Keith Jarrett Trio: Somewhere (ECM 2200)

| Tyran Grillo

Somewhere

Keith Jarrett Trio
Somewhere

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded live July 11, 2009 at KKL Luzern Concert Hall
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Produced by Keith Jarrett
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

In the same way that 2012 gave Keith Jarrett fans reason to celebrate with the awakening of Sleeper, so does 2013 bring light, placing us at the center of things in a magical new record from his nonpareil trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette. More than any other, this joint proves they are no mere instrumentalists but also singers, each in his way.

Somewhere was recorded—not live but alive—in Lucerne, Switzerland in July of 2009. Though it comes to us after a four-year steep, it is as fresh as the day it hit the ether. Jarrett opens with “Deep Space,” a protracted solo that leads into the Miles Davis classic “Solar.” If the transition between the two reveals anything, it is that these three souls, lit as they are by unwavering musical pilot lights, have traveled so far together for so long that the album’s title might as well be “Everywhere.” A feeling of openness and suspension emphasizes the three decades’ worth of magic that came together for this performance, each note a glow-in-the-dark star that still phosphoresces when the lights go down. Lest we get lost in the pitch of night, Jarrett lays down his runway particle by particle, giving his band mates all the guidance they need to fly. Peacock elicits a highlight or two in this 15-minute wind-up, flapping through changes like one among the album cover’s flock.

Jarrett is, while a technical genius, above all a connoisseur of melody. As if to prove this, “Stars Fell On Alabama” gives voice to the dark side of the moon for a beauty that needs no sun to shine. Here Peacock swings from Jarrett’s vines into the loosely woven “Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea,” in which now DeJohnette stokes the fire. In the process, he does the impossible: emoting impressionistically with clearly delineated strokes. This only inspires Jarrett to passionate heights, every cluster from his fingers dotting the landscape with fresh flowers. Peacock’s ligament keeps us on track to a whimsical ending.

A 20-minute exposition of “Somewhere,” one of two tunes culled from West Side Story, finds every facet of its theatrical quality realized in the Jarrett addition “Everywhere.” Peacock moves like a throbbing heart in an early solo. Meanwhile, Jarrett’s left hand maintains a gentle metronome as the right tells its stories in the second person. The trio takes its second dip into the Bernstein songbook with a sparkling take on “Tonight.” Jarrett’s fingers dance up a storm, cascading into a rich solo from DeJohnette that leaves us floating along the strains of “I Thought About You,” which flows tenderly, sweetly, as it should.

Somewhere isn’t so much a homecoming as it is a shoring up of a structure that has already held firm against many tides. Jarrett’s ever-evolving pianism provides the aluminum siding, Peacock polishes the freshly installed hardwood floors, and DeJohnette fits new windows into every frame with until the house thrums with the presence of its longtime tenants. Being somewhere locates one not only in space, but also in time, and the album’s clip reminds us that improvisation is a luxury never to be taken for granted. In this spirit they sound more with it than ever, due in no small part to the recording, which stands comfortably at the lip of the stage and twirls with delight. The result is an album that holds its own alongside Still Live as one of the trio’s absolute finest.

KJT

(To hear samples of Somewhere, click here.)

Keith Jarrett: The Melody At Night, With You (ECM 1675)

| Tyran Grillo

The Melody At Night

Keith Jarrett
The Melody At Night, With You

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded 1998 at Cavelight Studio
Engineer: Keith Jarrett
Produced by Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher

The Melody At Night, With You was my first Keith Jarrett solo album. And perhaps it was in a way for Jarrett, too. It interprets some of the greatest names in the American songbook—Duke Ellington, the Gershwins, Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern, Oscar Levant, among others—yet tells their stories as if we’ve never heard them before. More than just another standards album in absence of his trio, this is the pianist at his purest. He approaches the music as a composer approaches a blank staff: which is to say, with wonder.

