Jazz

Children At Play: s/t (JAPO 60009)

| Tyran Grillo

Children At Play

Children At Play

Tom van der Geld vibes, percussion
Roger Janotta reeds, percussion
Larry Porter piano, electric piano, percussion
Richard Appleman bass
Jamey Haddad drums
Bob Gulotti drums
Recorded 1973 at Rennaissance Studios, Maynard, Massachusetts
Engineer: C. Ange
Produced by Tom van der Geld

Vibraphonist Tom van der Geld’s distinct musical wanderings have left behind some of the choicest among ECM’s out-of-print relics. Whether the trio settings of Path or the broader palette of Patience, his sound is at once soft and unbreakable, forthright yet ecumenical. His footsteps also found purchase in the rarer soil of the JAPO sub-label, of which this self-titled date from his legendary group Children At Play was the first. Here van der Geld is joined by Roger Janotta on reeds, Larry Porter on keyboards, Richard Appleman on bass, and Jamey Haddad on drums. Basking in opener “Tamarind,” it’s clear why the ensemble has attained such high status among collectors. This power statement awakens to a wealth of morning light every bit as descriptive as Grieg’s. The brittle bass line that ensues nets a flavorsome admixture of piano, vibes, and soprano sax that positively exudes personality. Between Porter’s grounding keys and a drum circle-like interlude, there is much to take in throughout this 18-minute journey as it pulls down the sun to where it began.

“Wandering I” lumbers further into the album’s storybook scenography, bringing illustrations to life with a hint of whimsy. In addition to the group unity forged in such tracks, Janotta’s reeds work a most vivid magic throughout, but especially in “Sweet My Sweet,” in which he sets up a tropical narrative from van der Geld, trembling and sunbathed, swaying like the album cover’s long grasses. Drummer Bob Gulotti replaces Haddad on “Reason,” a rubato outing of multifaceted inner dimensions. A gnarled, lethargic bass solo paints the picture of sleep before van der Geld’s dreams touch off lens flare accents.

If pushed to find a point of critique regarding this album, I might comment only on the sequencing, for the tracks might have better served themselves in reverse. As the order stands, it’s like starting with an enormous dessert and working one’s way back through smaller main courses. Either way, the album is another beautiful entry in the van der Geld travelogue and finds rich closure in “Patch Of Blue.” The only track not written by the bandleader (this one comes from Porter’s pen), it molds a pastiche of all that came before, combining the time of “Tamarind,” the fantasy of “Wandering I,” the warmth of “Sweet My Sweet,” and the introspection of “Reason” in smooth detail. The feeling is one of sand—not of desert, but of beach—between the toes, honest down to the last grain.

Nils Petter Molvær: Solid Ether (ECM 1722)

| Tyran Grillo

Solid Ether

Nils Petter Molvær
Solid Ether

Nils Petter Molvær trumpet, piccolo trumpet, synthesizer, electronics, bass, percussion, sound treatments
Eivind Aarset guitar, electronics
Audun Erlien bass
DJ Strangefruit voices, beats, samples, ambience
Per Lindvall drums
Rune Arnesen drums
Sidsel Endresen vocals
Reidar Skår vocoder
Recording producer: Nils Petter Molvær
Recorded, edited and mixed 1999 at various floors in Oslo, Norway
Mastering: Shawn Joseph, Masterpiece London
Album produced by Manfred Eicher

ECM left an indelible mark in 1998 with the release of Khmer. Trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær’s leader debut spread a royal flush across the table when the music industry least suspected it. Solid Ether marks a return to that trending sonic universe, only now it turns away from the idiomatic sources of its predecessor and looks deeper into the mirror for inspiration. This time around, the layers are more archaeologically striated, servile to a beat-driven cartography. Melodically, the album is rawer, rudimentary, and finds its voice through the detailed care of the arrangements. “Dead Indeed” is but one rhythmically arresting example with an altogether sharper edge: a bolder, well-oiled machine. Molvær’s far-reaching introduction surveys a landscape with hand over eyes before diving into a serpentine Nile of its own making. The grinding drum ‘n’ bass vibe raises the dead with its veracity while singing calls harmonize like ancestors with the living: a mummy reanimated and bid to break-dance like it has never loosed a ribbon before. With a wry smile, it cocks its head and throws a handful of sand into those same eyes, that it might have a moment to fade and leave you wondering if it was all just a dream, a vision gone mad the moment you pressed PLAY. This opening track is also significant for being almost entirely played and programmed by Molvær himself, grafting only guitarist Eivind Aarset’s overdubs for effect.

