Marilyn Mazur’s Future Song: Small Labyrinths (ECM 1559)

| Tyran Grillo

Marilyn Mazur
Small Labyrinths

Aina Kemanis voice
Hans Ulrik saxophones
Nils Petter Molvær trumpet
Eivind Aarset guitar
Elvira Plenar piano, keyboards
Klavs Hovman basses
Audun Kleive drums
Marilyn Mazur percussion
Recorded August 1994 at Sun Studio, Copenhagen
Engineer: Bjarne Hansen
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Percussionist Marilyn Mazur, best known for keeping the beat with the Jan Garbarek Group, came into her own with Small Labyrinths, her first for ECM as frontwoman—in this case, of the Future Song project. With characteristic wit and commitment to seeing every gesture through, Mazur leads us on a trek of visions and fantasies. True to the dynamic nature of her art, she begins softly in “A World Of Gates,” caressing the periphery of her assembly and working her way to center with diligence. She blends into “Drum Tunnel,” clicking the tongues of her inner fire on the one hand, on the other adding a touch of icy whimsy via sleigh bells. In “The Electric Cave” a talk box hangs stalactites in code, while in the web of “The Dreamcatcher” we encounter the soothing voice of Aina Kemanis (in a different mode from her experiments with Barre Phillips), who gives fuzzy warmth to “Visions In The Wood” and prays for rain and thunder in “Castle Of Air.” Trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær adds backbone wherever he travels, shrouding the already supernal gamelan drone of “Back To Dreamfog Mountain” with a breath from below. After an interlude of “Creature Talk,” we stumble through the anthemic strains of “See There” into a “Valley Of Fragments.” This explosive aside casts us into an “Enchanted Place,” shattering windows into grains of sand, and those further into molecules, each indeed a small labyrinth harboring the promise of music. “The Holey” is where we end, lost in a book of cries and whispers, out of reach and out of time.

Small Labyrinths is no self-enclosed ritual, but rather a diary of open and spirited play. It seeks us out, asks us to stay, and hopes we may join in.

<< Jack DeJohnette: Dancing With Nature Spirits (ECM 1558)
>> Nils Petter Molvær: Khmer (ECM 1560)

Jack DeJohnette: Dancing With Nature Spirits (ECM 1558)

| Tyran Grillo

Jack DeJohnette
Dancing With Nature Spirits

Jack DeJohnette drums, percussion
Michael Cain piano, keyboards
Steve Gorn bansuri flute, soprano saxophone, clarinet
Recorded May 1995 at Dreamland Studios, West Hurley, New York
Engineer: Tom Mark
Produced by Manfred Eicher

It’s astonishing to think—given the intensity of his collaboration with Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and others for whom his talents were in demand as he rode a wave of worldwide prominence in the 1990s—that drummer Jack DeJohnette still found the time on shore to free such thoughtful beauty as that on Dancing With Nature Spirits. Pianist Michael Cain, in his ECM debut, makes noteworthy contributions to a deeply felt studio session, given three dimensions by Steve Gorn, here playing a variety of winds. The latter’s bansuri flute and kestrel soprano finger-paint rich undercoats to Cain’s sparkling pianism in the title track, all the while playing off tender bubbling from toms and cymbals. This low-grade fever pales into the mournful incantations of “Anatolia.” So the desert lures us, moths to candle, smudging us into the ashen backdrop. Breath becomes virtue incarnate, a doll Gorn fashions from dried reeds and lullabies. Tracings from piano and tabla push from the earth like kangaroos in slow motion, hovering above the ground for a split second before the lights are cut. “Healing Song For Mother Earth” stamps those feet back down, like hands to drum, from a wellspring of light. In those delicate freefalls we feel the vestiges of time wafting through us with all the comfort of a breeze through mosquito netting. DeJohnette scours the villages for cloth with which to dry the tears of elders who’ve relinquished hope, reaching blood-worthy sacrament in “Emanations.” The secrets of this garden stream are to be found in the waterfall that bore it unto the land like a vein in a field of muscle, where only “Time Warps” touch those reflections with silver in ecstatic storytelling.