At the time of this recording, Jarrett was diagnosed with what was then known as fibromyalgia, a condition that variously affects muscles and nerves, leaving sufferers chronically fatigued. This meant that Jarrett was unable to perform, and for a while his fingers never touched a key. This in the wake of his highly successful Tokyo ’96, released after the affliction had taken root. Yet surely nothing could staunch the pilot light from which he had borrowed so much flame in his career, and it was this, along with his love for wife Rose Anne (to whom the album bears dedication), that informed his return to playing. To call this album intimate would be an understatement, recorded as it was under cover of darkness, gently, sweetly. Skin thus shed, he is a cause without a rebel, open to the vision of love that holds us in our darkest hour.

The album divides songs internally, balancing contradictory impulses in elegant weave. Gone are the transcendent moonwalks of yore. In their place are gravid statements of purpose. From the contact of “I Loves You Porgy,” the physicality of his playing is immediately apparent as every stretch of sinew and bone works itself back into flexible life. Treading a fine line between linear melody and cloudbursts of chords, between song and circumstance, it is the Rosetta Stone for all that issues from its stirrings. “I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good” similarly mixes ecstasy into regret, thereby revealing a contradiction of love that cannot be shaken. Jarrett’s voice emerges, the groan of a waking giant. “Don’t Ever Leave Me” balances uncertainty and conviction by way of his fall-off-the-bone storytelling.

“Someone To Watch Over Me” sits at the fulcrum. An unadulterated gaze into the heart of things, it opens a window with every note and breathes light into the “Meditation” that flows from his touching rendition of “Blame It On My Youth.” With this one realizes, if not already, that something profound is going on—not only for the miraculous tinge of recovery that permeates, but also because of the way it emphasizes the vitality of music, as if it simply must be heard. This would also seem to be the message encoded into “Something To Remember You By.” Here the balance is of silt and crystal, while in “Be My Love” it is tears and laughter. “I’m Through With Love” ends on a bittersweet note, a fleeting coda that is anything but in its scope. Jarrett fleshes out the program with a pair of traditional favorites. In both, he pours his soul in the endings. What with the chromatic appliqué in the descending tail of “My Wild Irish Rose” and the string game of the heart that is “Shenandoah,” there is nothing more to do than close one’s eyes and breathe.

In this respect, The Melody At Night, With You is also a love letter to the songs themselves, for by the end the gift of performance gets lost in the billowing curtain of time, lingering as the memory of a dream, now dispelled in the morning light for an intensity that would otherwise obliterate us.

If this is where Jarrett’s heart lives, may it never die.

<< Charles Lloyd: Voice In The Night (ECM 1674)
>> András Schiff/Peter Serkin: Music for Two Pianos (ECM 1676/77 NS)

Craig Taborn Trio: Chants (ECM 2326)

| Tyran Grillo

Chants

Craig Taborn Trio
Chants

Craig Taborn piano
Thomas Morgan double bass
Gerald Cleaver drums
Recorded June 2012 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Assistant engineer: Charlie Kramsky
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The Craig Taborn Trio is a metronome with a soul. For its debut release, Chants, the pianist’s fearless group carves a niche and fills it with so much creative spirit that no one but the listener can squeeze in for a spell. The album defines a repertoire, extracting from one of the most enviable rhythm sections in the business an elixir for surefire engagement. Bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver know what Taborn is all about. They are never add-ons but are fully immersed atoms in his molecular goings on, nearly a decade in the forming. And if the syncopation of “Saints” is any indication, theirs is an aliveness of unity rare to hear. As in so many of the tracks that follow, there is a winding, slightly off-kilter feeling to its jaggedness. Taborn and Cleaver leave an especially consonant series of markings at the outset, each the half of a poker deck perfectly Farrowed to the tune of Morgan’s deal. The bassist works alone “In Chant,” enacting no mere solo per se but a living tendon between wholes. In those wholes contrasts abound. “Beat The Ground” evokes the blurred foliage of a running warrior’s peripheral vision. His weapons trickle down from the sky in care packages of godly insight, inspiring pulse-driven spirals into resonant fade. The feeling of resolution is as visceral as it is fragile. “Hot Blood,” on the other hand, is as cool as can be. It opens a city’s worth of brainwashed minds and, while flurried, keeps its inner flame in smooth focus.

