Scott Worthington / Renato D’Agostin: Orbit

| Tyran Grillo

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Orbit titles the intersection of bassist/composer Scott Worthington and Italian photographer Renato D’Agostin. Worthington’s minimal approach to sound, like D’Agostin’s to image, reveals the hidden complexities of interaction between bodies and the contexts of their transit. With an atmosphere that recalls the self-refractions of Stephan Micus, “A Time That Is Also A Place” fleshes out the flute of Rachel Beetz like vanes to a feather’s shaft, funneling into a quill hungry for a universal inkwell. Long tones beget longer drones to form a space in which the body retreats into itself. As multi-phonic light cradles shadows with aged hands, drawing static from its slumber into the foreground, the monochromatic heart of reality beats in the slowest of motions, as if to mark the passage of time beyond grasp of all measure. The effect is such that when the ambient “Interlude” opens its eyes against the sunlight of a thousand sun, we understand intimately the imperfection of the soul against a cosmos dripping with unity.

If we began with a circle, then “A Flame That Could Go Out” is another linking to it, resonating in a moan for all matter. In this bass-heavy flame, one encounters not a single flicker, but a steady flow of suicidal oxygen quietly accepting its fate. Each respiration is a word without speech, a simulacrum of mortality restored like an ancient instrument cleared of its corrosion. This leaves only the tracery of experience to communicate who we once were in the music of who we can never be again.

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That all of this feels so downright terrestrial is due in part to the captivation of D’Agostin’s images, which grace the album’s accompanying book with nomadic coherence. Their high contrast reveals a mutual contradiction of flesh and spirit, even as it fortifies the connective tissue of art between them. In this sense, the dialogue here is not between individuals but within them, steering the self into waters of deeper self until only horizon remains.

(For ordering information, check out the IIKKI imprint here.)

Uros Spasojevic / Bojan Marjanovic: V

| Tyran Grillo

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Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines “flow” as a oneness of performer and process, and on V electric bassist Uros Spasojevic and pianist Bojan Marjanovic achieve precisely that. That said, the Serbian duo doesn’t so much combine forces as close the gap between them, like two hands from different religious traditions coming together in a single prayer.

Spasojevic is unique for drawing out the bass’ corporeal qualities. In his solo “North,” he opens the curtain in a gesture so holistic that it seems to inhale and exhale simultaneously. With a tone that’s rounded yet which pierces the heart, he drops higher notes into a blurry pond, every ripple like a newborn song in search of words. The piano’s entrance in “Senok” reveals, with quiet assurance, an underlying Ketil Bjørnstad influence. Yet while the Norwegian pianist-composer’s cinematic lyricism is paralleled, it’s filtered through a color scheme all its own. Such an association suggests an ECM connection, and by no coincidence, as Spasojevic—who writes all the music here—cites the label as a staple of his listening diet. Such respect is further enhanced by the fact that the album was mixed and mastered under the attentive hand of Jan Erik Kongshaug at Oslo’s famed Rainbow Studio, and by the familiar thematic fragment of “Water,” which seems to have been lifted sanctimoniously from Kenny Wheeler’s “Nicolette.”

The sonic footprint of Vis as non-invasive as it is expansive. In “Guide” and “Change,” it reaches deepest layers of emotional transference, rendering hidden dreams with the pigment of open realities. “Hope” is a prelude to the title track, of which a pianistic lattice offers its plot to Spasojevic’s melodic fruit. As Marjanovic heightens his freedom of expression in spiraling architectures, he uncovers more than the album’s mission statement, but a land without borders. “End of the hill” thus surveys the album’s most abstract territories, making use of electronic augmentations and spontaneous impulses, while “Sea” closes the circle with another lone journey, of which every step brings us farther from a destination, letting us float instead across a misty sea, thankful for the beauty of unknowing.

ECM Radio Shows

| Tyran Grillo

For those interested, I have consolidated all six ECM radio shows I did last year for WKCR. The first five provide offerings from ECM’s catalog on a decade-by-decade basis, from the 1970s to the present, while the sixth is a special compilation of world- and folk-leaning favorites:

ECM by the Decades: The 1970s

ECM by the Decades: The 1980s

ECM by the Decades: The 1990s

ECM by the Decades: The 2000s

ECM by the Decades: The 2010s

ECM: Between the Lines

Live Report: Klaeng Festival 2018

| Tyran Grillo

Now approaching its 10th year, Köln’s Klaeng Festival (Nov. 23rd-26th) has developed into a synaptic hub of local and international jazz talents. Fueled by seven musicians with a passion for seeking out the finest in improvised music, 2018’s incarnation brought out the collective’s most eclectic mission statement yet upon the Stadtgarten stage.