A profound album to be savored for its simplicity, heart, and message.

<< Charles Lloyd: All My Relations (ECM 1557)
>> Marilyn Mazur’s Future Song: Small Labyrinths (ECM 1559)

Terje Rypdal: If Mountains Could Sing (ECM 1554)

| Tyran Grillo

Terje Rypdal
If Mountains Could Sing

Terje Rypdal electric guitars
Bjørn Kjellemyr basses
Audun Kleive drums
Terje Tønnesen violin
Lars Anders Tomter viola
Øystein Birkeland cello
Christian Eggen conductor
Recorded January and June 1994 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I start this review where I might end it, by marking If Mountains Could Sing as one of Terje Rypdal’s finest achievements. Marrying the Norwegian guitarist’s penchant for magnesium fire with his comparable passion for classical textures, this record gives us the clearest intersection of his split idiomatic personality since Descendre. “The Return Of Per Ulv” kicks off a journey that is modest in length—just shy of 48 minutes—yet anything but in scope and palette. Despite the odd title (“Per Ulv” being the Norwegian moniker for Wile E. Coyote), the smoothness of its melodic line, downright edible phrasing, and fluid bass playing (courtesy of Bjørn Kjellemyr) at once evoke snow and thaw, a landscape of discovery stretching beneath steel gray skies. If ECM were to make a single Best Of album for the label as a whole, omitting this one would be tantamount to crime. Running a close second is “Dancing Without Reindeers,” which after a pizzicato burst walks the violin off the plank into an ocean schooled by drummer Audun Kleive, who chronological ECM followers would have last heard with Jon Balke on Further. Kleive, in fact, shows incredible dynamic sensitivity throughout, supplying whispers of cymbal and snare in “It’s In The Air” and “Foran Peisen” as Rypdal awakens like some giant dragon from hibernation, splashing through the puddles of “But On The Other Hand” after a cosmic storm, and anchoring “Private Eye” with depth of experience. As for the composer behind all this, he breeds lifetimes of haze against tidal strings in the arresting title track and conjures up the object of Per Ulv’s ever-unrequited chase in “One For The Roadrunner” to gut-wrenching effect. The rhythm section gets its last gasp in “Genie” before he signs this love letter on a note of “Lonesome Guitar.”

Here we have a pinpoint of dawn stretched into a canvas large enough to fit any and all listeners. We can walk and admire, lounge or run as we please through its many moods, always knowing that the music is here for us and us alone. Open this door and don’t listen back.

<< Surman/Krog/Rypdal/Storaas: Nordic Quartet (ECM 1553)
>> Sándor Veress: Passacaglia Concertante, etc. (ECM 1555 NS)

Surman/Krog/Rypdal/Storaas: Nordic Quartet (ECM 1553)

| Tyran Grillo

Nordic Quartet

John Surman soprano saxophone, baritone saxophone, alto clarinet, bass clarinet
Karin Krog voice
Terje Rypdal guitar
Vigleik Storaas piano
Recorded August 1994 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Nordic Quartet bonds an unconventional roster of musicians and conceptual approaches. John Surman reaches into his usual toolkit, favoring the lower range, while vocalist Karin Krog sews her Sheila Jordan-like vibrato into Terje Rypdal’s electric swoons and pianist Vigleik Storaas’s intimate embraces. One can expect Surman to shine above any group he might be a part of, but in “Traces” it is Rypdal and Krog who slink like the wolves of our interest through abandoned factories, such that piano and reeds seem to drop from the ceiling, each a spider invisibly tethered. And indeed, the album is about nothing if not traces, smeared on the windowpanes of childhood homes, one-bedroom apartments, and coffee shops. We hear this most in Surman’s duets: “Unwritten Letter” (w/Krog), “The Illusion” (w/Storaas), and “Double Tripper” (w/Rypdal), the latter a battle-scarred stumble into post-traumatic memory. Rypdal steps up the mood in “Gone To The Dogs,” where his softly rocking chording anchors us in a hammock knotted by soprano (like floss through silver teeth) and lit by a kiss of pianistic sun. It is in these instrumental tracks that the album takes off in more exciting directions—surprising in light of the healthy pathos Krog wove into Such Winters Of Memory. Her most intuitive contributions to this session are wordless, as in the ghostly overtones of “Ved Svørevatn,” which blisters like an underwater volcano. Lost to its own philosophies, it is a voice guided only by (and into) itself. “Wild Bird” is the last breath, a quiet account of dark thoughts and darker thinkers. A heat rash of organ spreads across Krog’s lyrical skin, itself a half-remembered cry, windy and chopped beyond recognition. This is our solitude realized in sound, naked as the moment we are born.

