative

Self-taught composer-performer Bobby Naughton has been playing the vibraphone professionally since 1966. From silent film scoring to a stint with the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, not to mention a regular spot alongside Leo Smith (see 1979’s Divine Love), Naughton has since developed his craft by way of a unique, eclectic career. In 1971, Naughton and a handful of trusted musicians took a dip into the JAPO pool with Understanding. Recorded both in studio and in concert (with a slight change in roster between each), it documents a singular shuffle of original tunes and those of Carla Bley.

Bley and Naughton’s styles could hardly be more different, making their combination on this album all the more appropriate. Comparing the former’s title track with the latter’s follow-up, “Austin Who,” one finds a shift from the charcoal strokes of drummer Randy Kaye and Naughton’s own balance of melody and affect to a haunting look inward to places of delicate unrest. It is a fascinating diptych. Of the remaining Bley selections, the popular “Ictus” gets a gargling treatment, finding chaos and color in the tactile playing of clarinetist Perry Robinson. In it one can taste sunset and the excitement of evening’s promise. “Gloria” is the glistening heart of the set, a tender and questioning act of impression which, much like the opener, brushes its way into the ear, catching hair cells unawares with its jaggedness, pausing as if inhaling.

Naughton’s compositions unfurl a uniquely uplifting spread of descriptive moods. Sleigh bells, for instance, let us know that “Snow” is on the way. What ensues is not a song of winter’s dread, however, but of its thaw, each touch of percussion another clump rattling from the branches. Laurence Cook’s beautiful cymbal work in “V.A.” sparks an unusual conversation of wind and water, while for “Nital Rock” Naughton breaks out the clavinet for some electric throwback. Mark Whitecage does phenomenal things with the basset horn here, running a hundred errands at once.

This is a pot of water ever on the verge of boiling.

… . …

In an effort to better understand the context in which this album took shape, I interviewed Mr. Naughton, who kindly offered his succinct wisdom. Below is what transpired.

Tyran Grillo: Can you tell me a little about how you came to the vibraphone? Or did it come to you?
Bobby Naughton: I had been playing a lot of funky and out-of-tune pianos. The clarity of the vibraphone was appealing. And the keyboard was familiar. I went for it.

TG: As a self-taught musician, do you find that you approach performance in any way different from those with strictly formal training?
BN: I have no idea. As a child I had years of piano lessons, but am self-taught on the vibraphone. My formal education is in the liberal arts. My approach to performance? Prepare to lay it all on the line. Every time.

TG: How did Understanding come to fruition?
BN: I don’t know. Not by plan. It evolved.

TG: What was behind your decision to focus on the music of Carla Bley? Was she involved in the project in any way?
BN: No decision. Investigations led me to Carla’s compositions. Incredibly meaty and detailed stuff. No, Carla had no involvement.

TG: Looking back at your recorded output, how does Understanding fit into the sounds you have forged in, say, The Haunt or Zoar? What does the album mean for you?
BN: Each album covers quite a different area. Understanding is broader in scope and personnel. For example, the title composition is a tone row, a twelve tone piece, and “V.A.” is a graphic score.

TG: What were the circumstances that led you to work with Leo Smith?
BN: In the early 70s a JAPO employee wrote to me that Leo lived a few towns away in Connecticut. I called him and we met.

TG: Can you sketch me a picture of how the Divine Love recording session went down?
BN: A happening at the highest level.

TG: How would you describe your own compositions to those who haven’t heard them?
BN: Melodic and suggestive. Structures for improvisation.

TG: What would you say has been the most fulfilling aspect of your career thus far?
BN: Survival. It’s been musically rewarding but tempered by resources. You have to love it to do it.

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.