“Vilderness 1” takes its name from Molvær’s daughter Vilde and boasts a cut-and-paste aesthetic of many masks. It is a porous, geometric picture, of which the throbbing bass is an alizarin crimson-loaded palette knife. “Vilderness 2” doesn’t continue where the first left off but dances through its forest once more, hopping from branch to branch like the lithe warriors of Ninja Scroll. After experiencing this slide of Rubik’s plane as if from the inside, the caress of “Kakonita” feels like a wholly different love. Floating primary-colored blocks of notecraft on a bed of infant foghorns, it reworks cinematic DNA into a golem’s playlist. Sidsel Endresen, with whom Molvær plays on the singer’s two ECM recordings, So I Write and Exile, lends her voice to two iterations of “Merciful.” Joined by Molvær on piano, she cuts moving pictures of intense observation, each a morsel of gesture in a world of stills. Her poetry peels alienation away like a sticker, filling in the remaining ghost as if it were a piece of candy in danger of melting.

“Ligotage” first appeared on a Khmer tie-in single and takes a more congealed form here. Its breathtaking scope and depth of language glistens with sun-kissed brilliance. Audun Erlien’s growling bass flushes the sewers of the mind with its grit, heightening the feeling of alarm until it leaps with the unbridled spirit of a dolphin against Ra’s unblinking eye. Drummers Per Lindvall and Rune Arnesen add similar comfort to the concoction of “Trip,” proving definitively that the feeling created by this hip collective sells the music by virtue of its structural integrity alone. From tripping to skipping, we come to “Tragamar.” Striding a fuzzy border between ballad and lament, it drowns in the title track and its biochemical integers. More live drumming adds punch and bites us in the ear with its head-nodding finality.

There is an indigeneity to Molvær’s art that is as far away from pretension as we are from knowing the truth about ourselves. The music is a stranger in its own land, a king without subjects, a dog without a leash. It has only us to turn to.

<< Michael Mantler: Songs and One Symphony (ECM 1721)
>> Bruno Ganz: Wenn Wasser Wäre (ECM 1723 NS)

Globe Unity Orchestra: Improvisations (JAPO 60021)

| Tyran Grillo

Improvisations

Globe Unity
Improvisations

Gerd Dudek soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute
Paul Lovens drums
Günther Christmann trombone
Paul Rutherford trombone
Tristan Honsinger cello
Peter Kowald bass, tuba
Kenny Wheeler trumpet
Evan Parker soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone
Albert Mangelsdorff trombone
Peter Brötzmann alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet
Buschi Niebergall bass
Michel Pilz bass clarinet
Manfred Schoof trumpet
Derek Bailey guitar
Alexander von Schlippenbach piano
Recorded September 1977 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer Martin Wieland
Produced by Thomas Stöwsand

Ashes, ashes, we all fall…up? Yes, says the Globe Unity Orchestra. The autonomous improvisation collective was formed in 1966 and has shifted ever since with as much openness to the unknown as the music it unleashes. Over the years, it has seen a veritable who’s who of modern jazz flit through its cage, including Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Enrico Rava, and Toshinori Kondo. Because of the wealth of riches at its employ, the GUO’s eponymous unity undermines the need to dwell on individual talents. All the same, this early JAPO release, recorded in 1977, is an endearing document for, among other reasons, so nakedly marking the early careers of its great improvisers. Whether through Michel Pilz’s visceral baying, Peter Brötzmann’s gurgling of midnight oil, Derek Bailey’s jangly aphorisms, Kenny Wheeler’s playful fancy, or Evan Parker’s sopranic emulsions, the character of every voice remains prominent—astonishing when one thinks of just how many are involved.

