Barre Phillips: Music By… (ECM 1178)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1178

Barre Phillips
Music By…

Barre Phillips bass
Aina Kemanis voice
John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet
Herve Bourde alto and tenor saxophones, flutes
Claudia Phillips voice
Pierre Favre drums, percussion
Recorded May 1980 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Long before Twitter was a microblogging phenomenon, it was the name of the first cut on this out-of-print gem from Barre Phillips. Thankfully, there is nothing micro about it. Driven by train-like syncopation from drums and bass clarinet, this attention-grabbing burst of virtuosity introduces us to the bubbling acrobatics of daughter Claudia Phillips, a vocalist whose career as chanteuse found a niche in France in the 80s. Her sometimes-manic instincts are swept down the stream of Aina Kemanis, the voice of Journal Violone II. Together they form a magic triangle with John Surman’s own sinewy lines. With such exuberance and glottal depth as Claudia displays here, one can hardly keep one’s ears focused on anything but her brilliance. Her siren-like spindles prove to be a guiding force in the more freely improvised “Angleswaite” and, with Kemanis, trace fluid arcs in “Elvid Kursong” and drop like spores in “Pirthrite.” The latter is a bizarrely martial excursion that is at once march and requiem, made all the more so through the liquid alto of Herve Bourde. These facets contract into a single plane in “Longview.” Here, Claudia comes to life in a bubbling stutter, soon overtaken by Bourde’s tenor, left of center. “Entai” and “Double Treble” sound like an ice-skating bass and clarinet struggling for balance over a warping record, compressing the album into more rudimentary ciphers.

This is yet another fascinating cell in the stained glass window that is Barre Phillips, capturing both the thrill and pain of modernism and those quiet moments, few and far between, where the soul kisses the brow of alienation. The content is brought to fervent life by an impassioned participation that frolics at the intersection of speech and song. As a longtime fan of the Cocteau Twins and Elizabeth Fraser’s voice that drives it, I have sometimes wondered what she might have sounded like had she made an ECM album. With Music By… we begin to approach one possible answer.

<< Walcott/Cherry/Vasconcelos: CODONA 2 (ECM 1177)
>> Bengt Berger: Bitter Funeral Beer (ECM 1179)

John Clark: Faces (ECM 1176)

| Tyran Grillo

John Clark
Faces

John Clark french horn
David Friedman vibraharp, marimba
David Darling cello
Jon Christensen drums
Recorded April 1980 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Faces documents the only appearance of versatile French hornist John Clark on ECM proper (he does, however, appear on a trio of WATT releases) and is one from a modest overall output as leader. Having performed with musicians as diverse as Paul Winter, LL Cool J, and Gil Evans, his tender considerations fit snugly with the Eicherian touch in this out-of-print session. Joined by David Friedman’s mallets, the particularly welcome presence of David Darling’s electric cello, and Jon Christensen on drums, Clark paints for us a rain-slicked character study of a life lived in slow motion.

Side A charts the album’s deepest waters in “The Abhà Kingdom.” Its understated flow of vibes, overdubbed horns, and cello courses in and out of sonar range, diving ever deeper with every muted clench, so that even Christensen’s accentuations seem to move at the speed of honey behind Friedman’s subdued yet strangely exuberant cartwheels. The afterimages of “Lament” would make the perfect backdrop for a Terje Rypdal excursion. Instead of that grinding song, we get the rounded icicles of Darling’s bow and the sustained arpeggio from vibes that leaves us hanging before dropping us onto Side B. Our guide on this descent is “Silver Rain.” The marimba vamp evokes an African thumb piano and affectionately embraces Clark’s processed horn. Friedman also shares a notable dialogue with Christensen here. Darling’s fluid threads are the binding force of “Faces In The Fire.” A comforting feeling of perpetuity abounds in that cello’s voice and brings out otherwise inaudible whispers. “Faces In The Sky” would feel right at home as the soundtrack for a road picture. Christensen beguiles with his delicacy, in which he cradles a delicate implication that never breaks, even under Darling’s far-reaching pizzicato. After all of this soul-searching, the carnivalesque “You Did It, You Did It!” ends the album in resolute jubilance.