Taborn Trio

From the tectonic instability of its intro, “All True Night / Future Perfect” congeals like so much stardust. Its evolving Spirograph is toothed with miniscule variations, which though unapparent to the naked eye scream to the naked ear. Like a dislocated joint these connections remain encased in the body proper, hanging in lieu of locomotion. “Cracking Hearts” opens with a scattering of cobwebs from Cleaver before the trio rummages through everything in its attic, upturning memories that were never theirs to begin with yet which ring familiarly. More important than artifacts are the “Silver Ghosts” who haunt the rafters. Theirs is a ponderous song, an ephemeral dotted line of footprints in the dark, conducted by the wings of a trapped and frightened bat. “Silver Days Or Love” clears out the windows, drawing pointillist glyphs by Taborn’s right hand over a steady imprinting of chords from his left. A strangely enchanting bass solo, host to a network of internal gatherings, gives soil to Taborn’s sprigs of blossom. Only when they “Speak The Name” do clouds begin to open their pores to the firmament’s pale blue love.

While the music of Chants is certainly profound, it is, more simply, found. It is as if it had been wandering for countless years in the corners of our minds, each motif a determined mouse waiting for just the right cheese to tantalize its palate. Taborn never lets the intensity of this indulgence overwhelm. He knows just when to turn down the dial, lest the circuit break and leave us altogether unreceptive to signals. His brilliance is all in the music. Rather than go from A to B, he is content going from Q to R, clothing himself in the orbits of another planetary system that operates by its own gravitational and chemical rules. The chant, then, becomes a de-normalizing impulse, a light in the telescope that renders us in our darkest hour strangers even to ourselves.

There is glory and praise in these movements, sacrifice and self-reflection, pockets of expectation filled to bursting with illusions. As in the surgical discoveries of Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin, geometry is paramount, the lifeblood of all orbit. If the Keith Jarrett Trio revitalized the standard, Taborn and his allies have set one.

(To hear samples of Chants, click here, or watch the promo video below.)

Bley/Peacock/Motian: Not Two, Not One (ECM 1670)

| Tyran Grillo

Not Two, Not One

Not Two, Not One

Paul Bley piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Paul Motian drums
Recorded January 1998 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

This album documents a monumental coming together of pianist Paul Bley, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Paul Motian, a combination not seen on record since Paul Bley with Gary Peacock, laid down in 1963 and issued 1970 as ECM’s third release. Here the trio picks up where it left off some 35 years before, furthering a journey of deconstruction its members have since charted separately in various combinations. And combinations are really what this session is about, for the trio turns kaleidoscopically throughout, emphasizing certain angles over others in a constant shifting of crystals. One moment finds us mired in the quiet urban fantasies of “Don’t You Know,” in which Bley pours out every last drop from his flask of introspection, while the next tantalizes with “Fig Foot” (“Big Foot” by another name), last heard on Adventure Playground. Bley latterly dances like fire, erratic yet unified by elemental force, following a pattern that is beyond our ken. Peacock is duly inspired in his solo against a delicate swing from Motian, who stays the course with an effervescent washtub beat.

The album’s most notable soundings come from Bley’s pianism, which revels in the depths granted it by studio access to a Bösendorfer. Bley bathes in its open possibilities, moving from a sunny intro in “Not Zero – In Three Parts” to lively reveals of the instrument’s vibrating inner core. This touches off a spate of drums from Motian, whose own soliloquy takes root in the ethereal, and inspires from Peacock a solo that balances integrity with unruliness and ushers in the trio proper with bold progression. Bley’s zither-like touches tip the scales toward all-out swing. “Now” similarly digs low, forming a cascading and complex solo of bridge-cabled intensity. “Vocal Tracked” also finds Bley alone, this time pushing notes like pins into an entomologist’s specimen board. Peacock likewise enchants with “Entelechy,” an elliptical solo track that shows a master at work. He further contributes two tunes: the pirouetted “Intente” and the restless marginalia of “Set Up Set.” Each turns itself like a sentient children’s top, waiting for the moment when its inertia will falter.

