Colin Vallon piano Patrice Moret double bass Julian Sartorius drums Recorded June/July 2023 at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano Engineer: Stefano Amerio Cover photo: Woong Chul An Produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: November 15, 2024
With Samares, Colin Vallon completes a trilogy that began with 2014’s Le Vent and continued with 2017’s Danse, bringing its themes into the present. The Swiss pianist, reunited once again with bassist Patrice Moret and drummer Julian Sartorius, deepens his telepathic sense of touch across nine original compositions. The album’s title refers to what I grew up calling “helicopter seeds,” which often fall from maple trees in protracted flights. The image is an apt one, as each tune lends itself to plentiful regard as it makes its way toward the ground, so that by the end, we are left with a clearer view of the sky than ever.
“Racine” opens with brushed drums and prepared piano before morphing into piano proper with bowed cymbals and other gilding from Sartorius (who proves himself to be a phenomenal colorist here and in the later track, “Étincelle”). This exploration of morning light allows us to take in the scenery as it emerges, one frame at a time. Next to this awakening, “Mars” introduces the trio’s subtle feel for groove. Blending distance and proximity, the atmosphere is cushioned by the softness of its vision. There is a sense of privacy, of one looking out toward the mountains, of waiting for new constellations to shed the blanket of the horizon and reveal themselves. The underlying pulse is a comforting reminder that we are always moving forward, bound for life itself. Akin to tracks 4 (“Ronce”) and 8 (“Souche”), it emits a subtle yet locked-in pulse that always ensures Vallon has a light, no matter how dark the mood gets.
“Lou” is one of two pieces named for his children (the other being the progressively whimsical and lively “Timo”). It features piano preparations with objects bouncing on the strings as if to convey the trepidations of parenthood. Finally, “Brin” evokes the rustling of leaves, a shifting light, and faces from the past—fading but not forgotten. It is a photograph in a darkroom developing in reverse, leading the eyes (and ears) into shadow.
What has always caught my attention with Vallon’s trio, and with particular maturity this time around, is the ability to disturb the surface tension of its melodic waters without ever breaking it. It cradles the spinning seeds of the title track in their delicate demise, knowing that fresh growth will always find a way to take root.
Giovanni Guidi piano James Brandon Lewis tenor saxophone Thomas Morgan double bass João Lobo drums Recorded August 2023 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines Engineer: Gérard de Haro Mastering: Nicolas Baillard Cover painting: Emmanuel Barcilon Produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: July 12, 2024
Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi expands on his trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer João Lobo by welcoming saxophonist James Brandon Lewis (here making his ECM debut). The result is A New Day in more ways than one, each breath a chance at discovery.
This deeply curated session begins with “Cantos Del Ocells,” a traditional Catalan Christmas song rendered with soft-spoken confidence. Lewis speaks only as needed, letting his tenor work its way only through those cracks wide enough to accommodate him. It’s one of two tunes not written by Guidi—the other being a rubato take on the Rogers and Hart standard “My Funny Valentine,” which feels like a well of possibility despite (if not because of) its familiarity.
With so much space to wander in, the listener is free to explore each new environment as it unlocks itself. Whether your flavor of choice is the arco-inflected bassing of “To A Young Student” or the extended percussion of “Means For A Rescue,” organic elements get revealed by the mesh of every excavation. The group improvisational “Only Sometimes” casts a dim spotlight on Morgan and is remarkable for fitting seamlessly into its surroundings, as if it were an inevitability of the musicians gathered.
The inky call and response between Lewis and Guidi in “Luigi (The Boy Who Lost His Name)” is a highlight for its colorful turns, Lobo providing especially detailed commentary throughout. Between it and the glistening “Wonderland,” there is plenty of dreaminess to unpack in future listenings. Having the surest traction of any tune, Guidi, Morgan, and Lobo interlocking while Lewis carves through ebony and ivory, it is an invitation to run back home and start the journey again with fresh ears.