Throughout the three-day festival, a number of perennial themes clarified themselves. First and foremost was listening, as quintessentially expressed in the music of Clang Sayne. Led by vocalist/guitarist and principal composer Laura Hyland, the Irish band hung meticulously woven tapestries of song in celebration of life and death. Together with Judith Ring (voice/cello), Matthew Jacobson (drums) and Carolyn Goodwin (bass clarinet), Hyland crafted a tender yet restless atmosphere. Songs like “Thoughts from a Church Pew at a Mountain Cabin” and “The Round Soul of the World” revealed a lifetime’s worth of impressions with dirge-like pathos. Through it all, an awareness of silence as a physical substance of memory prevailed.

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David Virelles and Marcus Gilmore showed us the art of listening within to bring meaning without. The pianist and drummer were more than that, as each had a modest arsenal at his disposal—Virelles on his Alesis MIDI keyboard fed with custom samples and Gilmore employing Sunhouse sensory percussion technology—to fill in the finer details.

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Either musician could fill a room without these enhancements, which made their tasteful application thereof all the more joyful. Over the course of one long-form improvisation followed by something of a summary encore, the performance cycled through ambient grooves, massive block chords and solo relays in service of pathfinding music blurring the line between compression and decompression.

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No mode of listening was as intense, however, as that brought to bear by bassist/vocalist Ruth Goller, whose Skylla (a new group playing its first live gig) gave pause to the relatively denser sound clouds preceding it. Flanked by the precise intonations and occasional aphasic turns of vocalists Lauren Kinsella and Alice Grant, Goller proceeded from humble intervals to unravel an intimacy so deep it felt almost blasphemous to be privy to its wonders. Bass kept things grounded in every sense, serving as an interpreter of dreams in a larger feedback loop.

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Likeminded inwardness abounded in Of Cabbage and Kings, a local “neo a cappella” quartet who opened for drummer Leif Berger’s sextet and whose spiritual arrangement of Laura Mvula’s “Overcome” gave a taste of what could easily have been an entire concert.

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Berger and friends spotlighted a second major theme of the festival: communication. Here the focus was on gestures, motifs and improvisational strategies. Berger’s band was catalyzed by alto saxophonist Fabian Dudek, trombonist Moritz Wesp, pianist Felix Hauptmann, synth wizard Yannis Anft and bassist David Helm. Half of the tunes were so new as to have only numbers for titles. Of these, “Zwei” and “Sechs” evoked an arid, desert-like atmosphere. The moodier “Basilica” was a highlight for its vivid evocation of sun, stone and glass while “Pflanzem,” despite its nonsensical title, proved Dudek to be a sensible improviser.

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Further outstanding communication came from violinist Harald Kimmig, bassist Daniel Studer, cellist Alfred zimmerlin and pianist Philip zoubek, who over two long takes fleshed out a fascinating hour of free improvisation. Shifting between contemporary classical music (at times veering into darker, George Crumb-like territories) and jazz (as when Studer rubbed a drum brush across his instrument), every extended technique felt natural and inevitable and proved the humility of a quartet willing to be nothing more than the sum of its parts.

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The festival’s communication ambassador, however, was Soweto Kinch. The British alto saxophonist lifted his trio with bassist Nick Jurd and drummer Will Glaser to postmodern heights across a set of six original tunes, followed by a freestyle rap built around words suggested by the audience. Kinch’s forays into hip-hop firmly placed the cornerstones of his politics, worldview and harmony-seeking personality. His original blend addressed salient issues of division without proselytizing, yielding the most audience-aware act of the weekend.

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A final binding theme was synergy. Philm set the tone in this regard as the festival’s opener. Comprised of Philipp Gropper (tenor sax), Elias Stemeseder (piano/synths), Robert Landfermann (bass) and Oliver Steidle (drums), the band spoke in poetry rather than prose and brought unforced flow to fruition in chains of subtle explosions. The band carefully framed one scene after another, if only to allow dialogue to flow unscripted. Thus, piano and drums conversed from either end of the stage. Like a spirograph in sound, they embodied a dichotomy of chaos and order, revealing a depth of design in every turn of the cog.

