Rarities

Mike Gibbs/Gary Burton: In the Public Interest

| Tyran Grillo

Mike Gibbs/Gary Burton
In the Public Interest

Michael Gibbs composer, arranged, conducted, producer
Gary Burton vibraphone, producer
Randy Brecker trumpet, flugelhorn
Marvin Stamm trumpet, flugelhorn
Pat Stout trumpet, flugelhorn
Jeff Stout trumpet, flugelhorn
Michael Brecker tenor and soprano saxophones
Harvey Wainapel alto and soprano saxophones
Paul Moen tenor and soprano saxophones, flute
Bill Watrous trombone
Wayne Andre trombone
Paul Falise bass trombone
Dave Taylor bass trombone, tuba
George Ricci cello (1,2,3)
Alan Schulman cello (4,5,6,7)
Pat Rebillot electric piano, organ
Allan Zavod piano, electric piano
Mick Goodrick guitar
Steve Swallow bass
Warren Smith percussion
Harry Blazer drums (1,2,3)
Bob Moses drums (4,5,6,7) 
Recorded at Electric Lady Studios, NY, June 25/26, 1973
Engineer: Dave Palmer
Mixed at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg, West Germany, August 20/21, 1973
Mixing engineers: Kurt Rapp and Martin Wieland
Recording supervisor: Manfred Eicher

It has been well over a year since I’ve had enough time and energy to devote to this site. Now that I am back to posting regularly, in addition to catching up on ECM’s latest releases, I am resuming my quest to review every rarity I can find that may intrigue fans of the label. In that spirit, my readers sometimes do the finding for me, bringing things to my attention that I might otherwise have missed completely. Case in point is this out-of-print gem by way of Detrik, who dropped it in the comments, where it lingered for nine months before I gave it a spin. At last, I can offer my own.

Recorded in the summer of 1973 at Electric Lady Studios in New York and released a year later on Polydor, it bears the fingerprints of contemporaneous ECM productions. Manfred Eicher supervised the recording, which was mixed at Tonstudio Bauer by Kurt Rapp and Martin Wieland, the dream team behind Music From Two Basses. In this session, they render a rounded yet punchy sound.

Written, produced, and conducted by Mike Gibbs, In the Public Interest features a 21-piece band consisting of a robust brass section flanked by such heavyweights as saxophonist Mike Brecker, bassist Steve Swallow, guitarist Mick Goodrick, and drummer Bob Moses.

The A side begins appropriately with “The Start of Something Similar.” As the piano and vibes play in unison, dissonant brass gives rise to the theme before drifting into an atmospheric lull and back again. From this, one might expect a dreamier experience, but with “Four or Less,” it becomes obvious that reality abounds even when the musicians are at their most cerebral. Prominent now is the cello of George Ricci, who puts one rock into this stone soup for every two vegetables floating on top, Goodrick and pianist Allan Zavod stoking the fire until it all boils over in a free-for-all. Next is “Dance: Blue,” where groove is the name of the game. The horns evoke the colors of a 70s TV show (and all the associations that might come to mind with that image). Their carefree, youthful, seamless sound mellows as it goes, building a restrained strength in stretching out the theme.

After such a workout, it’s only fair that we are given a breather as we turn over to the B side, where “To Lady Mac: In Memory” awaits our ears.

A blistering flower of evocation, it features a soprano saxophone fluttering through heat waves of vibraphone on the way to “Family Joy, Oh Boy.” With weighty exuberance, this album highlight spotlights Burton in world-class form, navigating the maze laid out for him so adroitly by Swallow and Moses, who also share a savory dialogue. Lastly, the title tune, with its gentle carpet of vibraphone, electric piano, and cello, and “To Lady Mac: In Sympathy,” with its blushing skin, make for an easy offramp into contemplation.

