Smith/Taborn/Maneri: The Bell (ECM 2474)

| Tyran Grillo

The Bell

The Bell

Ches Smith drums, vibraphone, timpani
Craig Taborn piano
Mat Maneri viola
Recorded June 2015 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Assistant: Akihiro Nishimura
Produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. release date: January 15, 2016

After sideman appearances with Robin Williamson and Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, percussionist Ches Smith presents a bounty of original compositions on his first ECM album as leader. In the hands of his cosmically capable bandmates and label stalwarts—pianist Craig Taborn and violist Mat Maneri—Smith’s material behaves as exactly that: a substance to be formed and reformed with cymatic detail.

The title track opens the album, appropriately enough, with chimes. Microtonal harmonies from Taborn and barest caress of viola strings build anticipation over resonant vibraphone touches. From the piano arises a sweeping cinematic landscape as the mist resolves into clearer bow lines and forceful drumming. This piece shares breath with other such delicacies as “Isn’t It Over?” and “I Think.” In both, Smith treats grooves like rocks in his shoe—which is to say, as ephemeral yet memorable. And in these metallic core samples, striations of exactitude are unnecessary. As if in response to an underlying declaration of freedom, Maneri works his songcraft like a master boatman who has lost his oar but not his sense of propulsion, moving along the water with ease by power of thought instead. The effect is such that by the time Smith brings traction, the shoreline has already been confirmed as an illusion. Whether in the microscopy of “It’s Always Winter (Somewhere)” or the angular reverie of “For Days,” each member of this trio paints a halo of deference around the others’ heads, so that even the mischievous “Wacken Open Air” emits a near-palpable blast of respect.

The Bell Trio
(Photo credit: Caterina di Perri)

“Barely Intervallic” is the first of the album’s two deepest wells. This one is Maneri’s knot to unravel. The combinatory textures of Smith and Taborn allow every note from the violist a chance to speak. The monochromatic color scheme of “I’ll See You On The Dark Side Of The Earth,” on the other hand, is Taborn’s chamber of intimacy. Maneri and Smith are minimal here, the latter’s tracery is especially poignant as a lunatic origami ensues at the fringes of cohesion. In this medieval blues, distilled from the future to meet in the blessing of the here and now, Smith and his bandmates forge new understandings that suggest themselves by their very coexistence.

As in my review of Avishai Cohen’s Into The Silence, I feel compelled to note the beauty of seeing this trio at the 2016 New York City Winter Jazzfest, and how much more attuned I felt experiencing its wonders in a live setting. Perhaps it’s the blush of first exposure, but I would encourage anyone reading this to seek out the trio in person wherever and whenever possible. Not that the studio album is unworthy—just that, like a perfume, there’s only so much you can learn about its scent through the hearsay of this or any other review before getting a bottle of it to your nose.

Hamasyan, et al.: Atmosphères (ECM 2414/15)

| Tyran Grillo

Atmosphères

Atmosphères

Tigran Hamasyan piano
Arve Henriksen trumpet
Eivind Aarset guitar
Jan Bang live sampling, samples
Recorded June 2014, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. release date: September 9, 2016

As is common to ECM’s finest recordings of this century, Atmosphères represents the spirit of producer Manfred Eicher through its seemingly inevitable unfolding. Eicher is a listener above all, and his ability to coax that same level of regard from and between musicians in the studio, when it works this well, is marvelous. The label’s penchant for unprecedented collaborations, surprising yet organic by gentle force of suggestion, plays out here in the quartet of Tigran Hamasyan (piano), Arve Henriksen (trumpet), Eivind Aarset (guitar), and Jan Bang (live sampling, samples).

Those familiar with Hamasyan’s work won’t be surprised to find the Armenian pianist planting seeds of his homeland’s most celebrated composer, Komitas Vardapet (1869-1935), into this album’s otherwise spontaneous field. The beloved melodies of “Garun a” and “Tsirani tsar” especially highlight the synergistic core of Henriksen (whose tone often leans toward reed-like registers) and Hamasyan, although it was the latter’s collaborations with Bang at Norway’s Punkt Festival in 2013 that prompted Eicher toward this project’s realization. Concerning Bang’s sampling, whether banked or real-time, in combination with Aarset’s airbrushing it adds depth and vision to the overall soundscape at hand.

Komitas aside, ten freely improvised “Traces” make up the bulk of this two-disc album, and are where the possibilities of this quartet achieve fullest life. The ambience of “Traces I” opens the album on the softest of feet, swelling ever so gradually into audible life. Whether in the intonations of “Traces IV” or the misty layers of “Traces X,” each musician speaks to the other in whispers, true to the album’s titular spirit. Not all is mist and drift, however, as tracks like “Traces II,” “Traces VI,” and “Traces VII” speak of underlying tensions and earthly forces at work in powerful harmony. This restlessness is always at the mercy of some distant prayer, one cradled as a candle from night to dawn, while its flame dances frantically in the wind of unanswerable questions.