Those searching for groove in the standard sense will come up short. But if you want something exploratory that expresses itself with open-book honesty, then this one is for you.
It would be easy to say that guitarist, composer, and producer Charlie Rauh charts a territory all his own. But to fall into that cliché would risk eliding the tender graces that have fueled his endeavors from the beginning. He averts his eyes from the road less traveled, setting his heart instead on that still bearing the footprints of ancestors related either by blood or artistic heritage. Whether tuning his guitar like a microscope to the poetry of Phillis Wheatley or Anne and Emily Brontë or flipping it around like a telescope in the warmth of such albums as Viriditas and Hiraeth, he never lets go of the human condition as a central concern.
This debut musical treatise bears the subtitle “An Approach to Creating Intentional Music.” And yet, what is so refreshing about the narrative offered in these pages is that you need not be a musician, intentional or otherwise, to benefit from its insights. Central among them is that we tend to back down from the passion projects we hold dear in our youth. As time tempers these into rote platitudes (“hobbies at best, hidden out of embarrassment at worst,” he notes in the Foreword), we treat their recession as inevitable. This is, perhaps, one reason why literary works and all the paratextual experiences they entail have been integral to his oeuvre for so long. In that sense, he is as much a translator as a composer.
In the first section, “Simply,” he reflects on his time studying improvisation with jazz pianist Connie Crothers. Instead of bowing to the (relatively recent) convention that tells us simplicity is a bad thing, he embraces it as “a pure distillation of identifiable quality” that allows complexity to breathe. I cannot help but liken it to a line drawing of a wing versus a massive Baroque painting filled with saints and cherubim. The burden of proof on the creator of the former is deeper in the sense that every line speaks nakedly on the page, whereas in the latter, the margin for self-indulgence is greater yet more easily concealed. What Rauh realized at a key turning point in his growth as a musician was that complicating matters with business wasn’t the end goal. It was tapping into the childlike curiosity that such veneers, fragile as they are, do a surprisingly good job of hiding. This does not mean that one must “devolve” but that one must be willing to be vulnerable. And when we are vulnerable, we confront the question of who we are in spite of ourselves.
“Patiently” brings us into the spiritual weeds, through which every glimpse of sunshine becomes a tether to hope. More than that, it is the ultimate expression of love (think, for example, of the long-suffering God who stays his hand so that we might learn from our mistakes). And so, patience is not about proving your limits of tolerance but about faith as the evidence of things unseen. As Rauh humbly admits, “This is easier said than done, and despite my best wishes, I cannot claim that I am fully in tune with the concept as it applies to my life.” Amen, and amen.
Patience, too, is a mode of healing. It is the promise of strength fulfilled and renewed through the perseverance of the human (and animal) spirit. By tempering our fears, it gives room to stretch out our egos and cut them into millions of pieces. On the practical side, patience makes it “not only acceptable but optimal to leave spaces in your workflow.” Without those spaces, we lose sight of ourselves and what we are capable of. The moment we say we have arrived is probably when we need to check our assurance at the door and start singing again for its own sake.
The book’s third act, “Quietly,” is where the soul comes most readily into play. That said, quietude isn’t some mystical state of being in which one achieves unity with the universe but rather a recognition that the melodies of our lives need volition to seek one another out. And that is where the youthful essence from which we have distanced ourselves must be fished from within. Children are nothing if not intentional, and such clarity of expression is where we get our profoundest ideas. To be silent is to see ourselves no longer through the filters of camera lenses and computer screens but rather in the naked truth of the proverbial mirror. In so doing, we realize just how noisy we are inside.