<< Heiner Goebbels: Ou bien le débarquement désastreux (ECM 1552)
>> Terje Rypdal: If Mountains Could Sing (ECM 1554)

Jazzensemble des Hessischen Rundfunks: Atmospheric Conditions Permitting (ECM 1549)

| Tyran Grillo

Jazzensemble des Hessischen Rundfunks
Atmospheric Conditions Permitting

Lee Konitz
Bill Frisell
Eberhard Weber
Tony Scott
Albert Mangelsdorff
Heinz Sauer
Wilhelm Liefland
Rainer Brüninghaus
Jaime Torres
Joki Freund
Paul Lovens
Bob Degen
Ralf Hübner
et al.
Recorded 1967-93, Hessischer Rundfunk, Frankfurt
Engineers: Peter Michael Erler, Holger Mees, Fritz Moehrke, Helmut Schick, Rainer Schulz, and Erich Wemheuer
Remixed 1994 at Gasteig Studio, München by Steve Lake
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Ulrich Olshausen

Formed in 1958 by late trombone innovator Albert Mangelsdorff, the Frankfurt Jazz Ensemble had by the time of this recording produced one of the genre’s most sprawling archives, numbering some 2000 recorded pieces. Over the years, it has welcomed guest artists from abroad, including many of the ECM regulars featured in this tip-of-the-iceberg collection. Awarded the prestigious Hesse Jazz Award in 2009 for its invaluable contributions to the art, the Ensemble lives on for the home listener through the selections catalogued here. Drummer Ralf Hübner and saxophonist Heinz Sauer are the main compositional talents, and their passion shows in the ample room they leave for distinct soloing and other interpretive twists. The result is a 2.3-hour tour de force of gastronomic proportions spanning over a quarter century of activity.

Given the feast before us, one can only nosh on the wily clarinets of “Bagpipe Song” and the John Surman-esque touches of “Aud in den Wald” (with its palatable flavors of Rhapsody in Blue and big band pall) before getting our soup on with the rubber-banded bass and cascading pianism of “Niemandsland.” Bill Frisell lights up the air with his fluid wonders, cross-talking beautifully with Eberhard Weber’s fretless. From this we work our way up to such delectable starters as the harpsichord-inflected “Out Of June” and the chromatic “Stomp blasé.” What with the meditative spice of drummer Paul Lovens’s solo “Krötenbalz” and the contrasting sauciness of “Blues, Eternal Turn On,” there are plenty of main courses to choose from. Jazz critic Wilhelm Liefland’s poetry begins to unravel the meal’s moral and philosophical center in “Oben” and continues in “Schattenlehre,” thereby setting up the chewier textures of “Repepetitititive.” A veritable Ferris wheel in sound replete with spacey glitter and gold, it refills our wine glasses with “Fährmann Charon,” ending the first disc with children’s games and a jester’s twisting lips in the night.

Argentine master Jaime Torres smoothes us into the second with an epic pool of reflection in “Concierto de Charangojazz” amid the soulful caramel of Heinz Sauer’s reed. A pied piper’s parade awaits us, buoyed by the harrumph of tuba, in “Waltzer für Sabinchen,” leading us through the streets into “Für den Vater,” which along with “Von der gewöhnlichen Traurigkeit” blasts Sauer’s progressive talents into the stratosphere. Between a smattering of shorter pieces, the swinging celesta and dimly lit trumpet of “Kauf dir einen bunten Luftballon” and dramaturgical edge of “Manipulation” provide plenty to masticate before desert comes in the powered sugar of “Käuze und Käuzchen” and closes out this banquet with a bang and a nod in “Nachwort.”