In the Public Interest is an album of witty contrasts, thoughtful execution, confident melodies, and great charm. Listen to it here:

Music Hotel: ECM Musiktage Römerbad Badenweiler 1997 (VHS)

| Tyran Grillo

John Surman saxophones, clarinets
Anders Jormin double bass
Bobo Stenson piano
Dino Saluzzi bandoneón
Tomasz Stanko trumpet
Michelle Makarski violin
Jon Christensen drums
Rosamunde Quartett
Andreas Reiner violin
Simon Fordham violin
Helmut Nicolai viola
Anja Lechner cello
Filmed at Hotel Römerbad, Badenweiler, May 16-18, 1997
Edited by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud and Cyrille Nakache
Post-production: ARRI Studios, Munich
Executive producer: Fredrik Gunnarsson

Continuing in my coverage of ECM rarities, I was fortunate enough to be sent a copy of an obscure VHS tape documenting the 1997 Römerbad-Musiktage, where an eclectic group of ECM musicians gathered to perform as part of this annual musical event. The clamshell case insert provides the following description:

The Römerbad-Musiktage has been an important event in the contemporary music calendar since 1973, when impresario Klaus Lauer first began to present concerts in the Kuppelsaal of the hotel he owns in the South German resort town of Badenweiler. Although a wide range of music has been presented at the Hotel Römderbad, the emphasis has been on modern composition, and a close working relationship has been established with composers including Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, György Kurtág, György Ligeti and Wolfgang Rihm. In 1993, Lauer and music producer Manfred Eicher instigated another annual series, with performances by improvisors and interpreters associated with the ECM label. More than a mere festival, the Badenweiler meeting allows an informed public to witness ECM recording artists in the process of shared musical discovery. Spontaneity is the watchword as the musicians play together, in both proven and untested combinations. “The ECM Whitsun Concert Series at the Römerbad have become an enduring artistic experience,” wrote the Frankfurter Rundschau of the 1997 event. “The aesthetics of Eicher’s equally stringent and open agenda has acquired international renown. Listeners from 16 countries had the opportunity to enrich and modify their musical worldview and to perceive things unavailable at conventional music events.”

Sadly enough, the 50-minute video is not a document of the performances themselves. What we do get, however, is an intimate glimpse into ECM’s “behind-the-scenes” presence in the world of live music as Eicher brings together musicians that have rarely (if ever) shared a stage to create something as enduring in the minds of listeners as it is spontaneous in its coalescence. Filmmaker and friend of the label Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, along with coeditor Cyril Nakache, go to great lengths to clue us in not only on the logistics of putting together such an event but also on the everyday imperfections that must be ironed out to pull it off with elegance.

The split curtain that introduces us to the concert space, backgrounded by the unmistakable sound of John Surman’s bass clarinet, offers a sliver of orientation before we see the reed virtuoso in the flesh, along with bassist Anders Jormin, engaging in a measured dance as shots of the hotel’s interior and attentive staff are revealed in leisurely succession.

What follows is a series of rehearsal footage as Eicher molds the air with his hands, visually imagining what he hopes will take place when the room is populated with seasoned ears. Surman talks afterward about how easy it is to play with musicians who listen so deeply to each other before melodizing on soprano saxophone with Bobo Stenson and Jon Christensen joining on piano and drums, respectively.

The film moves on to Dino Saluzzi, who fills the room with the resonance of his bandoneón as the other musicians decide on their configurations with Eicher’s input. They then augment Saluzzi with Jormin and trumpeter Tomasz Stanko. Violinist Michelle Makarski is also interviewed, expressing her love of improvisation despite her classical training and her gratitude for being among these jazz greats. She recalls being asked to perform the works of Keith Jarrett in New York City, which caught the attention of Eicher and resulted in the 1994 album Bridge Of Light, followed by her solo album Caoine one month before this film was made. Her sound meshes soulfully with Saluzzi and Stanko, the latter of whom talks about the beauty of the space, the dry acoustics of which allow for the cultivation of a fuller sound among such artfully curated musicians.

Saluzzi is the focal point of the most alluring ensembles, especially when he combines his sound with that of the phenomenal Rosamunde Quartett. Anchored by the robust cello of Anja Lechner, the strings pair wonderfully with Saluzzi’s generous spirit. In the interview that follows, he talks about pitching this formal music crossover as a blurring of divisions toward social harmony. His tangos uphold that ethos with utmost love, imprinting the film’s final moments with a message for all.