I am reminded of an anecdote involving John Cage, who stepped into an anechoic chamber with the intention of experiencing true silence, only to discover that the faint sounds of his circulating blood and nervous system rendered that concept moot. This experience happened to be the inspiration behind his infamous composition 4’33”, for which the performer sits quietly in front of a piano for the titular duration without playing a single note. In hindsight, what was so disturbing about the piece’s premiere wasn’t necessarily that Cage was poking fun at the academy or even philosophically questioning the very definition of music; it was the fact that the performer ceased to matter. Thus, to experience 4’33” live is to be flooded with all sorts of internal voices. In wrestling with this same tension, Rauh concludes that the result of quiet music isn’t boredom or relaxation but power. It also tests our mettle as listeners and clues us in on the creed of patience. “When the rest falls away,” he observes, “all that is left is all we can give.”
No review of this superbly rendered meta-statement would be complete without mentioning the contributions of his sister, Christina Rauh Fishburne, whose illustrations are the glue that binds. By turns whimsical and contemplative, they work in counterpoint to the text without ever intruding. One in particular, which appears on page 24, speaks to the nostalgia of this reader/viewer. Its depiction of curiosity, stripped of all the baggage that adults bring to this impulse, teeters on the edge of interpretation. It is also the first of a sequence of images that home in on key aspects of the words preceding them.
Whether in the domestic comforts of a life without clear and present dangers or in the wider view of time and its inevitable entropy, Fishburne’s ability to pull out memories we never knew we had is a blessing and a comfort. As a segue into the scores included herein, they are denizens of a time capsule that is itself the curio of another time capsule. Of said scores, the musically inclined among us get access to a swath of moods. From lullabies to choral settings, they offer plenty of soil in which to plant and water seeds of communion, assuring us that we can rest our heads on pillows of wonder every night, knowing there is only more to come when day breaks.
John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet Rob Luft guitar Rob Waring vibraphone Thomas Strønen drums Recorded December 2022 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo Engineer: Martin Abrahamsen Cover photo: Christian Vogt Executive producer: Manfred Eicher Release date: February 16, 2024
Words Unspoken documents the unique convocation of saxophonist John Surman (in his 80th year as of this writing) with guitarist Rob Luft, vibraphonist Rob Waring, and drummer Thomas Strønen. The combination, both in terms of the instruments and the spirit of those handling them, evokes some of the groundbreaking collaborations that graced ECM in the 90s, If Mountains Could Sing not least among them. Though I wouldn’t place this in the same category, the session certainly has a charm all its own—one that is unmistakably Surman.
While the bandleader’s fluidity on soprano saxophone is as full-throated as ever, especially in the opening “Pebble Dance,” for which Waring and Luft create a flexible center while Strønen provides the undercurrent for their forward motion, there’s nothing quite like his handling of the lower reeds. The baritone of the title track dances with a characteristically light touch, while Luft’s electric overlay adds cosmic touches expanding on Surman’s experiments with arpeggiators back in the 80s. This, in combination with the vibraphone, adds a requisite touch. The baritone moves more snakily in “Around The Edges,” where romantic and platonic impulses comingle. Sticking with the gravelly end of things, Surman elicits some fantastic palindromes on the bass clarinet, culminating in “Hawksmoor,” which offers the most endearing development of the set, exhaling two parts gold for every inhalation of silver. Along the way, “Graviola” epitomizes the freedom of his playing over Waring’s precise infrastructures. Strønen, too, defers to a liberated touch.
Let us not neglect, though, the soprano’s philosophies, so beautifully expressed in such tracks as “Precipice,” in which it teeters at dizzying heights, and “Flower In Aspic,” where time and space bond over shared interests. The revelrous “Onich Ceilidh” (“ceilidh” referring to a party with dancing and music) encapsulates the joy still left in one of ECM’s most uncompromising yet humble stars, giving Luft carte blanche to reach some of the album’s finest points. And while much of the territory will seem familiar to longtime listeners at its core, to experience it under the navigation of such a fresh band makes it feel presciently true.