Together these musicians are something greater than the sum of their parts, each an integral element in an alchemy that espouses the new by tapping into something that predates all of us. Throughout the album’s four numbered improvisations, the GUO sharpens ears as if they were pencils. With the epic concentration and polar range of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, “Improvisation 1” clings to some alien monolith in pure instinctual discovery, while “Improvisation 2” teeters in the sonic equivalent of a groggy yawn. It pulls every limb from the muck of dreams until it pops with renewed life. The feeling of tension is palpable: plucking, striking, and exhaling into infinity. Yet where the first half seems chained to an alternate reality, “Improvisation 3” taps into those cortical implosions sooner and measures their perimeter before diving headlong into the resulting froth. It is a brilliant percussive mash of banshees and waterfalls.

“Improvisation 4” is the album’s pièce de résistance. Longer than the first three combined, it teases with jazzy beginnings. Like the third, however, it locates the problem early on and unpacks it with guttural aptitude. The more one surrenders to this music, the more it splits into pieces and slides down vocal tracts like children at a playground. The depth of color and texture—of sustained light flecked with disturbing rhythmic shadows—dwarfs all that came before. The intimacy, too, with which it ends is arresting: only cello and bass overlapping to the clatter of a teapot without a whistle, burying themselves as deeply as they can until the bulldozers arrive.

A worthy curio for your cabinet.

Michael Mantler: Songs and One Symphony (ECM 1721)

| Tyran Grillo

Songs and One Symphony

Michael Mantler
Songs and One Symphony

Mona Larsen voice
Michael Mantler trumpet
Bjarne Roupé guitar
Marianne Sørensen violin
Mette Winther viola
Gunnar Lychou viola
Helle Sørensen cello
Kim Kristensen piano, synthesizers
Radio Symphony Orchestra Frankfurt
Peter Rundel conductor
Songs recorded October 11, 1993, Danish Radio, Copenhagen
Recording engineer: Ronald Skovdal
Mixing engineer: Lars Palsig
One Symphony recorded November 13/14, 1998, Hessischer Rundfunk, Frankfurt
Recording engineer: Thomas Eschler
Mixing engineer: Rainer Schwarz
Album produced by Michael Mantler

I don’t know
anything darker
than the light.

Whatever your spiritual inclinations, you can be thankful that people like Michael Mantler have walked this earth and left behind a sonic trail so intuitively drawn it almost hurts. The Austrian-born composer delivers a subtle yet nonetheless smashing twofer in Songs and One Symphony, pairing his settings of poems by Ernst Meister with the titular symphony.

Songs is performed by the Chamber Music and Songs Ensemble, a group Mantler formed in 1993. Last heard in his masterpiece The School of Understanding, its instrumental signatures are uniquely Mantlerian, including the composer himself on trumpet, Bjarne Roupé on guitar, Kim Kristensen on keyboards, and a string quartet. For the present recording singer Mona Larsen assumes the throne, her wrapping of words the perfect disguise for Meister’s bare bones. Mantler’s ability to draw out melodies from the texts as if they’d always been there is uncanny. The cycle’s smoothness of execution is uniquely moving in this regard, finding traction in every negative space on the page. The connective tissue between “For ever” and “Nothing more,” for example, breathes in the fumes of just-sung sentiments and exhales the fearless drug of circumstantial evidence. Indeed, each slide on the projector roulette bears its own exhibition letter, submitted to the scrutiny of an invisible jury. Their shifting and murmuring implies conclusions but them lets them go in the interlude “How Long Are Our Nights,” from which the cello espouses lachrymose verdicts in kind. Larsen slips through words like a snake through the knotholes of an abandoned shed, carrying in her mouth the minimal shadows required to bleed warmth and misery. She embodies Meister’s “stir of solitude” so unpretentiously that one need know nothing of her pop music roots. Rather, she unearths her art for the first time with every stanza.