Peter Brötzmann: Nipples

| Tyran Grillo

Peter Brötzmann tenor saxophone
Evan Parker tenor saxophone
Derek Bailey guitar
Fred Van Hove piano
Buschi Niebergall bass
Han Bennink drums
Recorded April 18, 1969 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg (Track 1)and April 24, 1969 at Rhenus Studio, Godorf (Track 2)
Engineers: Kurt Rapp (Track 1) and Conny Plank (Track 2)
Cover design: Peter Brötzmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher + Jazz By Post

To my knowledge, Nipples is the only album produced by Manfred Eicher to not appear on the ECM label. This curious throwback was recorded in April of 1969, months before ECM’s first proper release would go down that same year in the famed Tonstudio Bauer, which yields the first track here. Of that track, which gives this album its name, we are given no warning, jumping instead into a blazing cacophony of sound. Even though it feels like waking up out of a coma in the middle of Shinjuku crossing, a bizarre sense of comfort begins to emerge the more one basks in its unrelenting glow. The one-two punch of Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker on tenor saxophones bleeds on the proverbial page across which guitarist Derek Bailey, pianist Fred Van Hove, bassist Buschi Niebergall, and drummer Han Bennink add all sorts of diacritics, punctuation, and editorial asides. The result is like the chaos of peer review controlled in a single moving portrait wherein the listener’s visage gets split like Michelle Yeoh’s in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Despite (if not because of) this whirlwind approach, moments for solos abound, such as Van Hove’s flight of fancy about six minutes in. Against aggressive bowing and frontline drum work, his pianism kicks us in the shins and leaves us crawling for more. To that fray, Brötzmann and Bailey add uncompromising grit, all the while building up the ensemble to an ascorbic cohesion. A fantastic arco spasm from Niebergall in the third act yields equally favorable outcomes in this chameleonic chain reaction. All of this ends in a congregation of tails, each wispier and more meteoric than the last.

For the B-side, “Tell A Green Man” sheds Parker and Bailey to no less engaging effect. While the preamble from the rhythm section provides anything but discernible rhythm, its foundational qualities provide plenty of clay for Brötzmann and Van Hove to mold to their whim. Indeed, whim is the name of the game as irreverence ensues, dividing its equation until it bursts with the desire for recalibration. Niebergall’s scraping rears its tactile head for the listener to run a comb through, while Brötzmann gives himself over to less subtle temptations of vivacity.

Nipples first appeared on the Calig Records (Munich) in 1969 and was remastered by John McCortney in February 2000 at AirWave Studios (Chicago) for Atavistic. Three years later, Atavistic released a follow-up with outtakes from the same studio sessions. The result, called—what else?—More Nipples, offers up three tracks of invigorating mayhem. The title track gives up its ghost from the first moment, tracing its ephemeral paths with more delicate abandon. Despite a few ebb tides here and there, it focuses more on the inner than the outer. “Fiddle Faddle” is a reedy wonder dragged kicking and screaming through the fires of Niebergall and Bennink and may be my favorite of the collection for its control of free spirit. Finally, we have “Fat Man Walks,” which concedes to a groovier blues aesthetic, gut-wrenching and sincere in its devolvement into atonalism.

A much-needed call to attention in these dark times.

Interview: Keith Jarrett conducted by Timothy Hill

| Tyran Grillo

KJ front

This ultra-rare promotional CD from 1994 contains an interview with Keith Jarrett conducted by Timothy Hill. Much of the interview is spent discussing the backstory and recording circumstances of At The Deer Head Inn, Jarrett’s phenomenal live album with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motian, and Bridge Of Light, a program of classical music composed by Jarrett.

When Jarrett first encountered the Deer Head Inn itself, it was the only place of its kind in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, where jazz wasn’t exactly on the hearts and minds of communities far more concerned with everyday practicalities. Jarrett was living in Allentown, where jazz was limited to generic rooms at best. Deer Head was far enough away that he wasn’t really aware of it until he got his first regular gig there, playing drums for local pianist (and Jarret’s personal friend) Johnny Coates. “I learned a lot about what not to do twice,” he recalls of those early gigging days, long before the piano became his forte. After two summers of grabbing the Deer Head by its antlers, sitting in sometimes on guitar (which, incidentally, earned him an invitation from Stan Getz to play in a Calypso band), he left that part of his history behind to dive headlong into his career as a pianist. By the time the Deer Head gig materialized, he hadn’t played there as pianist for nearly three decades.