Atmospheric Conditions Permitting is a solid take on this most influential collective, whose shifting vignettes and configurations do nothing to hide the fascinations behind them. Eclectic, professional, and not a trace of unpleasant aftertaste.

<< Azimuth: Azimuth / The Touchstone / Départ (ECM 1546-48)
>> Stephan Micus: Athos (ECM 1551)

Bjørnstad/Darling/Rypdal/Christensen: The Sea (ECM 1545)

| Tyran Grillo

The Sea

Ketil Bjørnstad piano
David Darling cello
Terje Rypdal guitar
Jon Christensen drums
Recorded September 1994 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The twelve parts that comprise The Sea are of a proportion far beyond aquatic, for their magic lies in the hands and hearts of four musicians who came together for a session as ever-changing as its namesake. The number would seem to be significant: months in a year, hours in a day, each a cycle rendered timeless through a story that bleeds and weeps. David Darling’s trembling cello lets out the first cry, eddying with all the force of nature at the edge of a bow. Pianist Ketil Bjørnstad therefrom unfurls a theme for the ages, drifting as might a reader’s eyes pass over the words of a favorite letter. As the hearts of the session, his keys drip glitter and shadow in equal, sometimes comingling, measure. Drummer Jon Christensen knocks at a ghostly door suspended above the horizon, leaving guitarist Terje Rypdal to complete the picture, breaching vapor and phosphorous. Such is the first ray of light to spoke from this sonic hub, spinning to the pulse of Bjørnstad’s heart-tugging ostinatos in a pregnant and billowing unity. Somehow, the stars feel closer, each a solar flare arcing into rebirth. But the breath is always damp, the air even more so, while the language falters to hold its shape in the presence of something so free. Of note is Part VIII, a duet between Bjørnstad and Darling that presages The River and a beautiful lead-in to an enchanting closing of the triangle. The spectrum of Christensen’s palette grows richly and organically as threads wind together, each color a drop into the inky cascade of its rapture. Part XII closes the album with Bjørnstad at his solemn best, far from shore.

The power of this music is its ability to adapt to whatever mood you bring to it. The listener is its vessel. The Sea is also a remarkable feat of engineering, fully expressing ECM’s commitment not only to the evocation but also embodiment of concept. But though it might very well flourish in the flesh and machines that produced it, it ultimately flows from, and returns to, the currents of which it is composed.

<< Tomasz Stanko Quartet: Matka Joanna (ECM 1544)
>> Azimuth: Azimuth / The Touchstone / Départ (ECM 1546-48)

Tomasz Stanko Quartet: Matka Joanna (ECM 1544)

| Tyran Grillo

Tomasz Stanko Quartet
Matka Joanna

Tomasz Stanko trumpet
Bobo Stenson piano
Anders Jormin bass
Tony Oxley drums
Recorded May 1994 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With a nearly two decades separating Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko’s ECM debut, Balladyna, and Matka Joanna, his label follow-up as leader, it’s no wonder the two are so different. Taking Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1961 film Matka Joanna od Aniołów as its inspiration, the second draws from a palette of possession and temptation as grittily as its namesake’s B&W canvas.