Keith Jarrett piano Recorded live July 9, 2016 Goldener Saal, Musikverein, Vienna Producer: Keith Jarrett Engineer: Martin Pearson Mastering: Christoph Stickel Cover design: Sascha Kleis Executive producer: Manfred Eicher Release date: May 30, 2025
Today marks the 80th birthday of Keith Jarrett, one of the most uncompromising visionaries of modern music. Although he is unlikely to be heard from again in a live setting, we can rejoice that ECM still has recordings in its vault waiting to be released. Among them is New Vienna, the label’s fourth document from the pianist’s final European solo tour (the previous recordings being Munich 2016,Budapest Concert, and Bordeaux Concert). The title of the present disc is a nod to his seminal Vienna Concert, recorded 25 years earlier, almost to the day.
Part I jumps into the bramble of our expectations and slinks through the sticks and foliage with the litheness of a mountain lion. The music evolves in a convoluted dance, moving ever forward to its sudden cessation. In light of such focused energy, it’s only fitting that the shadows of Part II should cast their pall over the scene at hand. Rather than tell a story, each resonant chord lingers long enough for us to come up with our own, so that by the end of this meditative slip, we are closer neither to the destination nor the point of departure. The applause between this and Part III is especially jarring, even as it prepares us for the latter’s spell-breaking properties. Every stomp of its feet is a declaration of the shorter forms that Jarrett came to favor in his latter-day performances. Part IV is an anthem for the soul, drawing a dangling hand through the waters of reflection on its way to the opposite shore. A brief shift into dissonance in the final leg is the only tinge of regret we encounter.
The balladic Part V represents a sea change in the program, channeling feelings so familiar that we must close our eyes to contain them. Every new layer reveals an older memory—this one of a hermetic childhood, that one of an unbridled young adulthood, and yet another of generations interconnected by love—leaving behind a gift unwrappable by time and space. The rise and fall of Jarrett’s left hand mimics the trepidations of an anxious heart that finds truest release at the keyboard alone. The hall recedes, the audience fades, and the lights dim until there is only vibration existing for no other sake than its own.
Part VI is the aftermath of an argument. An unnamed protagonist picks up the physical and immaterial pieces of what has just transpired in the hopes of refashioning them into a semblance of unity. But no matter how much he tries, the cracks are always visible. Part VII evokes the mourning of self that follows, creating hope from scratch before the clouds have a chance to weep. The increasingly dense textures come across as simultaneously desperate and liberated, while Part VIII cleans the proverbial slate with a brief yet cathartic blues. The gospel-infused Part IX is a return to form, giving joy to everything it touches. This glorious turnaround shows us that hope is a many-pronged path. And of all the places it might take us, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” couldn’t be more suitable. Its timelessness is the frame of a building that continues standing even when the mortar crumbles away. And as the winds blow through its open walls, they seem to whisper, “In a life filled with so much wonder, melodies are the only language that matters.”
Keith Jarrett piano Recorded May 1994 at Cavelight Studio, New Jersey Engineer: Peter Laenger Cover photo: Mayo Bucher Executive producer: Manfred Eicher Release date: June 30, 2023
In his 2014 monograph, The Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, music historian David Schulenberg paints a compositionally focused portrait of Johann Sebastian’s second son. Despite living in his father’s shadow, his influence managed to shine a light through the veil of history by way of his seminal Essay on the True Manner of Playing Keyboard Instruments and the conduit he was purported to have furled between the Baroque and Viennese Classical schools. As a composer of nearly 1,000 works, his oeuvre is nothing to sneeze at, nor his style, as much an example of evolution in and of itself as of eras retrospectively defined.
As Paul Griffiths notes in the liner text for the present album, which documents Keith Jarrett’s traversal of CPE’s Württemberg Sonatas, the ocean between father and son may seem vast, even as it churns with currents of familiarity in concert with calls from more distant shores. Dedicated to Carl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, this collection “makes the point about inheritance avoided, or qualificated, or contradicted, or accepted, whether with gratitude or resignation.” Although nominally composed in 1742/43 for the student who would soon ascend to his dukedom, Griffiths observes, “More likely it was for his own fingers he was writing, and for his own ears.” Jarrett, having only heard these pieces on harpsichord, felt compelled to make a piano version, resulting in this home studio recording from 1994, likewise also for his own fingers and his own ears. All the more honored we should feel to have it available three decades later.