Many elements came together for that performance to make it what it was. First, the venue was a “piano room” in the truest sense, a place of intimate construction that practically begged for Jarrett’s song. Second was the fact that drummer Jack DeJohnette, his trio go-to, was unable to make it, leading Motian to fill in at the last minute. Third was the “behavior and concentration” of everyone involved—a rapt attention he attributes at least in part to Motian’s involvement. When things come together like that, following a natural flow without depending on “large things,” as he puts it, magic is born.

Jarrett further bows to a certain magic in the recording itself. He mentions the “crucial little keys” of how a player is feeling, and how technology may struggle to capture those details in such a beautiful way. In this case, however, they shine through with utmost clarity, including the vocal exclamations for which he is (in)famously known. “I should’ve written them a thank you note,” he quips, speaking of Peacock and Motian, who he makes a point of noting added their own whoops of excitement in the heat of the moment. “If I’m going to be the culprit, let it be all three of us.” The conversation turns naturally to the tune “Chandra” (included along with “It’s Easy To Remember” at the end of this CD), which Jarrett praises for Motian’s avoidance of sticks altogether. Where any drummer would start with brushes and switch to the punctuation of sticks, Motian’s continuous brushing spoke directly to Jarrett’s heart: “This is what we’ve got now. This is what it is. And it put me in another place, where the expectations were not the same as they would be every time you play.” Thus did Motian pull everyone into the center of things.

At around the time that Bridge Of Light was coming together, he was already working on a commission from Japan to write the Adagio for oboe and string orchestra featured on the album. When told there would be time left in the program, his thoughts turned to the Elegy he was writing for his Hungarian grandmother. Taking such an active role in directing that recording was, for him, like “being in charge of a country,” whereas Deer Head was like “being not in charge and knowing it would be okay.” Such polar, yet parallel, opposites would seem to define his career. At Deer Head, for example, there wasn’t any music until it was played, whereas in a classical setting, anxieties toward perfection ran high. Classical musicians, he avers, should be less obsessed over playing the same music better than anyone else and more concerned about being themselves enough not to care, allowing the music to “bloom for itself” instead. And if blooming is what it’s all about, then Bridge (from which the Adagio and the “Dance” of Jarrett’s violin sonata are also included here) is a veritable field of life.

“You don’t have to be emphatic when you’re doing something beautiful,” says Jarrett of the creative process. “If you emphasize the beauty of something, you might step on it.” And while one might easily flag this statement for hypocrisy, spoken as it is by someone who can stretch a concert staple like “Autumn Leaves” to well over 20 minutes, there’s a sense that Jarrett is always saying what needs to be said and, accordingly, wasting no notes whenever he’s “on.” As he observes of jazz: “It would be as though you were to write poetry in more than one language at a time…and make it somehow into a coherent language of its own.”

As interesting as the above insights are, at best I would say this rarity has value only as an archival curiosity for the Jarrett completist, though it’s always fascinating to hear him speak of his own work. Either way, the objects of this discussion tell more of their past, present, and future than even he could, and perhaps our journey to find and experience them is the strongest bridge of all.

20004-2-cd

An Hour With Pat Metheny: A Radio Special

| Tyran Grillo

ECM PRO-A-810 Side A

In March of 1979, Pat Metheny appeared on the “Oral Tradition” radio program (broadcast out of Venice, California) to talk about the Pat Metheny Group’s self-titled debut and his then freshly released solo follow-up, New Chautauqua. Produced by Martin Perlich, this hour-long special was released on a rare promo LP by ECM and features an in-depth conversation with the guitarist between selections from both of albums.

Metheny gets into the meat and potatoes of his upbringing. Growing up in small-town Missouri among a family of trumpet players, his brother Mike having taught the instrument at Berklee College of Music in Boston from 1976 to 1983, Metheny needed only reach his hand out to grab hold of one. And that he did, joining the school band and doing fairly well for himself until his need for braces put an end to his future in brass. Immersed as he was in Top 40 culture, guitar was an easy choice for a substitute, and so he picked out his first axe and starting swinging. After doing the “garage band thing” for about a year, at age 14 he had a watershed moment when he saw Wes Montgomery and Gary Burton’s group perform a stone’s throw away in Kansas City. Hearing improvisation in earnest for the first time, and in such close quarters, converted him to jazz on the spot. It wasn’t long before he had every album by Burton, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane he could get his hands on. He recalls how naturally the concepts of jazz came to him, whereas in rock music the role of the guitar was ultimately unclear. Sitting in with blues musicians in Kansas City, where he humbly guesses he was being brought onstage as more of a novelty at first than anything else, was his first real classroom. After a year of teaching in Miami, he joined Burton’s band with Steve Swallow, Bob Moses, and Mick Goodrick, all of whom saw something in the young guitarist. Along with their already-heightened abilities came the patience needed to allow someone like Metheny to blossom.