Faces has a semi-porous quality and shimmers like the surface of an out-of-focus pool. It sits comfortably just below the rim of our consciousness, like a half-dream that one holds dear in the face of inevitable wakefulness.

<< Keith Jarrett: The Celestial Hawk (ECM 1175)
>> Walcott/Cherry/Vasconcelos: CODONA 2 (ECM 1177)

Keith Jarrett: The Celestial Hawk (ECM 1175)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
The Celestial Hawk

Keith Jarrett piano
Syracuse Symphony
Christopher Keene conductor
Recorded March 1980, Carnegie Hall, New York
Engineer: Stan Tonkel
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett’s classical modality often comes across to me as a dark pastoral, a variegated tapestry of intensity and withdrawal. And while The Celestial Hawk may be no different in this regard, it promises some brighter discoveries upon deeper listening. Against a gentle backdrop of percussion that includes timpani, snare, and triangle, Jarrett deploys his tiny fleets of high notes in the First Movement, out of which arises a delicate harp ostinato, doubled by piano and accentuated by woodwinds and strings, as a crystalline glockenspiel slowly clouds into less translucent ores. After a deep surge, Jarrett rows us into calmer waters alone at the piano, where dolphins in the forms of harp and mallet percussion soon join him. The Second Movement offers up the most cinematic passage of this piece. One can feel its images running, skipping, and emoting through lives unseen. We never stay in one thread for too long, for each is picked up by another into which the previous one has looped itself. The martial snare and cavalrous brass of the Third Movement glisten with the patriotism of an undiscovered country, bound to a manifest destiny in which walking is like flight. From behind the uplifted curtain, horns dance for us a message to prosperity. And yet even as the twilight descends, the oboe threads a ray of moonlight through the waters, bringing with it all sense of time for which beauty is but an afterthought to the truer beauties of slumber, where life ends in a crashing gong.

Despite being very programmatic, this music is far more than incidental to the narrative it describes. At times tumbling in billowy romance, at others even jarringly uncomfortable, Jarrett’s piano embraces itself, following the orchestral advice that surrounds it to the letter. It is an honest music, a painful truth, a call for peace in a violent world.

<< Keith Jarrett: Sacred Hymns of G. I. Gurdjieff (ECM 1174)
>> John Clark: Faces (ECM 1176)

Keith Jarrett: Sacred Hymns of G. I. Gurdjieff (ECM 1174)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1174

Keith Jarrett
Sacred Hymns of G. I. Gurdjieff

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded March 1980, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The exact date on which George Ivanovich Gurdjieff was born into this world is unknown. This is fitting, for to one who spent his life trying to unravel it, such mundane details would have been unnecessary in the grander scheme of things. Born in Armenia to a Greek father and Armenian mother, Gurdjieff traveled the world in search of fabled monasteries and the secrets they contained. Unlike many before and since, he succeeded. Yet more unlike many before and since, he packed that knowledge into his somatic consciousness until it burst like a supernova. Biographer John Shirley likens the Gurdjieff encounter to a cold shower, “a welcome shock of wakefulness” that leaves its deep, indelible traces in body and soul. Music was the dark matter of his cosmology and operated at the whim of an inarticulable law by which the listener felt compelled to turn oneself inside out, loosing previously bottled emotions into the open stars. Music was vibration, and vibration was life itself. In the hands of an artist like Keith Jarrett, I daresay it becomes something more.

Composed during Gurdjieff’s so-called “second period,” the music on this album arose from a fruitful block of the 1920s, which saw him and Russian composer Thomas de Hartmann together producing a treasure trove of melodies drawn from various folk music traditions and Russian Orthodoxy. The resulting selections are understatedly suited to Jarrett, spun as they seem to be from the kindred methodology behind his own solo improvisations, which construct from the ground down glorious caverns of sound, melody, and spirit. The strains of “Reading Of Sacred Books,” for example, unfold ever so gently, and yet rather than unveiling new territory simply open more and more doors within, each the mirror to a different face of our psyche. Ceremony and despair share the same sky; exaltations and poverty, the same ground. Each of these living moments winds itself like a string around the finger of spiritual forgetting. Jarrett negotiates these stark contrasts, and the connective tissue between them, with unwavering attention. Just listening to the brilliance with which he dialogues the punctuations of “Hymn To The Endless Creator” with the Debussean meditations of “Hymn From A Great Temple” and “The Story Of The Resurrection Of Christ” is wonder in and of itself. “Holy Affirming—Holy Denying—Holy Reconciling” perfectly describes the tripartite process of becoming that Jarrett enacts throughout, leaving us suspended in the final “Meditation.”