Sonata I in a minor is glorious from the start. There are moments of intense poignancy, as in the Moderato, while the faster outer layers elicit feelings of joy that are always undercut by what Griffiths calls a “sad grace” throughout (I might also call it a glorious melancholy). The final movement, marked Allegro assai, carries astonishing depth in tow. What seems a lightly articulated dance has room for so much more than the listener can calculate. Jarrett brims with vitality and precision without ever letting go of the improvisational spirit for which he is known on the jazzier side of things.
The sheer clarity of Jarrett’s voicings, a profound match for the younger Bach’s own, is fully displayed in Sonata II in A-flat major, of which the concluding Allegro is especially vibrant for its multifaceted joys. Like a brick wall, each layer staggers, parallel to every other layer below and above it, adding strength to the overall design and function.
The opening of Sonata III in e minor is perhaps the most glorious of them all, revealing its heart from the first sweep of the second hand. The Adagio is nostalgia incarnate, while the Vivace—the briefest movement of the collection—peels itself away with unfiltered love. The pauses in Sonata IV in B-flat major make for passionate contrast, yielding an Andante of great beauty. Working in stepwise formation, it is a DNA helix surrendering to melodic sequencing.
The more these sonatas develop, the more they veer toward Father Bach, especially in the Adagio fugue of Sonata V in E-flat major. With sweeping intimacy, it pieces together its puzzle between gusts of wind and spirit. The final Sonata VI in b minor is another inwardly focused distillation that defends variegations of light and shadow. The clocklike Adagio is a gem, while the final Allegro glistens in the setting sun. Each is a different keyboard, two eddies in a bay coming together harmoniously, speaking the same truth but with different tongues.
Fred Hersch piano Recorded May 2023 at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano Engineer: Stefano Amerio Cover: Andreas Kocks Produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: April 19, 2024
“I don’t use ideas. Every time I have an idea, it’s too limiting and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven’t run out of curiosity.” —Robert Rauschenberg
After making his ECM debut with trumpeter Enrico Rava on 2022’s The Song Is You, pianist Fred Hersch releases his first solo album for the label. Pleased with the feel of recording at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI and the piano on which he played that spontaneous session, he felt committed to the idea of returning to the same space and instrument. In the album’s EPK, Hersch speaks of the title as connoting not listening silently but rather a mode of patience from which music grows of its own accord, as is immediately palpable in “Star-Crossed Lovers.” Through the keyhole of this Billy Strayhorn/Duke Ellington classic, we glimpse a realm only articulable in notecraft such as this. Hersch’s sense of touch is profoundly ahead of so many other players, his feeling for melodic form (not just prettiness for the sake of it) giving flesh to every bone.
After such a suspension, the abstractions of “Night Tide Light” set the stage for a swath of freely improvised and original music. They break the spell without ever removing its base components, distilling them into a new tincture for creative souls. Upon drinking it, the mystical aura of “Akrasia” pulls away the proverbial veil to reveal a not-so-proverbial landscape populated by memories knowable only to the listener. As starlight weaves through dampened strings, we are shown new constellations in our image. As the story goes, Hersch brought his sheet music for this original composition, which he realized was on the floor after the recording started, so he just played the beginning and went from there. “Aeon” is one of a few titles taken from the oeuvre of painter Robert Rauschenberg and speaks more to the transcendence at play here. “Volon” is another, working dissonance into a grammar all its own.
The title track is pure transcendence. Improvised without preparation, its feeling is never stable. It wavers between weightless highs and gravid lows—the very qualities of life itself. “Starlight” is perhaps the most descriptive title for the album. It flirts with Debussy’s Clair de Lune before veering off along its own paths, always keeping a toe in the former’s shadow. Distant fires, whispering of a destructive power that looks beautiful from afar, burn quietly. “Little Song,” originally written for the duo project with Rava, receives its premiere here. It’s a tune that bends itself in three dimensions to the listener’s ear, needing nothing but its heartbeat as accompaniment.