Metheny elaborates on his jump from rock to jazz. Whereas in the former vein he saw a vital sensuality that was of organic appeal to younger listeners, he also yearned for a subtlety that rock just didn’t have. He even gave prog (Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, etc.) a chance in the hopes there might be something there. But he quickly realized how those guitarists were just “playing blues scales up and down like every rock player always did, [only] a lot longer and twice as boring.” It was in improvisation that he found the wider, more nuanced feeling he was searching for, and the first guitar icon to show him how it was done was Jimi Hendrix. Thinking back on it, he still wonders how Hendrix was as popular as he was. Still, Hendrix was in no way a conscious influence, but a talent to look upon with wonder. In Metheny’s estimation, the guitar was essentially neglected as a frontline instrument until Larry Coryell joined forces with Burton in 1967, paving the way for John McLaughlin and other pioneers. Before then, advances in guitar technology just weren’t developed enough to make it stand out against the harmonic landscape of a saxophone or piano. Coryell was groundbreaking for bringing a hard-edged sound to a jazz context, thereby widening the scope of what the instrument could do as a method of sound production. When Metheny himself came on the scene in 1974, the only viable gigs for jazz guitarists were with Jack DeJohnette, Chico Hamilton, or Burton. Burton was the natural fit.

From Pat Metheny Group we hear “Phase Dance” and “San Lorenzo.” In light these wonders, even Metheny is aware of their commercial appeal the non-jazz listeners (the album hit the Billboard charts, after all) but is adamant about changing nothing to achieve that success. “I just physically couldn’t play something that I didn’t really believe in,” he admits, thus capturing something essential to the steadfastness of his art.

Metheny transitions into reminiscing about touring in Oslo, where he spent three days writing, and two more recording, the music that would become New Chautauqua. Spurred on by fears of typecasting himself, and encouraged by producer Manfred Eicher, transitioning from a quartet to a solo project was the logical next step in his recording journey (though he isn’t without his sense of humor, as when quipping about a “fantasy record” with Lyle Mays and singer Nicolette Larson). Metheny likens the sound of Chautauqua to the open spaces of his childhood—hence the country twang of the album’s title tune (heard here, along with “Sueño Con Mexico” and “Daybreak,” the latter a nod to the Beatles’ “Please Please Me”). He also unpacks the title, which pays homage to the so-called Chautauqua who drove around playing one-nighters all up and down the Midwest (his great-grandfather, in fact, was a leader of one such group).

In addition to these anecdotal details, Metheny reveals a bit of his creative process. “Every time we hit the stage and we play the first notes, it enters a completely different realm for me,” he says of live performance, which is more than his wheelhouse but a way of life. He goes on to describe his style as one of playing “out” and never for himself, and shares an analogy for playing that was passed on to him by Burton: “There’s a whole grammar thing you go through when you’re becoming a musician and an improviser that’s very similar to…when you’re a child and you’re learning…how to speak…. It gets to the point where…you don’t think about verbs and pronouns and stuff…you just say whatever you have to say and it comes out. Sometimes there’s little goofs…but the message comes through if you’ve got something to say. It’s exactly the same when you’re improvising. You have this whole backlog of information, but when it comes time to play, as you become more advanced as a player, you think less and less about the technical things…and you just say what you have to say, and hopefully the audience will respond to what you’re saying if you make the picture clear enough for them.” And how does he respond whenever people come up to him and ask how he plays so well? “I haven’t practiced in four years.” The stage is where it all goes down.

“I don’t see myself as a guitar player that plays melodies in a setting,” he self-observes. “I see the act of playing the guitar and writing the tunes and having the band as a statement about what I want to be like as a guy, you know…. If I were ever not going to do that, I would go sell cars for my father.” Of course, we can be thankful he isn’t selling cars but rather music that was made to flow from their stereos as we drive along open roads to places we’ve yet to know.