From the titles alone, one might think of these pieces as incidental music, when in fact the music is its own ritual, a collection of hymns to itself in a mise-en-abyme of faith. It is a multifaceted jewel of loosely bound energy that finds joy in emptiness. With due assurance and temerity, Jarrett proves it’s not music that is its own religion, but religion that is its own music.

<< Ralph Towner: Solo Concert (ECM 1173)
>> Keith Jarrett: The Celestial Hawk (ECM 1175)

Ralph Towner: Solo Concert (ECM 1173)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1173

Ralph Towner
Solo Concert

Ralph Towner 12-string and classical guitars
Recorded October 1979, Amerika Haus, München and Limmathaus, Zürich
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Ralph Towner’s Solo Concert holds a special place in my ECM-adoring heart, for it was my introduction to a guitarist whose skills have since become staples of my listening life. Lovingly recorded in the open concert spaces of Munich and Zürich, Solo Concert is to the guitar what Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert is to the piano. It’s that good.

Towner’s own compositions make up the bulk of the album. The opening “Spirit Lake” is the most transcendent of these and exemplifies Towner’s craft as both technician and melodic wellspring. Notes drip from his 12-string with shimmering lucidity, dipping below every motif it can swing from as it blossoms into a brilliant flourish of an ending. What at first seems an abstract improvisational exercise in “Train Of Thought” reveals the instrument’s hidden voices, in which a pulsing bass lingers and harmonic clusters soar. The staggered melodies and banjo-like articulations of “Zoetrope” contrast superbly with “Chelsea Courtyard,” in which dissonant arpeggios lie in the grass, above which the clouds are so thin they’re barely visible, and motivations even more so. Still, the music offers more than enough provocation as nostalgias flit by the windows of our attention, the curtains of which Towner opens to let in the light of a half-remembered day.

Towner also lays his hands on a pocketful of sparkling covers. Of these, the two by John Abercrombie—“Ralph’s Piano Waltz” and “Timeless”—are notable for their use of thumbed anchors, which provide a ghostly counterpoint to wider runs in the upper registers. Lilting syncopations trade places with jazzier throwbacks, packing melodic energy into increasingly compact cells. Yet it is with “Nardis” (Davis/Evans) that Towner truly enthralls. Played on classical guitar, it is a vivid standout that jumps headfirst into its themes before unraveling them in a blissful wave. Towner’s deft harmonies and prowess at the fingerboard leap with the precision of synchronized swimmers about to clinch a gold.

This is an intelligently assembled program of complementary music that shows the depth and breadth of Towner’s abilities more than any single disc. My only complaint is the applause that breaks the spell of every piece when it ends. Then again, I’d have done the same had I been there.

If you’ve ever wondered just how high a guitar can fly, then here’s your plane ticket.

<< Keith Jarrett: Nude Ants (ECM 1171/72)
>> Keith Jarrett: Sacred Hymns of G. I. Gurdjieff (ECM 1174)

Keith Jarrett: Nude Ants (ECM 1171/72)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1171_72

Keith Jarrett
Nude Ants

Keith Jarrett piano, timbales, percussion
Jan Garbarek saxophones
Palle Danielsson bass
Jon Christensen drums, percussion
Recorded May 1979 at the Village Vanguard, New York
Engineer: Tom McKenney
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Something about Keith Jarrett’s very presence seems to draw out from even the most highly regarded musicians unexpected levels of performance, commitment, and above all faith in the musical moment. Nude Ants, easily one of his most uplifting live dates (this time at the Village Vanguard) on record and the pinnacle of his quartet activities, exemplifies this to the nth degree.