Still from Matka Joanna od Aniołów

Backed by pianist Bobo Stenson, bassist Anders Jormin, and drummer Tony Oxley (in a decidedly Christensenian mode), Stanko brings his pungent lyricism to bear across a swath of mountains and shadows that inhales cobwebs from a “Monastery In The Dark” and exhales the mummified sermons of its “Klostergeist.” Within those lungs mingle forgotten bells, vibrating between prayer and dreams, and chains of latent virtues. Jormin’s bass squeaks like a family of mice in the walls, Stenson the cat stalking them from every alcove. Stanko, meanwhile, lights votive candles with the tip of his every winded tongue, trailing mystery into the drowsy flower of a “Green Sky.” A complex track in spite of its recessive nature (the pianism alone is a maze of nuance), it sets bass adrift on a current of icy cymbals until the swinging “Maldoror’s War Song” sticks some feathers to Stanko’s skeletal wings. Amid this rosette of fire, Stenson connects the constellatory dots and hugs Jormin’s nebular blurs. Further highlights include the continuity of heaven and earth as heard through Stanko and Jormin’s relay in “Matka Joanna From The Angels” and the likeminded meditations of the superbly punned “Nun’s Mood.” Though but a brief excursion for trumpet and drums, the latter leaves us open to the cerebral fog of “Celina,” a sleeping face in sound whose eyes enchant before they ever open.

While Stanko’s economy of abandon (listen especially to “Cain’s Brand” in this regard) is something to marvel at, to these ears Jormin stands out from the rest in this soundtrack within a soundtrack. The depth of his grain holds the knots together, even as it dissolves that glue that keeps them from falling out. The result is a balance of style and effect that never wanes. Ironically enough, this album seems to recall another stark narrative of spiritual challenges: namely, Anchoress (1993, dir. Chris Newby). Ironic, because said film is utterly devoid of music, save for a passage of retribution at the end. So, too, with Stanko’s paean to an underrated picture, staring at us from beyond the celluloid in a straight line to our souls.


Still from Anchoress

<< Italian Instabile Orchestra: Skies Of Europe (ECM 1543)
>> Bjørnstad/Darling/Rypdal/Christensen: The Sea (ECM 1545)

Italian Instabile Orchestra: Skies Of Europe (ECM 1543)

| Tyran Grillo

Italian Instabile Orchestra
Skies Of Europe

Pino Minafra trumpet, megaphone
Alberto Mandarini trumpet
Guido Mazzon trumpet
Giancarlo Schiaffini trombone, tuba
Lauro Rossi trombone
Sebi Tramontana trombone
Martin Mayes French horn, mellophone
Mario Schiano alto and soprano saxophones
Gianluigi Trovesi alto saxophone, clarinet, alto and bass clarinets
Carlo Actis Dato baritone and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet
Daniele Cavallanti tenor and baritone saxophones
Eugenio Colombo alto and soprano saxophones, flute
Renato Geremia violin
Paolo Damiani cello
Giorgio Gaslini piano, anvil
Bruno Tommaso double-bass
Tiziano Tononi drums, percussion
Vincenzo Mazzone tympani, percussion, drums
Recorded May 1994 with the White Mobile, Auditorium F.L.O.G., Florence
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Steve Lake

Reductively speaking, Skies Of Europe is significant for welcoming reedist Gianluigi Trovesi into the ECM fold. More broadly, we find in this second record from the 18-piece Italian Instabile Orchestra a potpourri of stimuli that only hints at the significance of this democratic collective in its formative live settings, which helped spark a renaissance in Italian jazz. The group, founded in 1990, sports a lush yet angular sound that is exciting down to the marrow. True to form, it offers up two longish suites as showcases of hidden shadows and the talents that cast them.

Bassist Bruno Tommaso paints half of this diptych with his Il Maestro Muratore (The Master Mason). The open, golden sound rings of epic fantasy, spilling glitter and feathers like birds diving into waterfalls as drums light the way for deeper abstractions. Sections range from declamatory (“Squilli Di Morte”) and insistent (“Corbù”) in mood to the gentler persuasions of “Merù Lo Snob.” The latter’s formative vibes from piano and reeds kiss the air with promise, veiling sensual developments in the politics of breath. With vivacious resolve the music spreads in these directions and more, leaving but a silhouette and a clue.