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The Buoyancy Band, a new outfit from pianist and bandleader Pablo Held, took synergy to an even higher level. Boosted by the flair of Percy Pursglove (flugelhorn), Kit Downes (organ) and Sean Carpio (drums), Held sparked one beautiful fire after another. Pursglove was a special treat, as his stratospheric improvisations recalled the late Kenny Wheeler in the most heartfelt way imaginable. Downes was another key presence, bringing depth to tunes like “Floater” and a remarkable translucence overall.

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Synergy incarnate came in the form of Gilad Hekselman’s Zuper Octave. Joined by keyboard player Aaron Parks and drummer Kendrick Scott, the guitarist closed the festival with mostly original music that was on-point and welcoming. Between the fast-fingered “VBlues” and downtempo encore “Stumble,” the trio made magic seem like second nature. Parks held the most unenviable post, providing basslines on a Korg microKEY while playing Rhodes underneath. Hekselman’s writing represented one of the band’s many strengths. Whether in the beautifully arranged rhythms of “Tokyo Cookie” or relief-oriented “It Will Get Better,” his love of life was as obvious as the smiles he exchanged with his bandmates were plentiful. Theirs was a wisdom of experience most bands would take a lifetime to achieve.

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If nothing else, however, 2018’s Klaeng Festival was about sound as substance. This was nowhere so obvious as in the venue’s slogan, printed on the door opening into the concert space: “We eat music.” If so, then everyone was surely nourished to capacity, leaving room only for the dessert of reflection.

(This article in its original form appeared in the January 2019 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, a full PDF of which is available here.)

Kyoko Kitamura’s Tidepool Fauna: Protean Labyrinth

| Tyran Grillo

Protean Labyrinth

Protean Labyrinth is a tunnel burrowing into the linguistic soil from which we all sprout. It’s a sensation best expressed in a handful of tracks bearing the title “Push.” Of these, “Push Four” is the most emblematic, a spontaneous ramble, which, like the album as a whole, achieves coherence by virtue of its passage through time—pushing indeed against the temptation of meaning in favor of instinctive understanding. At the center of this aphasia is vocalist Kyoko Kitamura, who doesn’t so much lead the band as strike it like flint on rock. Tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Dayeon Seok are chemically bound to her at every moment, tasting the air of possibility like a three-pronged tongue.

Despite the guiding scores from which the music is drawn, the quartet undermines any purchase of exposition. What starts as a bright groove one moment might morph into throaty sinews of darkness the next. That such changes occur without force or hierarchical touch is testament to these musicians’ willingness to smash their compass the moment it’s calibrated. The finest turns are “Deadbolt” and “No Exit,” both masterful containments of wildness. Each is a glass house filled with vocal stones—not thrown but handled so much that they’ve become rounded with care.

Kitamura’s voice, brimming with fierce humility, is central to these goings on. In “Lure,” each of her utterances is an Ouroboros of potential meaning sacrificed on the altar of its own becoming and in “Slide” she breaks out the vocal champagne, bubbling and frothing her way through a subterranean mythos. This is the underside of language, a sonic entity that grows and moves of its own accord.

(This review, in its original form, appeared in the December 2018 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, a full PDF of which is available here.)

Winged Serpents: Six Encomiums for Cecil Taylor

| Tyran Grillo

Winged Serpents

If the music of Cecil Taylor was a continent, this album is a chain of islands. Divided in magnitude yet sharing the same creative waters, each of its pianists offers one of six eulogies in praise of an artist who knew no bounds and whose powerful life is held in the balance of interpretation.

Craig Taborn’s “Genuflect” plays out a dialogue between the ethereal and the earthly. His feel for texture is savory enough to be edible and recalls the soul-filling starches that were staples of the Taylor diet. This catharsis sits comfortably next to Sylvie Courvoisier, who brings her knowledge of the piano’s interior to bear on “Quauhnahuac” as a linguist would phonemes: that is, creating meaning out of elements that in and of themselves have none. Her anatomical precision elicits solace and strength in equal measure. The humbly titled “Minor Magus” finds Brian Marsella scraping away the dirt of grief in handfuls. It’s an unrelenting piece that speaks of a biography struggling to catch up with its departed subject.

“Grass and Trees on the Other Side of the Tracks” is Kris Davis’ song of spontaneity. By turns prayerful and spasmodic, it struggles to breathe of its own accord, like a pair of lungs fighting the influence of a respirator. Aruán Ortiz’s “Unveiling Urban Pointillism” may just be the body housing said lungs, pulling away from a dream so adhesive that one begins to question the value of waking at all. Anthony Coleman swings from the rafters of a written score (the album’s only). Its title, “April 5th, 2018,” dates Taylor’s death, veering into improvised corners of renovation. The most somber of the set, it is also the most traditional, sprinkling fragments of ragtime, swing, and pop into its brewing vessel. A fitting end to one whose posthumous legacy is just beginning.