<< Bobo Stenson Trio: Serenity (ECM 1740/41)
>> Ralph Towner: Anthem (ECM 1743)

Michael Mantler: Hide and Seek (ECM 1738)

| Tyran Grillo

Hide and Seek

Michael Mantler
Hide and Seek

Robert Wyatt voice
Susi Hyldgaard voice, accordion
Roger Jannotta flute, oboe, clarinets
Michael Mantler trumpets
Martin Cholewa French horn
Vincent Nilsson trombone
Bjarne Roupé guitars
Tineke Noordhoek vibraphone, marimba
Per Salo piano
Marianne Sørensen violins
Mette Winther violas
Helle Sørensen cellos
Recorded and mixed February-Septemer 2000 at Danish Radio Studios, Copenhagen
Engineer: Lars Palsig
Vocals recorded April 2000 at Gallery Studios, London
Engineer: Jamie Johnson
Electronic percussion programmed by Michael Mantler, sounds realized at Subzonique
Produced by Michael Mantler

Michael Mantler is a force: not to be reckoned with, per se, but of reckoning itself. He is an artist of voices, one who, as the title of this operatic jewel attests, seeks them out from hiding. One of those, Robert Wyatt (long since found), is a singer with whom this album furthers a 25-year collaboration. Another is Susi Hyldgaard (also an accomplished accordionist), who first rose from within the Mantler fold in his masterwork The School of Understanding. Accompanying them is an expanded version of the composer’s loosely termed Chamber Music and Songs Ensemble, which opens its wings to include, on winds, Roger Jannotta (of Tom van der Geld’s elusive Children At Play) and Danish pianist Per Salo. Also (omni)present is Bjarne Roupé, a guitarist who has become an integral player in Mantler’s soundings. The most vital instrument of all, however, is the text by Paul Auster, an author on Mantler’s mind for years and whose eponymous short play lends itself starkly to the composer’s unmistakable brand of telepathy. The result is no mere setting, as Mantler takes his scissors (with the author’s approval) to its language with surgical care.

Holograms are constructed in such a way that if you cut them into pieces, each retains the entire image on a smaller scale. Such is the dynamic of Hide and Seek’s seventeen miniatures. Not one is fragmentary but rather contains elements of the whole. The purely instrumental “Unsaid” dots the program in six parts, the first of which opens. In them one encounters swarms of commentary, some more modest than others, around the guitar’s queen bee. In them are the agitations into which the play’s two characters are so reluctant to give. The balance is meticulous. It allows Wyatt and Hyldgaard to dance in their circles of comfort, breaking even in their seesawing between resignation and martyrdom even as the strings paint cracks in the glass above. Unsaid, yes, but not un-voiced.

“What did you say?”

These words introduce us to a drama of elliptical conversational elements. They cradle in their hands steaming plates of indecision, miscommunication, and vulnerability, which take the piece’s full duration to consume. Voices get caught up in their own vices, and in that process also take advantage of a few loopholes. Statements become facing mirrors lost in a mise-en-abyme of their own making. In their net the accordion occupies stage center, emotes without semantic limitations, while Mantler’s trumpet drips with guidance.

“What do you see?”
“Absolutely nothing”

Question and answer. Cloud and rain. Strings and footsteps. These comprise the core of Hide and Seek, their refrain a powerful marker of identity, or lack thereof, in which all traction is gilded, amplified. The tangled web of “What can we do?” features Mantler’s electronically programmed drums in a whirl of self-realization. It also poses the album’s most pertinent question, for which it has no answer but the melody of its asking.

“It all has to end sometime”

Closure by conjuring. An impending doom, so dark it is beautiful. In its shadows Wyatt and Hyldgaard make an emotionally foiled pair, especially in the final leg. They braid acceptance, parrying and thrusting their way toward the simple resolution of “I’m glad you’re glad.”

All of which culminates in two of Mantler’s most perfect shapes. The circling electric guitar of “Do you think we’ll ever find it?” marks a standout denouement, while “It makes no difference to me” sets speech atop a fulcrum of rocking strings. A return to the game, the accordion’s song passes through the door and on to the next chapter, as yet unwritten.

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