One Symphony is the result of a German radio commission. It takes the concept of a symphony in its most rudimentary form—which is to say, as a large meeting of musicians—and represents Mantler’s mounting interest in explicitly notated material. Consisting of four numbered movements, it finds its voice early on with the establishment of a characteristic flow. The harp flirts with the water’s surface like a sunlit dragonfly in Part 1, sucking inkblots from paper as if water from a glass. The shifting rhythms and textures achieve perfect kilter in the final origami fold, looking deeply into the mirror where its cinematic fantasy moves on. Part 2 opens poised before an oncoming train: it hears the signals but heeds them not in the widening funnel of light. The clouds offer little solace, dark and gnarled as their manner is. The feeling of locomotion never completely recedes. It touches the piano keys, flicks its hair in the wind, and swings from brass branches. The honeycombed Part 3 unloads a relatively mechanical shipment of dots and dashes, leaving the aftermath to spawn life of its own will in Part 4. This self-tending garden sustains some of the symphony’s darkest wounds and presses its palm to a cold window until an ephemeral handprint is all that’s left of its ever having been here.

<< Karl Amadeus Hartmann: Funèbre (ECM 1720 NS)
>> Nils Petter Molvær: Solid Ether (ECM 1722)

Dave Holland Quintet: Not For Nothin’ (ECM 1758)

| Tyran Grillo

Not For Nothin

Dave Holland
Not for Nothin’

Chris Potter saxophones
Robin Eubanks trombone, cowbell
Steve Nelson vibraphone, marimba
Billy Kilson drums
Dave Holland double-bass
Recorded September 21-23, 2000 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James Farber
Assistant engineer: Aya Takemura
Produced by Dave Holland

Dave Holland has done for the modern jazz quintet what Keith Jarrett has for the standards trio. Balancing utter control with democratic reverence in a carefully assembled team, he pushes an open agenda of bold yet affectionate creation. In this third and final ECM record of his most proper quintet, he, along with saxophonist Chris Potter, trombonist Robin Eubanks, vibraphonist Steve Nelson, and drummer Billy Kilson cut some of the group’s most flawless diamonds yet. As much a unit as one could ever hope for, their connection as such is more than telepathic—it’s downright genetic. This is all the more astonishing when you think that by the year 2000, when this album was laid down, the group had only been together for three years (even less, seeing as Potter replaced Steve Wilson in 1998).

Of the album’s nine tunes, five have felt the scratch of Holland’s pen. Vital and varietal, they boast the quintet’s signature joy in spades. Unique among them is the reflective “For All You Are,” which begins in a loose weave and proceeds to lay the love on thick. For this one Potter has an especially soulful turn on tenor, gray as a storm cloud and as rainbowed as its aftermath. “What Goes Around” is this session’s vehicle of choice for the horns and also titles the follow-up big band album. This hot ticket is a master class in listening to one’s band mates. The symmetry has to be heard to be believed. The title track is an equally hip penultimatum and finds Nelson shining over break-beat support from the rhythm section. Potter’s soprano adds further bite on two tracks, running like a shawm’s great-great-granddaughter through “Shifting Sands” in anticipation of new settlements and cracking eggs of phenomenal cast in “Cosmosis.” Almost flippant but ever genuine, he charts a magnetic course indeed.

Into Holland’s five the set list shuffles one tune by each remaining member. Eubanks’s “Global Citizen” bolts straight out of the gate freshly laminated. Nelson takes an early lead by a head and carries the quintet swiftly around every bend. Holland navigates this game of Snakes and Ladders all the while, marking a turning point midway through into breezier denouements, which, iced by Kilson’s semisweet drumming, provide plenty of skating surface for the composer’s gliding valves. Potter’s offering is “Lost And Found,” which finds Holland in especially muscled form. Eubanks cuts the cloth with precision, leaving Kilson to rev up the energy to interlocking heights. The drummer’s own “Billows Of Rhythm” dovetails into Holland’s love of jagged syncopation and throws the bassist into an early solo. This gives plenty of breathing room for Potter’s upbeat tenoring in what amounts to the set’s most youthful track. This leaves only Nelson and his sardonically titled “Go Fly A Kite,” which is actually quite forgiving in execution. It paints an evocative picture of sky and cloud, giving the horns more than enough room to soar.

Whether it’s bass and vibes, bass and drums, or sax and trombone, the combinations turn on a dime in constant organic relay. All of which puts the humble reviewer to task in picking sides. For just when Kilson seems to steal the show, Holland overwhelms with its virtuosic flair. When Nelson seems buried under Potter’s effervescent rides, he resurfaces with glittering treasure in hand. Eubanks preens his fair share of feathers as well. All the more reason to just sit back and shake one’s head in wonder at the plenitude.