Yet together is how the trio shines. In “Noosphere” they work as one amorphous blob, carefree yet passionate. A many-petaled solo from Peacock bespeaks an undaunted hand, thereby flinging the veil of obscurity in favor of transparent expression against Motian’s profound susurrations. And after a luxurious dip in the balladic waters of “Dialogue Amour,” the trio tightens the drawstring with “Not Zero – In One Part,” a brief and burrowing coda.

These three sages of modern jazz neither break down borders nor blaze trails. Rather, they ignore those borders altogether and shape their music as it comes: bare yet flavorful enough to shock your taste buds into bliss.

<< Giya Kancheli: Magnum Ignotum (ECM 1669 NS)
>> Zelenka: Trio Sonatas (ECM 1671/72 NS)

Keith Jarrett Trio: Tokyo ’96 (ECM 1666)

| Tyran Grillo

Tokyo '96

Keith Jarrett Trio
Tokyo ’96

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded March 30, 1996 at Orchard Hall, Tokyo
Engineer: Toshio Yamanaka
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Keith Jarrett’s trend-setting standards trio returns to Japan in celebration of its 15th year in this commanding live recording, which from bare pianistic threads spins an up-tempo version of “It Could Happen To You” to kick things off just right. With DeJohnette’s brushes flying and Peacock likewise enamored, free and easy exchanges abound. At this point we’re already hooked, so that “Never Let Me Go” becomes a mantra to guide us through the rest. There’s so much tenderness from Jarrett here, it’s a wonder he can emote with so little vocal breach. This, along with Peacock’s soulful slides, makes for one of the most heartwarming tracks in the trio’s output. Peacock’s early lepidopteran solo in “Summer Night” traces Jarrett’s masterful story arc word for word and shifts into high gear for “John’s Abbey” in a chain of powerful music-making. The trio’s sparkling rendition of “Billie’s Bounce” is a splash of cold water on the face. Jarrett’s right hand slaloms through the left’s gentle punctuations before a concluding solo from DeJohnette puts the icing on this positively exuberant cake. It’s one of a few standout moments from the drummer, who relays hand percussion and hi-hat in “I’ll Remember April” and leads the trio into an organic fadeout. All of which makes the relatively brief “Mona Lisa” a magical moment. Painting with a dark and bar-lit hue, its grandeur is obscured, embraced, inhaled.

Two tracks find Jarrett drawing improvised pieces from the energies at hand. “Last Night When We Were Young” blends into “Caribbean Sky,” while “My Funny Valentine” morphs into “Song.” In each there is a hip nostalgia, Jarrett’s sweeping gestures the perfect foil for every tectonic shift the rhythm section brings topside. Like a mountain shadow looming in the twilight, the latter offers especial solace, standing as a vestige of times we have yet to know. DeJohnette’s quiet rumblings are a distant thunder, even as Peacock’s restless song offers the promise of a new day.

Were it not for the due process this trio brings to every verdict, it might be easy to let these live recordings blend into one another. Yet these are cases without perpetrators, whose crimes are absolved the moment they are committed. Like a virus that adapts to vaccinations, their creativity spreads with an all-consuming will to be felt. Only here, rather than pain and decay, there is affirmation, resurrection, and spirit. We encounter this most vividly in “Autumn Leaves,” which in addition to being one of the trio’s signatures finds delicate balance here through Jarrett’s anticipatory style. Jarrett makes block chords blossom with melody, just as he deepens the single note. In the wake of such marvel, perhaps only this rhythm section can sustain the flame with the skill that Peacock and DeJohnette possess in spades. DeJohnette’s brushes in particular keep up with every roll, while Peacock’s excitations somehow ring contemplatively.

Jarrett and his band mates carry a tune without ever letting us forget that they wouldn’t be here without that tune to begin with. Whether through bold, linear lines or atmospheric touches, the trio puts melody over matter, because in the end melody is all that matters.