(This review originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of The New York City Jazz Record, of which a full PDF is available here.)

Sabîl review for RootsWorld

| Tyran Grillo

My latest review for RootsWorld online magazine is of the third studio album by oudist Ahmad Al Kathib and percussionist Youssef Hbeisc, known together as duo Sabîl. Fans of Anouar Brahem are sure to find much to admire. Click the cover to read my full review and listen to samples.

Zabad

Solveig Slettahjell review for RootsWorld

| Tyran Grillo

My latest review for RootsWorld online magazine is of Norwegian singer Solveig Slettahjell’s Poetisk Tale. Slettahjell has collaborated with many ECM regulars, including Tord Gustavsen, Nils Økland, and Jon Balke, and on this album is backed by guitarist Eivind Aarset, the Vertavo String Quartet, percussionist Helge Norbakken, and keyboardist-arranger Kjetil Bjerkestrand. A must-listen for fans of anyone involved. Click the cover to read my full review and listen to samples.

Poetisk Tale

Sinikka Langeland: The Magical Forest (ECM 2448)

| Tyran Grillo

the-magical-forest

Sinikka Langeland
The Magical Forest

Sinikka Langeland kantele, vocals
Arve Henriksen trumpet
Trygve Seim soprano and tenor saxophones
Anders Jormin double bass
Markku Ounaskari percussion
Trio Mediæval
Anna Maria Friman vocals
Berit Opheim vocals
Linn Andrea Fuglseth vocals
Recorded February 2015 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. release date: August 5, 2016

On The Magical Forest, Norwegian kantele virtuoso Sinikka Langeland reconvenes her “Starflowers” quintet (with saxophonist Trygve Seim, trumpeter Arve Henriksen, bassist Anders Jormin, and drummer-percussionist Markku Ounaskari), adding to that quilt the patchwork of voices known as Trio Mediæval. Any of these names will be familiar across the spectrum of ECM followers, but their shared love for Scandinavian folk music has never been so clear as in this latest project.

In contrast to previous albums, the kantele is a largely supportive presence, almost airy in its backgrounded-ness. This gives Langeland’s unaffected singing—and, more importantly, the imagery laced into it—room to roam. Of central significance in that regard is the sacredness of space. Not only in the immaterial sense, but also in the physical landscapes of nature at large and their shaping of reality as we’ve come to understand it over millennia of spiritual seeking.

The album’s opening trifecta sets its thematic charge as the rising sun ignites the day into breaking. “Puun Loitsu” (Prayer to the Tree Goddess) is based on a rune song text from the Finnskogen, or Forest Finns, whose migratory settlements in Norway and Sweden have become reliquaries for creation myths and other origin stories, glistening anew in the varnish of Langeland’s diction. The wiry strains of the kantele offer hints of song, which emerges first in monotone before being taken up in Trio Mediæval’s chanting response. “Sammas” crystallizes the running theme in its evocation of the “world pillar” (axis mundi), a column of infinite energy binding Heaven to Earth and circling around the North Star. The lyrics, with their Trinitarian framing, demonstrate one way in which Christian elements have found their way over the centuries into these mystical traditions. The light-bearing qualities of Henriksen’s trumpeting deepen these underlying messages, which “Jacob’s Dream” makes even more apparent. This retelling of the biblical Patriarch’s vision emphasizes the permanence of verticality over the fleetingness of horizontality. The “ladder,” then, is not climbable by the body but constitutes the body itself: a DNA helix spun from godly breath. Once the words are sung, the instrumentalists brilliantly unravel an improvisational second half. Seim’s tenor and Henriksen’s trumpet move in tandem, drawing rungs between them as they travel.

Trees continue to dominate the landscape in “Køyri” and “Karsikko.” The latter, which names a memorial trunk on which the names of the dead are carved, is based on a variant of the hymn “I Know of a Sleep in Jesus’s Name,” and Langeland’s communications with Henriksen make for some picturesque unfolding in both songs. “Pillar to Heaven” likewise strengthens an interconnectedness of things.

As so often happens on a Langeland album, animals figure heavily into the symbolism of The Magical Forest. “The Wolfman” recounts a man named Johan who, according to legend, lived as a wolf yet died as a man. The inseparability of soil and sky resurfaces, as Ounaskari’s cymbals seem to scale the clouds. “Kamui” takes a relatively documentarian turn in its depiction of Hokkaido, Japan’s indigenous Ainu, whose annual ritual killing of a bear cub is described in empathetic detail, while Trio Mediæval intones the titular “Kamui,” an Ainu word meaning “God” and referring to both the sacrifice and the deity honored by it. This leaves only the title track, an instrumental foregrounding the bird-like calls of Seim (now on soprano saxophone) and Henriksen while Jormin’s arco bassing slithers in the underbrush.

All of which makes me think that the album’s title is somewhat misleading. For indeed, what the listener encounters here is not a forest that is magical but a magic that is forested.

(See this article as it originally appeared in RootsWorld online magazine here.)