In its European incarnation, Jarrett’s menagerie of yesteryear opens its gates quietly and smoothly with “Chant Of The Soil.” Jarrett digs in alongside one of the most engaging rhythm sections one could ask for (Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen). The liveness of the performance comes across early in “Innocence.” Amid clinking glasses and the even more cacophonous spirits of appreciation of those drinking from them, an enthralling intro from keys tosses Jan Garbarek’s exposition like a salad of bright energies. The moonlit “Processional” burrows beyond the trappings of a ballad and into a cavernous subconscious. Jarrett’s singing teases out a vivid pedal point as he punches chords like ecstasy’s time clock before floating off in reverie.

The second half of this heavy loaf slices much like the first: in slabs of wing-beats and half-words. Garbarek shines in “Oasis,” his reed shawm-like and opaque, as he wrenches out some of his most ecstatic high notes on record. Out of this measured catharsis Jarrett waters his colors in a solo tour de force. After the upbeat “New Dance,” the drawl that begins “Sunshine Song” is hardly enough to keep the band from pulling back a slingshot of dynamism and hurtling its contents skyward. Mounting intensities from Christensen underscore a fluttering resolution. And yet, as with everything in this set, it is tempered by an intense feeling of perpetuity that renders every potential end into a pathway of renewal.

In spite—if not because—of the idiosyncratic strengths of its performers, this is ensemble jazz at its freshest. Jarrett’s vocal leaps are nearly as adventurous as his fingers, proving once again that such passion cannot be contained in a vessel so modest as the human lung. Garbarek lets loose in ways seldom heard outside of Sart, while Danielsson and Christensen are so good together that I would be nearly as content listening to just the two of them for the entire set. Everyone here is aflame. Together, they light the world.

An indispensable classic.

<< Haden/Garbarek/Gismonti: Folk Songs (ECM 1170)
>> Ralph Towner: Solo Concert (ECM 1173)

Lying in the Fields: An Evening with the ASMF Chamber Ensemble

| Tyran Grillo


Bailey Hall, Cornell University
October 4, 2011
8:00 pm

Since being founded in 1959 by Sir Neville Marriner, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields has flourished as one of the most renowned and most recognized orchestras in the world. The ASMF’s heritage traces back to its namesake church in London’s Trafalgar Square, where this conductorless collective was figuratively and literally instrumental in England’s renewed interest in Baroque music in the 1960s. Some 500 recordings later, the ASMF has now named violinist Joshua Bell as its new artistic director, thereby promising a fresh generation of adventurous programming and collaboration. On Tuesday night, Bailey Hall was presented with the ASMF in distilled form. Comprised of the orchestra’s principal players, the ASMF Chamber Ensemble continues to bring the legacy of its parent group to a broader international audience.

The results were a mixed bag of soaring catharses and unintended incidentals. These reputable musicians might have picked any number (or manner) of pieces for their performance. As it was, they played things relatively safely: two selections from the 19th century and one from the 20th made for an atmosphere that swung from quixotic to piquant at the draw of a bow. By fault of logistics, the program’s first half was flip-flopped at the last minute, thereby placing the Prelude and Scherzo of Shostakovich at the start, effectively bypassing the romanticism in which the rest of the concert would be steeped in favor of the neoclassical equivalent of a double espresso. While gorgeous in its own right—at the time of its composition (1925), Shostakovich declared the Scherzo the best thing he’d written—and filled with haunting moments, this diptych set an unsettling tone that I couldn’t quite shake.

Of the three composers represented, Brahms proved to be the most porous. His music breathes like a sponge. And yet, my heart still racing from the Shostakovich, I found difficulty in letting it soak up as much of my attention as I would have liked. Inked between 1864 and 1865, the String Sextet No. 2 is a farewell to a fiancée, Agathe von Siebold, from whom the composer had split. Traces from this emotional snap reverberate throughout the piece, which in its first movement obsessively spells Agathe’s name in hexachord. The addition of a second cello to the standard quintet seems to have opened Brahms’s sound to the symphonic possibilities of despondency, most especially in the Scherzo, which was the highlight of the performance. The Scherzo was so deeply realized, in fact, that I only found myself wondering why the rest of the piece seemed to waver on the surface of my interest. Thankfully, we had violist Robert Smissen, by far the brightest star of the evening, evoking a tremulous heartbeat, all the while underscoring the composer’s mid-range affinities and cutting some of the first violin’s incongruous glare.