<< Bent Sørensen: Birds and Bells (ECM 1665 NS)
>> Schönberg/Schubert: Klavierstücke (ECM 1667 NS)

Bent Sørensen: Birds and Bells (ECM New Series 1665)

| Tyran Grillo

Birds and Bells

Bent Sørensen
Birds and Bells

Christian Lindberg trombone
Oslo Sinfonietta and Cikada
Christian Eggen conductor
Recorded October 1997 at NRK Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Audun Strype
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Visual practitioners have experimented with processes of decay for centuries. Their art has even become subject to it over time in varying degrees. Those working with sound, however, face different challenges in evoking the same. Electronic musicians have perhaps been most successful in this regard. Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin, better known as Boards of Canada, often subject their creations to a sort of virtual oxidation whereby the music loses its sheen and welcomes blemishes and distortions into its fold. William Basinski inadvertently took this one step further when he captured the process live while recording what came to be known as the Disintegration Loops. And now we have Bent Sørensen, whose quasi-spectralist sound-world dons the ECM New Series cloak in this program of instrumental works.

Bent Sørensen

Most of the program places soloists inside an ad hoc group under the moniker Cikada Ensemble. The Lady and the Lark (1997) centers on viola amid a spray of other colors. And yet this series of five miniatures (the longest at three minutes) turns soloist into periphery, dotting a mandala-like framework with textured bodhisattvas. Amid fluttering intentions and water-drip effects, woodblocks touch the night with their toad-throated vibrations. Like paintings subjected to X-ray, they reveal underlying sketches. Such attention to microscopic detail further shapes the Funeral Procession for violin, viola and 6 instruments (1989), which similarly pulls up the carpet from the forest floor and shines a flashlight on all that squirms beneath. Like an astronomer, it focuses on the negative space as much as the stars, each nothing without its limpid backdrop.

By contrast, while The Deserted Churchyards for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, percussion and piano (1990) designates no central instruments, piano and flute act as quasar to its gaseous system. Their transcendent relays render invisible fissions audible. A tubular bell bends to the will of a shifting wind and drowns in a wisp of distance. From the title alone, one might imagine a still and neglected scene. We instead encounter a microbiome of scuttling activity. Desertion does not mean death; it means the freedom of kinesis to run its course unimpeded, except by its own zeal.

The Bells of Vineta for solo trombone (1990) dips freely into the Uncanny Valley. Christian Lindberg is the soloist, and his presence throughout is almost disturbingly vocal. With every muted slur he walks the line between cartoonish mockery and cathartic mourning. He travels with an eerie persistence in the tripartite title composition. Composed in 1995, it drops him into the larger palette of the Oslo Sinfonietta under the baton of Christian Eggen, who elicits a viscous, bleeding mosaic with wounds that sparkle from the touch of a healing ear. Each grows a tiny hand of light, plucking thorns of shadow from its own luminescent skin. Lindberg again animates his playing vocally, closing and separating to the pulse of a larger body. The result is a Doppler effect of the soul, the tinnitus of collected verses that make up any life. The occasional rhythmic passage cuts through the fog, each a tadpole swimming in the piano’s darkened well, a place where reality and childhood intermingle like ink and water, respectively. References to George Crumb, Gideon Lewensohn abound inside these cellular whispers, dreams yet to be dreamt and whose realization flowers with the tide’s recession.

The Cikada Quartet draws a curtain with The Lady of Shalott (1993), which allows us to feel water and glass as if they were the same. Yet the cut of its passage is less like the boat in the famous John William Waterhouse painting…

Waterhouse Lady of Shalott

…and more like the threads in William Holman Hunt’s rendering, spilling from their loom with all the profusion of Christmas yet clipped by cerebral destruction. These are the paths we have taken, and they lead us all to where we began.

WHH Lady of Shalott

And on that note, these pieces, if only by virtue of their programming, exist as part of a phosphorescent whole. They arch their backs along the edge of a crescent moon, feeding off the oscillation of the night. By the humble touch of a fingertip to string and bone, their effect births as much as it dissolves. Though the foliage may change, the branches pulse in synapses of life. There is destiny in these leaves and it quivers with every verdant breath. In this music, sun and moon can touch each other without the slightest hint of destruction, for in that contact they acknowledge having been spun from the same breath.