(This review, in its original form, appeared in the December 2018 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, a full PDF of which is available here.)

Tord Gustavsen Trio: The Other Side (ECM 2608)

| Tyran Grillo

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Tord Gustavsen Trio
The Other Side

Tord Gustavsen piano, electronics
Sigurd Hole double bass
Jarle Vespestad drums
Recorded January 2018 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Peer Espen Ursfjord
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 31, 2018

Following the success of three earlier ECM recordings and reeling from the death of bassist Harald Johnsen, Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen decided to pursue other sources of light. Here his trio is relit, carrying over the torch of drummer Jarle Vespestad and adding the new flame of bassist Sigurd Hole for a veritable candelabrum of poetic originals, folk songs and church music. Although 11 years separates this from the last trio session, Gustavsen’s self-styled approach of “radical listening” is more vibrant than ever—a mood only confirmed by the crispness of this album’s engineering and the humbling interactions it documents.

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(Photo credit: Hans Fredrik Asbjørnsen)

Like a prism, colors change throughout The Other Side as a matter of perspective. Upon first listen, I find myself drawn to an anthemic subtlety such as only Gustavsen can articulate. It’s all there in the inaugural “The Tunnel,” which feels like a slow-motion flashback into the deepest corners of my happiest memories.

A slight change of angle highlights the band’s newest member. Hole is an intrepidly lyrical bassist whose approach to folk tunes and hymns alike reveals a buoyant physicality of execution. His spirited contributions to folklorist Ludvig Mathias Lindeman’s “Kirken, den er et gammelt hus,” for instance, reveal a heart rooted deeply in tradition. His arco whispers in “Duality” and “Taste and See,” both of which float on softest beds of electronics, are haunting and precise and the continuity of his playing in “Re-Melt” is nothing short of romantic.

Another shift brings out the deeper hues of three Bach chorales, lovingly arranged in dramatic braids. Of these, “Schlafes Bruder” teases out great joy from solemn hymnody and frames butterfly-winged drumming. The piano solo “Left Over Lullaby No. 4” is yet another band of a spectrum that speaks for itself and, like the title track and the concluding “Curves,” has a classic feel that beckons us into Gustavsen’s back catalogue. All of which yields a life-affirming record and a profound leap of faith for one of ECM’s most indelible trios. Welcome home.

(This review originally appeared in the September 2018 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, a full PDF of which is available here.)

Mark Turner/Ethan Iverson: Temporary Kings (ECM 2583)

| Tyran Grillo

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Temporary Kings

Mark Turner tenor saxophone
Ethan Iverson piano
Recorded June 2017, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 7, 2018

Following two appearances on ECM as part of the Billy Hart Quartet, saxophonist Mark Turner and pianist Ethan Iverson return to the fold as a duo. Their speculative blend of chamber jazz is a nod to the Lennie Tristano/Warne Marsh school, yet every listen reveals layers of spontaneous design.

Marsh’s own “Dixie’s Dilemma” is a thematic centerpiece, which in its present form feels like a jazz message shot into space, scrambled by the universe and dropped back through the Earth’s atmosphere with exacting lyricism. The lion’s share of credit, though, goes to Iverson, who penned six of the album’s nine selections. Set opener “Lugano” is an ode to the place of its recording as well as the state of mind it conveys. It’s a feeling that could exist nowhere and nowhen else and finds Turner’s tone, fleshier than ever, sprouting wings from the spine of an aching altissimo. The title tune and darker “Third Familiar” are soundtracks of the soul while the tighter knots of “Turner’s Chamber of Unlikely Delights” unravel with playful extroversion. Against the cloudy backdrop of “Yesterday’s Bouquet,” a piano solo oozing with remembrance, the bluesier “Unclaimed Freight” puts a spirited ice cube in the cocktail. Turner’s contributions, for their part, constitute a binary star of personal expression. Where “Myron’s World” is a masterfully realized tangle of associations given credence by the profundity of their grammar, “Seven Points” is the album’s creative apex. Its balance between focus and surrender is indicative of open communication. Turner navigates every change of direction and terrain with eyes closed and heart open, yielding massive returns from investments of experience.