“The Wind” (Russ Freeman) is a first take that flows as if it were the tenth. There is something nostalgic about its contours, a certain magic of the past that permeates so many of ECM’s past solo piano gems, including Keith Jarrett’s The Melody At Night, With You and Paul Bley’s Solo in Mondsee. Similarly, this must be heard from beginning to end to be appreciated fully. Hersch lets the sounds go wherever they must, never forcing the keys where they will not bend. It ends with a rustling of leaves, a stirring of the soul, and a baptism of moonlight. The standard “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise” is a nod to Hersch’s self-professed hero, Sonny Rollins, whereas “Winter Of My Discontent” is an inspiration to itself. Like James Joyce at his most accessible, this is modernism given a fine mesh through which to steep its tea. Thus, the predetermined is not a seed but a base layer for something humane to be built on top. The taller it gets, the more it reacts to the wind, never toppling but gracing the clouds with its teetering metronome.
John Scofield guitar Vicente Archer double bass Bill Stewart drums Recorded August 2022 at Clubhouse Studio, Rhinebeck, NY Engineer: Tyler McDiarmid Cover photo: Fotimi Potamia Executive producer: Manfred Eicher Release date: October 13, 2023
Since entering the JAPO sublabel on Peter Warren’s out-of-print Solidarity in 1982, guitarist John Scofield skipped between ECM and its sister imprints for decades as a sideman. And while he has only begun headlining sessions for producer Manfred Eicher in the present one, his storied discography on Verve, Blue Note, and elsewhere leaves indelible fingerprints across the fingerboard in this laser-focused studio outing with bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Bill Stewart. Their interactions are as varied as the tunes from Scofield’s pen that activate them, and his chosen points of contact from a wide swath of the American canon only make their energy that much more electric.
Speaking of Scofield’s writing, of which this two-disc album gives us seven substantive examples, we can hardly encounter it without marveling at the vivaciousness he brings to every turn of phrase. Whether in the folkloric delicacy of “Back In Time” or the tongue-in-cheek virtuosity of “The Girlfriend Chord,” he never backs down from the opportunity to tell a meaningful story—nowhere more so than in “Nothing Is Forever,” a tender yet muscular tune dedicated to his son, Evan Scofield, who died in 2013 at the age of 26. Whatever the shade, he lets his expressivity chart its own path.
Toing the line between funk and swing, “Mask” (a reference to the pandemic) welcomes the listener with its headnod-worthy goodness. Masterful playing all around heightens the trio’s cohesion as a unit. “How Deep,” a standard 32-bar jazz, also swings with consummate intuition. Its nostalgic sound finds kindred vibes in “TV Band,” which finds the composer in a guttural mode, with a touch of country twang for good measure. His guitar stays crunchy even in milk, giving us one burst of flavor after another. Finally, “Mo Green” expands his older original, “Green Tea.”
Although Archer and Stewart shine throughout, they are particularly brilliant in their take on Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Anchored by a cycling guitar loop, the album opener takes its time to build, locking step before veering into unexpected directions. Only when the bass solo brings a hush to the scene do we remember that the looping guitar has been going all along. In addition to effortless readings of “Budo” (Miles Davis), “Ray’s Idea” (Raymond Brown), and “Somewhere” (from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story), Scofield shines in his playful rendition of Neil Young’s “Old Man,” a song he now relates to in an experiential way. Even the standard “Stairway To The Stars” seems as though it were written yesterday. In addition to its loveliness, the engineering is superb (Stewart’s brushes sounding especially lucid and present).
All good things come to an end with the title track. This Grateful Dead classic shows the trio in their finest hour. “I love playing this way with Vicente; he knows what to do, as does Bill,” says Scofield in the liner notes. “I feel like we can go anywhere.” And with all the fresh, chameleonic goings on here, it’s hard to disagree.