ECM PRO-A-810 Side B

David Byrne: Music for The Knee Plays

| Tyran Grillo

25022-front-3

David Byrne
Music from The Knee Plays

Garnett Brown trombone
Ray Brown trumpet
David Byrne vocals
Pete Christlieb saxophone
Rich Cooper trumpet
Ernie Fields baritone saxophone
Chuck Findley trumpet
Bill Green baritone saxophone
Bobbye Hall percussion
Dana Hughes trombone
Paul Humphrey drums
Jackie Keslo saxophone
Harry Kim trumpet
Don Myrick saxophone
Nolan Smith trumpet
David Stout trombone
Phil Teil trombone
Ernie Watts saxophone
Fred Wesley trombone
David Blumberg conductor
Recorded:
One On One Studio, North Hollywood, April 4, 1984
Engineer: Mark Wolfson
Studio Sound Recorders, North Hollywood, April 5 & 6, 1984
Engineer: Joel Moss
Mixed at RPM Studio, December 8-17, 1984
Originally Mastered at Sterling Sound, NY
Produced by David Byrne

A tree is best measured when it is down.

This 1985 release, a rare one for ECM, comes from the fertile mind of Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. Originally intended as incidental music for Robert Wilson’s grand opera The CIVIL warS, to be played while actors and crew prepared set between acts, these brass-heavy arrangements of traditional tunes, folded into a rich batter of original compositions and spoken word, take their inspiration from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band of New Orleans and have since come to constitute a standalone work in their own right.

“Tree (Today Is An Important Occasion)” sets the tone for a journey of horns and voice that is as even-tempered as it is dramatically sincere. This postmodern dirge for the otherwise voiceless intersections of body and materials that govern our lives is perhaps even more relevant now than when it was written. Colors and fashion, each linked to specific emotions and personality traits, roll through the mind like an art gallery disassembled and thrown. As possibilities of self-expression are donned and discarded like replaceable skins, we are left to determine our own subjectivity in the onslaught of objective pretense we call our daily lives. The mélange effect of worlds colliding is dazzling in the moment yet darkly tinged in the remembering.

“The Sound Of Business” is a detailed assessment of our work-obsessed culture. Its uncanny chain of images contrasts the bustle of everyday life with the slow-motion fantasies struggling for air beneath its surface. “Social Studies” pulls away another mask to reveal the colonial scaffolding of well-to-do urbanites. Through deconstruction of knowledge-seeking privilege and the impulse to study that which does not belong to us, it puts our desire to live vicariously under a sonic microscope.

Byrne’s voice is a powerfully understated element. With consistent, even-tempered brilliance, he speaks matter-of-factly about large ideas (and hugely about the mundane), such that the very notion of importance stands on its head until it passes out. Even in his absence, the effect remains. Among the instrumentals he helped arrange, “Theadora Is Dozing” is a particularly enchanting tessellation of brass and percussion, while his own “Admiral Perry” is another standout for its evocative cast, as is the haunting “Winter.”

“In The Future” is quintessential Byrne, and imagines a time when sameness is the norm and norms are all the same. Like an intimate shadow of his timeless “Once in a Lifetime,” this crushing indictment of individualism shows us the horrors of an age when everybody becomes like everybody else. And so, ending in the comforts of the opener’s reprise, we realize that wheels are all there are, and that we, the ephemeral rats running nowhere within them, might one day destroy each other until there’s nothing left.

Peter Rühmkorf: Jazz & Lyrik.

| Tyran Grillo

JL cover

Peter Rühmkorf
Jazz & Lyrik.

Peter Rühmkorf voice
Michael Naura piano
Wolfgang Schlüter vibraphone
Klaus Thunemann bassoon
Eberhard Weber bass, violoncello
Christian Willisohn piano
Titus Vollmer guitar
Leszek Zadlo saxophone, flute
Christian Kappe flugelhorn, trumpet
Ansgar Elsner saxophone
Burkhard Jasper piano
Alexander Morsey bass
Klaus Gunnemann drums
Dietmar Bonnen piano
Andreas Schilling bass
Mastering: Eberhard Schnellen and ECM Records
Studio: ES-Dur, Hamburg
Produced by Hoffmann und Campe in collaboration with ECM Records
Release date: November 17, 2009