Although the musicians were recorded in the same room, they seem to inhabit their own planetary orbits. Bound by the gravitation of a serious whimsy, they finish each other’s sentences even as they begin to cast new lines into the galactic pond on which they’ve anchored their boat for an hour’s duration. And while their kingship may be temporary, whatever they’re tapping into is anything but.

(This review originally appeared in the September 2018 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, a full PDF of which is available here.)

Playing Pärt

| Tyran Grillo

Playing Pärt

Playing Pärt

Directed and filmed by Dorian Supin
Release date: October 12, 2012

In 2011, the Old Town Music School of Collegium Educationis Revaliae and the International Arvo Pärt Centre put on a student concert of Pärt’s music at St Michael’s Church in Tallinn. Playing Pärt documents both this historic performance and the rehearsals leading up to it, supplemented by interviews with the composer and his wife, Nora.

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Said concert is a charming, in-depth survey of Pärt’s legacy, and of the beauty that gives it resonance. Many pieces on the program will be familiar to ECM listeners: organ works Trivium and Pari Intervallo (the latter arranged here for four guitars), Da Pacem Domine (arranged for four recorders), and the solemn Für Alina are standouts among them. Spiegel im Spiegel, for its balance of tension and prayer, is another. Throughout, a quiet respect prevails by way of a “local” feeling that cannot be replicated in the international concert hall. These melodies, however familiar, paint even more direct lines to the heart when so endearingly performed. Like fragrances in sound, they waft through the senses, following ancient channels of memory even while forging new ones.

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Delightful surprises abound. First and foremost are “The Cycle of Four Easy Dances,” from the 1959 collection Music for Children’s Theatre, including the rarely heard “Butterflies” and the evocative “Dance of the Ducklings,” replete with dissonant splashes of webbed feet. Just as alluring is “I’m Already Big,” a children’s song composed when Pärt was a student. The focus on youth feels as poignant as it does inevitable, and makes indelible impressions in such choral settings as Veni Creator (a 2006 commission from the German Bishops’ Conference), Bogoróditse Djévo (a 1990 commission from Cambridge King’s College Choir, based on a Church Slavonic hymn to the Virgin Mary), and Vater Unser (composed in 2005 and based on a German translation of the Lord’s Prayer), for which the composer at the piano accompanies a quartet of singers.

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Other highlights are Ukuaru Waltz, originally composed for the film Ukauru (1973, dir. Leid Laius) and performed on two chromatic kannels (plucked zithers), the aleatoric Diagramme (Pärt’s opus 11), and Variations for the Healing of Arinushka, a solo piano piece composed in 1977 while daughter Ariina was recovering from an appendix operation. Trepidations and hope of light breathe through every note.

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Yet it’s in the rehearsals where Pärt’s humilities come out in full attendance. More than providing insight into the mind of a world-renowned composer, they reveal the soul of a man whose entire concept of art is nothing without faith in eternity. He understands the quality of sound, and the beauty of it being played with heart. If anything, and for that very reason, he’s more demanding of the children’s pieces, which in all their etudinal simplicity allow the interpreter’s soul to resound. During a rehearsal of “Butterflies,” for instance, he says, “It’s essential for the music to have some kind of secret. That’s the case of the butterfly as well. It’s a mysterious creature.” For him, the rudiment is sacred.

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His music has materiality, and he treats it accordingly. Whether stressing the positions of a pianist’s hands while playing Für Alina or chiding himself for inclusion of inappropriate dynamics in the original score to “Dance of the Ducklings” (upon hearing which, he exclaims, “A beautiful piece. Did I compose it?”), he upholds the value of any given moment to shape something unexpected, personal, and true.

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We encounter echoes of this philosophy in his conversations with Nora. In these, the subject of the interpreter is a red thread, pulling at questions of authority versus idiosyncrasy, and concluding that one must be both strong and gentle in order to play music with genuine feeling. “It has to be born in the soul of the interpreter,” he says, for in the body thereof is something concrete and in the metaphysical thereof is something ineffable. “The composer,” he goes on to say, “can learn a lot from the interpreter.” Most musicians, Nora agrees, are unresponsive to this suggestion. It’s like trying to explain how the sun shines. Hardship, Pärt adds, helps people understand this. Children notice it, too. Hence, the concert. They are straightforward, avers Nora, whereas professionals are contending with “a thousand different traditions.” Innocence allows performers to take notes seriously. She further likens music to the optical effect of two binocular images merging into one, a simile I would extend to the listener’s relationship to what’s being heard. Countless motifs out there are waiting to blend into our own. Let this film be a reminder of our openness to the spiritually healthiest ones.

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