Mendelssohn’s beloved Octet for Strings promised a costume change after the refreshing intermission. Composed in 1825 at the tender age of 16, it remains one of his most performed works and has been called “one of the miracles of nineteenth-century music.” That the ASMF has recorded this piece more than anyone showed in the delicacy with which the ensemble approached the dizzying Scherzo. And yet, like a Beethoven conductor who suspects that most in attendance are holding out for the Ode to Joy, the ensemble seemed to traverse the opening two movements as a courtesy toward getting there. The rousing finish did garner a standing ovation, however, so perhaps I was in the minority in feeling underwhelmed.

After thanking the audience and the many young faces populating it, Smissen lead the ensemble in a soulful rendition of Gershwin’s “Summertime,” which sounded like the Kronos Quartet, on a quiet day, in duplicate. I only wish such vibrancy had been on full display throughout.

Cold Suns and Warm Moons: The Music of Yelena Eckemoff

| Tyran Grillo

“Scenic” is the word that comes foremost to my mind when basking in the music of Yelena Eckemoff. Not only in the sense of being rural and picturesque, but also in the filmic sense, as if each album were a scene from an evolving motion picture. Snapshots of memory, flickers of time, and points of reflection: these are the nourishments on which Eckemoff’s sonic activities thrive. The Moscow-born, U.S.-based musician, composer, artist, and teacher brings her experiences of (re)location to bear upon each new project, and draws upon a deep spiritual awareness to give weight to the painterly melodies therein. Simultaneously, her music has an uncanny ability to manifest itself through feelings in lieu of images, conjuring instead a state of listening rather than a type of listening. With this in mind, I have set out to evoke four recent albums—of which Eckemoff has composed and produced every moment—and braid these reflections with an interview in which she was gracious enough to participate via e-mail. In the interest of starting our discussion, I begin with a rudimentary question…

Tyran Grillo: What role does music play in your life?

Yelena Eckemoff: Music has been a vital part of my whole existence since the first day of my life, as I was a daughter of a wonderful pianist—my dear mother Olga. My head has always been filled with music, and I started to play by ear and make up little tunes at the age of four, and then years of extensive professional training with some of the best teachers in the world, followed by decades of personal growth and never-ending evolution as a musician. I’ve been living and breathing music…this is pretty much all I care about, not counting of course my family.


The Call (2006)

The genesis of this album came with the unexpected passing of Eckemoff’s dog, Daisy, in October of 2004. The titular call was first a heartfelt reaction to this loss, sprung naturally from the realization that Daisy would never again answer it. Yet through the improvisations that emerged in the coming year, lovingly transcribed and rendered in the company of a few committed musicians, Eckemoff found another calling, knowing that the absence left behind by a loved one can always be filled with creation. This recording followed an exclusive period of solo work, and the addition of Gayle Masarie on cello, Deborah Egekvist on flutes, and Michael Bolejack on drums represents an embrace of togetherness that the mourning process had perhaps previously obscured.

TG: Now that five years separates you from The Call, can you reflect further on its title and on the period of loss that nurtured its coming into being?

YE: The Call was my first CD that I recorded with live musicians. Before that I was doing solo piano recitals and working with the synthesizer and sequencer, while raising my children and trying to make it with my husband in our new country. But in the end of 2005 I felt “the call” to go back to interacting with live musicians and found several local ones with whom I started my own band. I was so excited and encouraged with the new perspectives that my creativity peaked, and I composed a lot of new music for my new ensemble.

After the piano’s light opening touch, the grand thematic statement that soon takes shape is its own call, one that speaks to each listener in different ways. To these ears, it is a prompt to act upon one’s desires for fulfillment, an urging toward spiritual purpose, a shift beyond the blindness of temptation. The piece ends in a sprinkle of raindrops, resting at the edge of darkness.

TG: The combination of instruments is delightful, the flute adding an obvious touch of breath to the sonic palette. One hears this especially in “Daisy,” which so beautifully conveys your beloved pet. What made you decide to introduce a flute into the mix? 