Jazz & Lyrik names a genre that might never have existed as such without Peter Rühmkorf (1929-2008). Together with pianist Michael Naura, vibraphonist Wolfgang Schlüter, and a host of other talents, the lauded German poet and essayist brought a consistent physical quality to his spoken artistry. It’s a characteristic he quite consciously cultivated: “I’m also a bit like an instrument,” he said in 1985. “My poems are fixed, like the keys on a piano. Only I must strike with the voice. The poem I read is my instrument. I just have to intone it.” While the form of jazz poetry presented in this 3-disc treasure trove, an archive coproduced by Hoffmann und Campe in collaboration with ECM Records and with support from the Arno Schmidt Foundation, reached its peak in the 1960s, the recordings documented here span from 1976 to 2006. The former year was a watershed one, when Rühmkorf recorded Kein Apolloprogramm für Lyrik for ECM. On that album, from which eight tracks are included, he joined forces with Naura, Schlüter, and bassist Eberhard Weber, yielding such phenomenally descriptive morsels as “Tagebuch” and “Zirkus.”

Eight further tracks are also included to represent the 1978 follow-up album, Phönix Voran. Leszek Zadlo (saxophone and flute) replaces Weber, making for a folk-tinged change of scenery and adding delight to such tracks as “Ich butter meinen Toast von beiden Seiten” and “Allein Ist Nicht Genug.”

Yet this album’s most valuable rarities are in its live recordings—delightful not only for their historical value, but also for the insight they provide into Rühmkorf’s effect on an audience. The standout in this regard is “Variation auf »Abendlied« von Matthias Claudius,” from an 18 September 1994 performance. As Rühmkorf riffs on the lyrics of Germany’s most beloved lullaby, he brings an improvisatory quality to the reading, so much so that the applause that follow it feel like those given after a jazz soloist passes the torch. The arrangement by Naura and Schlüter is as heartwarming as it is sincere (it’s also among the more pristinely recorded of the live selections).

This set also traces the afterlife of Phönix Voran as it played out in radio broadcasts from 1987, 2001, and 2005. These unlock secrets in that album’s highlights (especially “Komm raus!”) and others that never made it to the studio (“Einen zweiten Weg ums Gehirn rum”). The addition of guitarist Titus Vollmer in the middle performance is magical, as is the effect of hearing Rühmkorf’s voice recite the title poem on three separate occasions over a period of nearly as many decades.

Other noteworthy selections include the self-styled studio composition “Elbterrassen,” in which Rühmkorf beats over a recording of “C Jam Blues” from the Johnny Griffin album At Onkel Pö’s Carnegie Hall, Hamburg 1975; “Früher, als wir die großen Ströme noch …,” a 2005 performance featuring a rhythm and horn section, along with the less tangible instrument of Rühmkorf’s sly humor; and “Betr. Rundfrage Grundfrage,” a 2006 interpretation of a 1998 poem whose domesticity meshes beautifully with the intimate microscopy of pianist Dietmar Bonnen and bassist Andreas Schilling.

Rühmkorf had a wonderful way of speaking, at once in rhythm with the music (if not the other way around) and wandering its own path freely alongside it. What a significant achievement to have it so lovingly preserved, especially in such a mosaiced fashion. As the title of “Bleib erschütterbar und widersteh” reminds us: stay shattered and resist glory.

Pat Metheny Group: Live In Concert

| Tyran Grillo

PRO-030-front

Pat Metheny Group
Live In Concert

Pat Metheny guitars
Lyle Mays keyboards
Mark Egan bass
Dan Gottlieb drums
Recorded August 31, 1977
at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco
Radio broadcast by KJAZ
Engineer: Bud Spangler
“San Lorenzo” recorded September 4, 1977
at Seattle Opera House
Radio broadcast by KZAM
Engineer: Rick Keefer
Prepared for release by Robert Hurwitz

This rare promo-only LP documents two live radio broadcasts from the summer of 1977 by the Pat Metheny Group. Three of the four tracks are taken from a performance at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall as heard on KJAZ, while the outlier, “San Lorenzo,” was heard on KZAM from a performance at the Seattle Opera House. That latter tune is a thing of archival beauty. First, we get to hear Metheny introducing to the crowd what has since become a staple of the band’s repertoire as a “brand-new one.” Second, Metheny gives brief insight into its “odd tuning for the electric 12-string” and by extension into his process. This information only heightens our wonder at what transpires for its effortlessness of execution in a nascent stage, while also cluing us in on the historicity of its coalescence. Moreover, Metheny and company play it more slowly and enigmatically than on the seminal album they would record for ECM a year later, thus allowing keyboardist Lyle Mays a horizon’s worth of space in which to dance.