<< Misha Alperin w/John Surman: First Impression (ECM 1664)
>> Keith Jarrett Trio: Tokyo ’96 (ECM 1666)

Misha Alperin w/John Surman: First Impression (ECM 1664)

| Tyran Grillo

First Impression

First Impression

Misha Alperin piano
John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones
Arkady Shilkloper French horn, flugelhorn
Terje Gewelt double-bass
Jon Christensen drums
Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen percussion
Recorded December 1997 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Ukrainian pianist and composer Misha Alperin joins forces for the first time in session with British reedist John Surman (a last-minute replacement for Tore Brunborg) in this melodious, spontaneous set. Augmented by Arkady Shilkloper on French horn and flugelhorn, Terje Gewelt on bass, and Jon Christensen on drums, their hypnotic nexus breathes ounces of thematic life into the “Overture” in watery, stepwise motion. Surman’s reptilian soprano takes us in some unexpected directions throughout a holistic introduction, while his unmistakable baritone threads resilient cables through “Twilight house” and “City Dance.” The first of these is where the session truly comes to life through his interactions with Alperin, while the latter serves a touch of groove in a veritable trill buffet (think Snakeoil). “Movement” features classical percussionist Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen (heard previously on No Birch) in a spindly improv, the pointillism and melancholy draw of which only thinly veil its composed undercurrent. A lovely solo from Shilkloper on French horn rises like a paper lantern lit and offered to the sky.

Yet these are but the roofing to the album’s five “Impressions,” each a pillar in the dust. Most of these are latticed pieces in chambered combinations, achieving darkest patina in “Second Impression,” in which Surman’s soprano dances like a wick-hugging flame, and whispering new beginnings in “Fifth Impression.” Neither is as intimate as the title track, in its way a profound one. In printing terms, the first impression is always the most crisp, the most sought after, but here we get something so ephemeral that it hardly seems to stick to the page. In its solo piano expanse is something metaphysical, a catch of moonlight in the mind.

<< Dave Holland Quintet: Points of View (ECM 1663)
>> Bent Sørensen: Birds and Bells (ECM 1665 NS)

Dave Holland Quintet: Points of View (ECM 1663)

| Tyran Grillo

Alternate Points of View

Dave Holland Quintet
Points of View

Dave Holland double-bass
Steve Wilson soprano and alto saxophones
Robin Eubanks trombone
Steve Nelson vibraphone, marimba
Billy Kilson drums
Recorded September 25/26, 1997 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In 1997, ECM veteran Dave Holland unveiled his new quintet with saxophonist Steve Wilson, trombonist Robin Eubanks, vibist Steve Nelson, and drummer Billy Kilson. Wilson and Kilson were then the latest additions to the bassist’s milieu, the former making his only ECM appearance here and both making their debut with the label. Kilson has since grown to notoriety through his associations with Holland, and it’s impossible to wonder why after hearing him emote throughout this smooth, copacetic set, especially in tracks like “Metamorphos” (the sole Eubanks-penned tune therein) and Holland’s opener, “The Balance.” As representative a doorway as one could hope for, its unmistakable bass line underscores a developing signature of drums, bass, and vibes that sticks to the ribs like a good meal. It’s a deep and shimmering sound, whetting our appetite through a solid solo from Eubanks, Holland all the while bringing that buoyant flavor we crave. Wilson’s sopranism whips a thin caramel in Holland’s dark chocolate goodness, while Kilson’s riffle force adds texture and crunch. The result is the astrological sign under which the remainder lives.