YE: In the past I’ve written a lot of music for various instruments, and I have always been motivated by the prospect of my music being performed, so I gladly wrote for any instrumentalists who I had available at the moment. When I work with a certain musician, I try to adjust my music to his or her performing style to achieve the best musical outcome.

Whimsy abounds in The Call. In everything from the titles to the arrangements, there is revelry to be experienced in both the playing and listening; that in the simple gift of music-making, one can gift not only melody, but also memories. Much of this comes through in shorter pieces like “Strolling Towards Sunset,” “Sushi Dinner” (a tongue-in-cheek ode to the atmospherics of ingestion), and “Questions.” These tracks are a light jazz blend, contrasting vividly with the somber “Ripples on Water,” and are a testament to Yelena’s eclectic fluency.

Others like “Sunny Day in the Woods” (in which the flute glistens against the circular motions of the piano),  “Suspicions” (which includes a lovely cello solo against a Satie-like lattice), and “Garden in May” (one of the album’s finest) leave us in little doubt as to their associations. In this sense they are quite photographic.

TG: Do you approach your music and images in a particularly scenic way, or do you perhaps approach the images through the music?

YE: Any strong impressions and especially feelings result in music being born inside me. I never try to come up with melodies—they just flow out of me constantly…often even at night. In the morning I write them down and sort them later…or forget about them.

Like the symphony of windy hands that rake the “Ocean of Pine,” the album moves in circuitous progressions. From the cinematic (“Temptation”) to the wistful (“Windy Day in the Countryside”), we are treated to a feast of time and possibilities. And as the title of “My Cozy Bed” implies, Eckemoff is interested in the simpler pleasures in life, uncluttered by unnecessary intellectual trappings and bound instead to a direct moral compass. This track also gets up to some jazzier business, anchored by heavy double stops in the cello. Masarie stands out again in “Full Moon,” a revolving door of pizzicato and sustained notes. Eckemoff and company save the best for last with “Imaginary Lake,” capping off an 18-track album that is sure to please many with its variety.

TG: In the liner notes for The Call, drummer Michael Bolejack lists his favorite musicians: Peter Erskine, Jack DeJohnette, Paul Motian, Bobo Stenson, John Taylor, and Keith Jarrett. These peak my interest, of course, for having recorded extensively for ECM. How, if at all, has the music of ECM influenced your own work? Does it comprise any portion of your listening life?

YE: I am ashamed to admit that I did not even know about the very existence of ECM until Michael Bolejack introduced me to the label and its production in the course of 2006. I was happy to realize that there are other musicians out there whose approach to modern music is somewhat similar to mine, and it gave me this feeling of unity with other musicians, which I was happy about.


Cold Sun (2009)

This album represents the most fruitful shift in Eckemoff’s career by joining her with bassist Mads Vinding and drummer Peter Erskine. Her relationship with the latter is particularly striking and achieves a clearly discernible balance of distance and intimacy throughout. Erskine’s profoundly subtle craft—sharing peerage with Jon Christensen especially in the use of cymbals—ever so delicately paints in those gaps that the piano leaves untouched in its abyss. His gestures swirl like snowdrifts, each the afterthought of something internally more dramatic. These wintry nuances crystallize in sonic postcards such as “Scents of Christmas,” “Romance by the Fireplace,” and “Freezing Point.”

TG: Cold Sun comes across to me as a distinctly airy album. Its feet touch the ground only occasionally, as in the gnarled groove of “Stubborn,” making for a, dare I say, mysterious experience. Did this album develop any differently than the rest?

YE: There was The Call as a starter. Then my group gained a double-bassist and an oboe/saxophone player, and we rehearsed actively as a band, played gigs, and performed many new compositions that actually did not get incorporated into any of the CDs yet. Then there was Advocate of Love (2008)—a mostly trio album, reflecting a somewhat jazzier feel. The Cold Sun material was formed out of my 4-year experience working actively with my ensemble. The material of this winter album required a more improvisatory approach. And I reached out to the musicians who I thought would work best for that project.