Mays, by any stretch of the imagination, is the highest mountain on that horizon (its peak now glowing more brightly than ever in the light of his recent passing). The greenery he paints in “Watercolors” drips as if after a rainstorm of hope and nostalgia. Amid drummer Dan Gottlieb’s glistening cymbals, he pays deference to an underlying ether. Gottlieb shines also in “Phase Dance,” which opens the album. In this setting, it immediately becomes apparent just how much ECM production brings out from certain configurations. Hearing the Pat Metheny Group in close quarters like this allows individual lines to rise lucidly, leaving us to imagine the depths extracted in a studio setting. Either way, it’s glorious to hear the band’s vibrant turns of phrase. Mark Egan’s electric bass is the backbone, flexing in harmony with every shift of weight. The excitement of the crowd is also palpable, and shows how well-traveled the music was on the road before it landed in the studio a year later. It’s worth noting that the title here is misspelled as “Phase Dancer” on the LP sleeve, as it may just be the most accurate description of Mays’s mode throughout the lesser-heard “Wrong is Right.” Its vivacity, to say little of Metheny’s golden solo, shows what can happen when musicians and listeners share the same oxygen. As KZAM-FM’s then-music director Jon Kertzer writes on the back cover: “Forget about jazz-rock fusion and who played with whom and where. Just sit back and listen to the music—some of the most refreshing and creative sounds that I have heard in a long time.”

William Naboré: Franz Schubert – Piano Sonatas

| Tyran Grillo

ECM TRIO PAC-205-front

William Naboré
Franz Schubert – Piano Sonatas

William Naboré piano
Recorded May 1976 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

When ECM recorded Valery Afanassiev performing at the 1985 Lockenhaus Festival, it would be label’s first intersection with Schubert after its classical-leaning New Series imprint went into effect. Sadly, that recording didn’t see daylight until 1998. Still, it set a benchmark for future New Series way stations in the ongoing Schubertian journey that has since unfolded. But ECM and Schubert have an even deeper relationship going back to 1976, when Virginia-born pianist William Naboré made this rare recording (distributed in Japan on Trio Records) at Ludwigsburg’s Tonstudio Bauer under the direction of producer Manfred Eicher and engineer Martin Wieland. In a way, Afanassiev picked up where Naboré left off, taking on Schubert’s posthumous opus DV 960 in B-flat Major, while this album begins with DV 959 in A Major. Naboré’s reading of the latter is as distinguished as anyone familiar with his playing will expect. It’s also chock-full of selectively applied exuberance, especially in the righthanded tone clusters of the Andantino. Before that, however, a faintly Mozartian take on the opening Allegro lends insight into a player who reinforces the architecture of what came before so that he might have the most artful support possible for his sometimes-acrobatic bursts of whimsy. In that precise vein, his rendering of the third movement—a delicate Scherzo—is exquisitely detailed. The final Rondo-into-Allegretto speaks of a composer who, at the end of his short life, had already perfected the sonata form as he understood it to the point of breathing it out onto the page, despite his rapidly waning health, and of a performer who, only a few years older than Schubert himself when he wrote it, understands this music as if it were his own.

By the time of this recording, as Naboré himself observes in an album note, apocryphal impulses had crept their way into the hands of many a Schubert interpreter. “The Schubert sonatas,” he writes, “are addressed to the imagination and need no such props to validate their existence.” True to his assessment, Naboré uses steadfast restraint as a source of illumination from within rather than elaboration from without, as is especially the case in this program’s second half. The C Major Sonata, DV 840, was composed in 1825 and bears the title “Reliquie” (referring to its unfinished state, as only two full movements survive). Nevertheless, the initiatory Moderato is in no way diminished by its power of execution in this most fundamental of tonalities. There’s a geometrical quality to be experienced that holds its breath throughout the Andante that follows. Though no less dramatic than its predecessor, the mood is subtler in its urging. Thus, the intimacy of this recording (and of the instrument it captures) only enhances the grandeur of Schubert’s spirit (and Naboré’s ability to extract it).