As per usual, Holland takes the lion’s share of compositional duties. “Mr. B.” brings the joyful, swinging sort of beauty one would expect from bassist Ray Brown, to whom it bears dedication. An early vibes solo gets us off on the right foot in this sure jaunt through city streets. Wilson gives an exemplary lesson in alto improvisation, building from simple elements and unwinding in flowing chromatic lines that cajole the band to peak intensity. “Bedouin Trail” is a leftover from Holland’s Thimar session with Anouar Brahem and John Surman and proves to be a perfect atmospheric vehicle. Nelson draws from an especially appropriate color palette, pairing nicely with the sandy textures from Eubanks. “Ario” means à Rio and came out of a trip Holland took to Brazil just before putting this record together. Though inspired by rainforest and natural splendor, it boasts an urban edge, not to mention also the cleanest solos of the entire set. Holland’s then-recent work with Herbie Hancock adds due piquancy to “Herbaceous,” an upbeat cruise along fast-moving waters. Holland is swift as a jackrabbit here, setting off some gorgeous soprano work in the process.

Wilson and Nelson round out the writing with “The Benevolent One” and “Serenade,” respectively. The saxophonist gives us the tender heart of the session and provides plenty of page space for soulful monologues all around. Nelson likewise in “Serenade,” a tropical infusion of marimba that is easy, breezy, beautiful.

Throughout every track, Holland brings the listener courtside, as it were, with his lyrical, elliptical playing. Yet off all the soloists, it is Eubanks who shows the most fire and innovation. In the end, we have laid-back, non-confrontational, music that comes to us democratically and without pretension. A well-rounded record, slick as rain.

<< Philipp Wachsmann/Paul Lytton: Some Other Season (ECM 1662)
>> Misha Alperin w/John Surman: First Impression (ECM 1664)

Mats Edén: Milvus (ECM 1660)

| Tyran Grillo

Milvus

Mats Edén
Milvus

Mats Edén drone-fiddle, violin, viola
Jonas Simonson flute, alto flute
Cikada String Quartet
Recorded September 1997 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After making vital contributions to the ECM collaborations of Lena Willemark and Ale Möller, Swedish multi-instrumentalist and composer Mats Edén brings his folk revival sensibilities to this leader date from 1999. He joins longtime musical partner Jonas Simonson in paying homage to many great fiddlers, including Ärtbergs Kalle Karlström and Lejsme Per Larsson, and old-time masters Torleiv Björgum and Anders Rosén. The latter revived the use resonating strings, which Edén took on himself in developing a custom instrument called the bordunfiol, or drone-fiddle, featured prominently in Milvus.

Of that drone we get plenty in “Haväng,” an original tune dedicated to Indian violinist K. Shivakumar. Simonson’s flute is the photographic image that develops in Edén’s solution. This frothy combination of sublime harmonies and cohesive adaptation permeates especially the vibrant polskas that speckle the program. The contrast between airy riffs and tethered harmonics, between flowing lines and jagged accompaniment, between fragrant soil and dry winds makes for an altogether inviting atmosphere.

Having grown up in Värmland, which borders Norway, Edén takes inspiration from the region in “Norafjälls,” which he plays to earthen perfection. Likewise the dirge-like lows of “Vardag.” He also offers two improvised solo “Variations,” which bring with them a darker cast. Their strained quality and wrenching, emotional grit reveals a highly ingrained mind at work.

Simonson brings spiritual centeredness against distant fiddle accompaniment in “Den lyckliga (Beate Virgine),” a devout, reverberant jewel in the album’s rusted crown, and brings reflection and depth to his solo “Spillet,” a brief but profound segue.

As if this weren’t enough, the Cikada String Quartet concludes with Edén’s three-part String Quartet No. 1, of which the first movement feels like an unpacking of all the traditions that came before. As such, it is a distillation, a crystal fragmented and made whole again (the “jigginess” here is far more subtle, internal). The second movement is a quiet agitation of rubber-banded ideas, a spiral into the final Lento, engaged by folk themes amid careful attention to surroundings.

The album’s title refers to the kite bird. Not surprisingly, the music created in its name embodies the cut of those wings, angular and sure against the sky. Such contrasts would seem to be of vital importance to Edén, a musician who understands that the spaces in between the strings are just as important as the strings themselves.

<< Hans Otte: Das Buch der Klänge (ECM 1659 NS)
>> Joe Maneri/Mat Maneri: Blessed (ECM 1661)