Other tracks are more abstract and prompt us into deeper listening. “Silence,” for example, is not a literal description but more an evocation of state and mind. Like fingers running through hair, Eckemoff’s notes comb the ether. “White Magic” is a subdued evocation, which blends effectively into the touching dissonances of “Snow Bliss.” Yet it is in the throes of “Winter” that we at last encounter the synthesis of the album’s many threads. Brimming with glorious leaps and bounds, as well as more subterranean reflections, it brings us delicate closure to a moody and free-flowing album that is sure to please fans of Tord Gustavsen and Marcin Wasilewski.

TG: The piano trio is clearly a comfortable format for you. What is it about the combination that appeals to you and how does it enliven your expressivity?

YE: I suspect the piano trio will always be my favorite format, because I am a skilled pianist and the piano has always been a dominating expressive source for me. However, I do like the variety of the sounds, and I get many ideas that call for different sets of instruments (that I hope to see through in the future). But the intimacy and perfect balance of timbres in the trio is the most comfortable setup that surely has my first love.


Grass Catching the Wind (2010)

As the unnamed sequel to Cold Sun, Grass Catching the Wind picks up where the former left off with “Anticipation of Spring.” Its shaded bass solo, courtesy of Vinding, sets the tone for the album’s crepuscular seepage. Nocturnal gestures unfurl in “Night of the Fireflies & Crickets” and the masterful “Neverland,” while “Summer Heat,” “Harvest,” and “Sonnet for the Flowers” flap like laundry hanging in an afternoon breeze, intermittently revealing the vast countryside behind.

TG: You seem to be overflowing with musical ideas. What is your creative wellspring? What inspires you?

YE: Musical ideas and melodies constantly bubble up and accumulate inside me. Making music for me is the way to live and to cope with my life’s ups and downs. If I can’t express myself in music, I virtually suffocate. I hear music everywhere, especially in nature, but my feelings and emotions are still the greatest source of my inspiration and stimulant for my creativity.

We also find ourselves in the more upbeat stylings of drummer Morten Lund in “Somebody Likes Jogging,” “Rain Streams,” and “Emerald World,” the latter being the grooviest leg on this tour and the album’s crowning highlight. The distinctive bass line in the title track also pulls us forward in fluid motion, fanned along by card-deck riffles from snare. And where “Overcast” engages shadowy figures in a puppet show of opaque emotions, “Beautiful Destruction” actually bonds them with light. This is music unveiled to reveal a softly beating heart, where memory is the only present.

TG: I hear so many memories in your pieces, as if each were an autobiography in miniature, the reflection of a time and place long past but ever alive in your heart. How much of you resides in this music?

YE: My music is me, no question about it. If you listen to my music, you get to know me better than you would through talking or anything else. My soul is completely bare in what you hear! I never try to show off or please the listener. My only aspiration is to express my thoughts and feelings as accurately as only I can. I can’t resist this overwhelming desire—to pour out my soul in sounds and reach out to the people who would like to feel the same vibes.


Flying Steps (2010)

Eckemoff’s latest trio album marks the return of Erskine into the fold, and with it the inaugural “Promise,” a languid journey through innocence into resignation and back again, with an isolated rest stop or two along the way. Darek Oleszkiewicz takes the helm at bass this time around, completing a trio of superb insight. His dexterity brings a gentle urge to the foreground and gilds Erskine’s already filigreed approach.

Here is an album that works particularly vividly in images. “A Smile” seems to paint itself one tooth at a time, opening the pathways of its own emotional distance, while “Good Morning” scintillates like sunlight on a kitchen table, glinting off coffee cups, illuminating a newspaper, shimmering outside the window—and all of it threaded by Erskine’s delicate rolls.

TG: You clearly share a deep musical connection with Erskine. You even dedicate the inviting title track of Flying Steps to him. How did that partnership come about and how do you feel it has changed the way you play, listen, and perform?

YE: As I mentioned before, I was searching for like-minded musicians who I thought would feel at ease with my music. Peter was on my mind for a long time, because as far as I could tell listening to his playing, I felt that we would likely have many things in common. This proved to be completely true when we met and played together—a complete mutual understanding! Of course, Peter is a genius, and surely all musicians would feel great having him on board. And I was flattered at how respectfully Peter treated my music, and it made me so happy that he really liked it and that he enjoyed working with me. Working with him was a fabulous and joyful experience. Everything comes easy and naturally to Peter, and making a record with him was a truly exciting journey.