Elina Duni voice Rob Luft guitar Matthieu Michel flugelhorn Fred Thomas piano, drums Recorded July 2022 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines Engineer: Gérard de Haro Mastering: Nicolas Baillard Cover photo: Nicolas Masson Executive producer: Manfred Eicher Release date: June 16, 2023
And I will face the sea that will bathe the pebbles. Caresses of water, wind and air. And light. Immensity.
So begins A Time To Remember, the latest box of newly minted coins to be placed alongside the others that singer Elina Duni has contributed to the ECM treasury. The song, “Évasion” (Escape), with music by Duni and guitarist Rob Luft and lyrics by Belgian-Israeli poet Esther Granek, is a paean to the stripping of hearts and minds down to their barest elements. Admirers of 2020’s Lost Ships will find the band more cohesive than ever, four hedges whose shapes have expanded and intertwined into one larger formation. Multi-instrumentalist Fred Thomas contributes flowing pianism to the set’s opener, while Matthieu Michel adds a voice of his own through the flugelhorn, all of it cradling Duni’s journey from wave to wave, carrying eras of history compressed into every exhalation. On the next shore awaits “Hape Derën” (Open The Door), one of two Albanian traditionals on the program, the other being the enchanting “E Vogël” (Little One), in which Duni and Luft weave through the air as birds in flight. Thomas adds light drums and percussion to this scene of domestic comforts, while Duni’s voice is as delicate as rice paper, softening the glare of remembrance from beyond the pale. “Mora Testinë” (I Grabbed The Water Jar), a folksong from Kosovo, completes the ancestral triangle with whims of flirtation and potential romance, Luft’s guitar sailing crystalline waters, as Duni and Michel move forth in unison of theme and purpose.
Singer and guitarist are the primary creative forces behind the texts and composing, respectively. The title song is one of a quadriptych from their adoring collaboration. Recalling the great folkish ballads of the 1960s and 70s (I sense the fingerprints of Tim Buckley or even Dan Fogelberg), it finds collective purpose in its individualism, where the love one shares with another, soul to soul, stands as the only monument to a world where towers and altars and fallen into dust. Meanwhile, “Whispers Of Water” and “Sunderland” offer dreamier energies, the latter nestled in more quotidian surroundings:
Cars and spaces Concrete erases my state of mind But somehow The heart is on rewind
This is the core of their navigation, where a split between the flesh and the environments it inhabits functions as its own safety net. Even the wordless “Dawn” transpires as a meditation, the meaning of which is never in doubt.
A curated smattering of touchpoints rounds out the story arc. Charlie Haden’s “First Song” finds the musicians in the most fragile mode, letting the innocence of Abbey Lincoln’s heartfelt lyrics blossom without getting in the way of their fragrance. Even Luft’s fuzzy electric works beneath the voice rather than through it. The Stephen Sondheim classic “Send In The Clowns” stands out as a surreal addition. To hear something so mainstream takes us out of body. Like “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” in the opening of the Disney/Pixar film WALL-E, it’s almost as if the world for which it was created is gone. Instead, it exists on its own terms, haunting outer space with echoes of a planet left to die. “Mallëngjimi” (Nostalgia), with music/lyrics by Rashid Krasniqi, expresses a kindred longing for an Albania that no longer exists. Even the unison of flugelhorn and voice, expanded by pianistic harmonies, can only be a closed circle. The standard “I’ll Be Seeing You” is another step out of time. It’s as if the Great American Songbook were an unfinished sentence on the tip of the cosmic tongue. Accompanied only by acoustic guitar, Duni’s voice recedes, forever unrequited.
Just as light and shadow need each other to survive but never fully comingle, each song on A Time To Remember gives shape to the rest. Their unity is born in contrast, taking shape as one of my top ECM albums of the decade.
Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 