<< Stephan Micus: Desert Poems (ECM 1757)
>> Enrico Rava: Easy Living (ECM 1760)

Barre Phillips: For All It Is (JAPO 60003)

| Tyran Grillo

For All It Is

Barre Phillips
For All It Is

Barre Phillips bass
Palle Danielsson bass
Barry Guy bass
Jean-François Jenny-Clark bass
Stu Martin percussion
Recorded March 12, 1971 at Alster Film-Tonstudios, Hamburg
Engineer: Klaus Bornemann
Produced by Barre Phillips

This unusual meeting of minds pits bassists Barre Phillips (who also penned the proceedings), Palle Danielsson, Barry Guy, and Jean-François Jenny-Clark with percussionist Stu Martin in a tactile playoff with mixed results. It’s remarkable to think that four behemoths could sound so open, and so one shouldn’t be surprised to encounter a few tangles in “just 8.” For the most part, however, this introductory track maintains the clarity of separation that characterizes the album’s latter remainder. Either way, it’s a jaunty ride into an unprecedented sound-world. Martin anchors “whoop” with his engaging loops amid a menagerie of pizzicato signifiers. Along with “few too” it evokes a jack-in-the-box weeping for want of exposure. From that unrequited lament comes a bright promise, skewed by a hope that the world turns not even for itself. It’s a melancholic hope, to be sure, but hope nonetheless. Martin’s absence here makes the track an early standout: just the rocking of bows pressed into myriad shapes by insistent fingertips. “la palette” and “y en a” form another pair, taking a decidedly architectural approach to this most warped string quartet. Together, they form a cycle of destruction, pain, and healing.

The album only really comes together in the final two tracks. Where “dribble” proves an apt title for its dotted ritual, “y. m.” dances like an anonymous car alarm stripped of its batteries and given new acoustic life. The latter is a particularly complex, anchored piece that spits out some utterly brilliant turns of phrase.

For All It Is, for all it is, is above all an exercise in linguistics. Its cognates are familiar, even if the grammars are not. Although I’d likely recommend this one least out of Phillips’s otherwise astonishing ECM outings, for the completist it will be an intriguing blip on the radar of all four bassists’ careers.

Magog: s/t (JAPO 60011)

| Tyran Grillo

Magog

Magog

Hans Kennel trumpet, fluegelhorn, perussion
Andy Scherrer soprano and tenor saxophones, flute, percussion
Paul Haag trombone, percussion
Klaus Koenig piano, e-piano, percussion
Peter Frei bass
Peter Schmidlin drums, percussion
Recorded November 1 and 2, 1974 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineers: Martin Wieland and Carlos Albrecht
Produced by Solitron Productions, S.A.

Magog was the brainchild of trumpeter Hans Kennel, who made a name for himself in the 1960s as a hard-bop king of the Swiss jazz scene. After earning his chops with the likes of fellow countryman Bruno Spoerri and American bassist Oscar Pettiford, he continued to work with other brilliant outliers, including Mal Waldron, George Gruntz, and Pierre Favre. The band documented here arose in the mid-seventies and was something of a stepping-stone as he grew into his own as a purveyor of “New Alpine Music” (including an alphorn quartet outfit called Mytha), combining now the traditional music of his ancestors with modern jazz idioms.

As it stands, this self-titled album from the short-lived Magog is a worthy JAPO outing. There is plenty to admire in the sounds forged by Kennel and his cohorts. Reedman Andy Scherrer, trombonist Paul Haag, pianist Klaus Koenig, bassist Peter Frei, and drummer Peter Schmidlin round out a sometimes-formidable sextet in this program of as many cuts. Haag pens opener “Lock.” It’s the album’s weakest, building a loose groove from base (read: bass) elements to Kennel’s breezy adlibbing. Despite the pleasant jam aesthetic, it feels like a studio warm-up in comparison to the sprawling entity that is Scherrer’s “Gogam.” This bubbling spring promises stronger themes and realizes them with a tuck and a roll into swinging traction. The big-band-on-a-shoestring sound achieved here is remarkable, as is the steamy action between the composer and the rhythm section.