“For Harry” is a dance of piano and cymbals, all threaded by Oleszkiewicz’s invisible stitching. A memorable color shift occurs when Erskine lays down rims over Eckemoff’s light-as-a-feather touch. “Isolated” seems to represent the album’s theme. There is something expository in its activity, finding profundity in the everyday.

TG: Following up on the question of memory, there is an unmistakable note of nostalgia in all of your music that is only intensified with each new listen. In what ways does the past influence the immediacy of your musical creation?

YE: Nostalgia…everybody feels it toward childhood, their younger years, lost friends and family members, beloved pets and places… In my case it got even more complicated by my immigration and living so far from my homeland… A lot of pain is hidden inside the souls of many people. And it only grows stronger when you age and experience new losses… But not only losses. I am also feeling nostalgic toward many happy memories and events. It is said that passionate love of all kinds is painful: how true!

“Isolated” also clues us in on the enigma of the album’s cover. Though isolated insofar as it is elevated above all social and civil signs, as such it is also connected to the vastness of the great beyond. In this liminal space one finds the aptitude of solitude.

“Where is Maxim?” forms a trilogy of sorts with “Tears Will Come” and “Insomnia,” for each evokes weighted emotions with equal lightness. For me, more overtly personal tracks like these reach deepest. Take, for example, “Mama,” which is a brilliant and sublime confluence of time, space, and technique that seems to constitute the very heart of what Eckemoff is capable of at her best. Oleszkiewicz shines again in “Steps,” especially in his captivating solo. We end with “Tomorrow,” a soft exercise in humility and the unpredictability of circumstance.

TG: Where do you see your music, and your life, going next?

YE: While new music keeps piling up, I have quite a few projects on hold, including a vast work with Old King James Biblical Psalms. At the moment I am getting ready to release a new CD, Forget-Me-Not, which I have just recorded with Marilyn Mazur and Mats Eilertsen this August in Copenhagen. And now I am truly looking forward to a couple of very exciting projects (in planning) for the next year: I cannot disclose the details yet, but it is shaping out to be the next important step in my musical journey.

To learn more about Yelena Eckemoff and purchase CDs, please visit her website.

Haden/Garbarek/Gismonti: Folk Songs (ECM 1170)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1170

Folk Songs

Charlie Haden bass
Jan Garbarek saxophones
Egberto Gismonti guitars, piano
Recorded November 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

This scintillating follow-up album to Magico is yet another fine example of ECM’s progressive comings together. Uniting multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti with the instantly recognizable stylings of saxophonist Jan Garbarek and bassist Charlie Haden seems at once a stroke of genius and an inevitable configuration. A blue “Folk Song” sets the tone for all tender considerations that follow, slowly working its motions into a helix of atmospheres. Gismonti stretches out a gorgeous drawl in “Bôdas De Prata.” Within the open bowl of Garbarek’s cupped tenor, he glows like a firefly. The rhythmic acuity of “Cego Aderaldo” is enough to sustain an otherwise languid album. There is something special about the 12-string/sax combination here that recalls the label’s Solstice days and pairs beautifully with “Veien,” which gives us the album’s most reactive moments. Gismonti’s perpetuity, Garbarek’s crystalline phrasings, and Haden’s heartening geometries unify, appropriately enough, in “Equilibrista.” This cradle of rolling piano and melodic overlays falls from its bough in a melodious tumble, landing on its feet for the final word, which comes in the form of “For Turiya,” another ballad-like seesaw of piano and bass resting on the fulcrum of Garbarek’s nocturnal whispers.

Each of these precious musicians has the ability to paint the grandest pictures with the subtlest gestures. This tension of method and effect is at the heart of ECM’s ethos. In such projects, one feels producer Manfred Eicher’s conversational presence and guiding hand, both of which can only illuminate the joys of creation and the sharing thereof.

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>> Keith Jarrett: Nude Ants (ECM 1171/72)