The title suite, composed by pianist Giorgio Gaslini, sets its phasers to meditative in the opening section, “Du Du Duchamp.” This ponderous tenure at the casino swaps the former’s chips for ornately patterned pips, the violin’s Ace of Spades the most florid of them all. So begins a roving gallery of allusions, gambling higher stakes in “Quand Duchamp Joue Du Marteau” to translucent effect, letting out a Pifarély-like cry in “Il Suono Giallo,” and traipsing through the forested “Marlene E Gli Ospiti Misteriosi” on the heels of a stunning baritone, which stumbles like Little Red Riding Hood into the wolf’s open jaws. “Satie Satin” is a delightful palate cleanser with shrill arco touches, while “Masse D’urto (A Michelangelo Antonioni)” is as emotionally turgid as the cinema of its dedicatee. A manipulated trumpet spools the anthemic “Fellini Song” in an old dusty theater, petering into fadeout.

The IIO is an attentive and responsive unit—so much so that by the end of this performance the names of individual players (as brilliant as they are) cease to matter. In the midst of this acticity we are but bystanders at the roulette table, watching as that little white ball bounces from red to black until it settles on…

<< Keith Jarrett Trio: Standards In Norway (ECM 1542)
>> Tomasz Stanko Quartet: Matka Joanna (ECM 1544)

Kenny Wheeler: Angel Song (ECM 1607)

| Tyran Grillo

Kenny Wheeler
Angel Song

Kenny Wheeler trumpet, flugelhorn
Lee Konitz alto saxophone
Bill Frisell guitar
Dave Holland double-bass
Recorded February 1996, Power Station, New York
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

For my first ECM review after the birth of my son, I decided to return to an old favorite. As one of the label’s deepest accomplishments in all respects, the generative spirit of Angel Song breathes like the life that has cast new light onto mine. Now that I hear everything through the lens of a fatherhood never known to me before, yet which is now as lucid as the quivering of a crying newborn, I discover something so poignant in “Nicolette” as can be matched only by the love of parent for child. This first of nine Wheeler originals bears every hallmark that makes Angel Song such a statuesque experience. From the soulful theme to the sheer depth of listening on part of the musicians and engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug, the interweaving of audible and inaudible elements sets an already high bar and builds a soft ladder from there.

The title of the album’s final track, “Kind Of Gentle,” is also its mode. It is a lulling and unwavering effect that cradles us in nebulae of memory. We dream, back to the cribs and crooks in which we all once drifted, all the while guided by a formidable foursome: Lee Konitz on alto sax, Dave Holland on bass, Bill Frisell on guitar, and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler in the lead. Absence of drums lends the music stretch and comfort, wrapping the metaphorical child of its creation in swaddle. The reed is paramount in this stretch of dawn-lit midnight, sealing every crevice of the album’s fragile architecture as securely as mother’s arms. Like a quiet vessel it cuts a V through the reflected sky, leaving the shores of “Present Past” and touching down on “Past Present.” And in “Nonetheless” his tone drips like honey from a comb. Holland, for his part, adds pliancy, pulling signature lines through such tracks as “Kind Folk” and “Unti.” Frisell also excels in both, peeling stretches of glitter from his restrained backdrops with the nimbleness of Peter Pan’s shadow. Each of his solos is a spider’s web trembling at our listening. As for Wheeler, he has never sounded more verdant, painting the landscapes of the title track and the relatively upbeat “Onmo” with the intensity of a thunderbolt yet the almost-not-there-ness of a dandelion puff.

Recorded in the winter of 1996 yet effusive with body heat, this is music that exhales one timeless theme after another. Perhaps because it was also my first exposure to Wheeler, I mark it as one of his very best. Even in the absence of comparison, it soothes, taking me back to the events of one week ago and the overwhelming unity that has held me since. After the fever dream that was his coming into this world, my son absorbed the light of his first morning as might a leaf drink from the sun. Behind him, the fears that beset any parent-to-be; before him, the safety now manifested in my waiting arms. I seek to magnify that tranquility in this music, and hope it may do the same whenever you find yourself in the presence of a miracle.

<< Ingrid Karlen: Variations (ECM 1606 NS)
>> Terje Rypdal: Skywards (ECM 1608)