Koenig counters with two. Haag’s trombone is a prominent voice in “Rhoades,” threading the piano’s claustrophobic maze of needles with ease. This and Kennel’s visceral squeals, not to mention the sleepwalking bass solo, make for some inspiring journeying toward the final pop. “Der Bachstelzer” finds Koenig plugged in, providing somber introductory remarks to the smoothly paced excursion that ensues. More inspired, erratic brushwork from Kennel (whose musicianship stands a head above the others) and lithe sopranism from Scherrer lay a rough yet fluid track. The group really hits its stride, however, in the closing tunes from Kennel. Between the hauntingly atmospheric beginnings of “Summervogel,” replete with ancestral ululations, and the solid groove of “New Samba,” there is much to warrant return fare.

Magog doesn’t seem to have been afraid to test the waters on tape. Their honesty is apparent throughout and makes for a transparent listening experience. The group flicks through dreams like a Rolodex, working fingers to the bone in search of closure. Although said closure never quite materializes, it leaves us free to interpret the sounds however we choose.

Enrico Rava Quintet: The Words And The Days (ECM 1982)

| Tyran Grillo

The Words and the Days

Enrico Rava Quintet
The Words And The Days

Enrico Rava trumpet
Gianluca Petrella trombone
Andrea Pozza piano
Rosario Bonaccorso double-bass
Roberto Gatto drums
Recorded December 2005 at Artesuono Recording Studio, Udine, Italy
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The Words And The Days follows Easy Living, which marked the studio return of Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava after a 17-year hiatus. More than the continuation of a comeback, it constitutes a self-contained entity with its own dreams. It is only natural, then, that the title tune should flow like a soundtrack to those dreams. Verdant and sincere, it hangs, as might a contended hand over the side of a boat, cutting a path through the water. Rava seems to paint that vessel’s wake while the intuitive drumming of Roberto Gatto renders every glint of sun thereafter with photorealistic detail. Yet despite these sundrenched beginnings, where Easy Living was warm and fuzzy all over, we generally encounter a cooler sound in this mostly Rava-penned program.

Gatto and bassist Rosario Bonaccorso hold fast to their formidable dual role, at once supportive and pace-setting. Rava is happy to follow wherever they may lead, with often-joyful results. In “Secrets,” for instance, some of his formative Brazilian influences jump from the woodwork. Meanwhile, trombonist Gianluca Petrella puts his enigmatic stamp of things. Although his language can be fiercely chromatic, this time around he moves under the table in search of forgotten crumbs. He works a quiet magic in the Russell Freeman standard “The Wind,” engendering a chain of lilting calls, while in “Serpent” he preens his feathers to the tune of a slick, rubato synergy. Most of that synergy he shares with Rava, reigning clearest in “Art Deco,” a three-minute duet that crosses the straight and the curved and pays tribute to its composer, the great Don Cherry. Petrella and Rava trade more brass arrows in Gatto’s “Traps,” evoking a big band on an intimate scale, balancing the pans with its breezy concentration. As a player, Gatto’s adaptive panache figures centrally in “Bob The Cat.”

Pianist Andrea Pozza, replacing Stefano Bollani from the last session, marks a shift in the group’s sound. His reflective approach adds monochromatic atmospherics to “Echoes Of Duke,” taking the session’s feet from its picturesque murk and washing them anew with a more classically rendered style. Rava digs deepest on this expedition, unearthing a plethora of finely preserved artifacts. In this regard, the bandleader excels highest when he is cut loose, as in the cinematic veils of action and soft-focus drama of “Tutù” and the stretch of empty road that is “Todamor,” which unrolls its horizon after a viscous monologue from Bonaccorso entitled “Sogni proibiti” (Forbidden dreams). Although unpopulated, that horizon is filled with stories. Rava is confident behind the wheel in taking us there, navigating an echoing corridor with superb control of every gear. And as he pulls us into the driveway of “Dr. Ra And Mr. Va,” of which the strangely somber exterior only thinly veneers a fiery heartbeat within, it is clear that the journey has only just begun.