My first review for All About Jazz is now up, and should be of interest to ECM fans. The album in question is the Yelena Eckemoff Trio’s Glass Song, for which the Russian-born pianist brings bassist Arild Andersen and drummer Peter Erskine together for the first time in a sparkling session. Check out the review here, and be sure to watch the promo video below.
Arild Andersen
Hyperborean
Tore Brunborg soprano and tenor saxophones
Bendik Hofseth tenor saxophone
Kenneth Knudsen keyboards
Arild Andersen double-bass
Paolo Vinaccia drums, percussion
Cikada String Quartet
Odd Hannisdal violin
Henrik Hannisdal violin
Marek Konstantynowicz viola
Morten Hannisdal cello
Recorded December 1996 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
“What was I to do when I saw him soar through the air in broad daylight and walk on water and go through fire slowly in foot?”
–Cleodemus
If you think the title of Hyperborean sounds enchanting, wait until you hear the music. Arild Andersen’s evocation of the Greek mythological race plies the shimmering backdrop from which its thread comes unraveling and weaves an entirely new one in its place. Like the chariot of Apollo, who rides to the north three months out of the year to join the Hyperboreans, it marks the sky with seasonal precision. Such is the backstory of this 1995 Norwegian Molde Festival commission, which sought a large-scale suite from the bassist. Andersen took the opportunity to expand his sound, writing for string quartet for the first time. After the success of the concert, Andersen returned to the material and appended “Patch Of Light,” which introduces the album. Andersen: “In general, the role of the strings in the music was strengthened and improved by Manfred Eicher’s input. He had a lot to add in terms of phrasing, dynamics and emphasis, and in the relationship of the string writing to the jazz improvising in the mix.” Eicher’s fingerprints are apparent every step of the way and represent a particularly successful marriage of engineering, behind-the-scenes thought, and performance. He also brought in the Cikada String Quartet for the first of many label collaborations. Saxophonists Tore Brunborg (longtime member of Andersen’s Masqualero outfit) and Bendik Hofseth (who appeared on his earlier Sagn) make for an organic counterpoint of styles. Italian-born but Oslo-based drummer Paolo Vinaccia, who replaced Nana Vasconcelos in Andersen’s “folk” group in 1993, has also made notable appearances on Terje Rypdal’s Q.E.D. and Skywards. Danish pianist Kenneth Knudsen is a longtime friend of Andersen and draws on his background both with Miles Davis and Palle Mikkelborg.
“Patch Of Light” is indeed a thread, a hand-span of strings that exposes its core as would a Gavin Bryars chamber work. Welcoming the night as if it were its own body, it sheds starlight in place of skin. So it is with the title track, which draws finer alloys from these beginnings and holds them like tuning forks to Andersen’s bass, which though contemplative brings meteoric streaks of implicit fervor. Meanwhile, Vinaccia’s delicate patter is the tick of a train whose tracks are laid by the art of soliloquy. And just when you think this landscape might not be populated, in strides “Duke Vinaccia” with saxophonic servants in tow. The heights are stratospheric, yet we feel them in the gut, hanging from the jungle gyms of our rib cages like children. Pianistic echoes from Knudsen, microtonal and gentle, blow off the foam of life’s new quaff before sipping the ale beneath. “Infinite Distance” is a more upbeat affair, delightfully syncopated and brimming with soul from tenor, a robust link in a minimal chain of solos. “Vanishing Waltz” evokes a fadeout into the distance, as if it were the train of the Duke’s procession, a band of merry subjects floating into the sunset. The plush beginnings of “The Island” cradle a heavy tenderness from Andersen, whose instrument has by now become a cognizant body. Trembling and untouched, it bids us to listen to its “Invisible Sideman,” to see things through a translucent veil in the window, billowing to the rhythm of dreams. “Rambler” is Hofseth’s purview. Quivering with lovely agitation and tunefulness (one may feel tempted to compare him to Garbarek, but we find here a more restless brilliance), it dances among Vinaccia’s pincushioned plains. These curves continue their journey in “Dragon Dance” and on through to “Stillness,” where we get the album’s most soulful saxophonism. Last is the heartfelt “Too Late For A Picture,” a forlorn and credit sequence, an epilogue for the ends of the earth.
The strings are our ever-present reminder of peace, rungs on a ladder of light that must be scaled and descended simultaneously to reach any sort of destination. The prevalence of space and “unbeing” names Hyperborean as an intangible reality where perhaps all music begins and ends. Like a jellyfish, it needs ocean to express its proper shape. And what better place to swim than in our hearts?
(Incidentally, since making this record, Andersen formed a trio with Brunborg and Vinaccia improvising on this album’s material. You can see my review of the latest incarnation of that trio, with Tommy Smith in place of Brunborg, here.)
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Arild Andersen bass
Ralph Towner guitars
Nana Vasconcelos percussion
Audun Kleive snare drum
Recorded Spring 1988, July 1991, and February 1992 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Arild Andersen
Manfred Eicher strikes gold with yet another inspired melding of musical minds. The microphones at ECM’s Rainbow Studio this time are privileged to witness an emotionally powerful session from bassist Arild Andersen, guitarist Ralph Towner, and percussionist Nana Vasconcelos. The session begins with something of a title track in “If You Look.” From this swell of drones and metallic whispers comes “Svev,” a scintillating piece that finds Andersen in a buoyant mood. “For All We Know” is a stunningly gorgeous duet between him and Towner—a match made in heaven. Andersen’s tender spaces are the perfect sky for Towner to spread his careful, classical wings. “Backé” continues this intimate reflection, only now with Vasconcelos’s auguries providing a more focused berth for Towner’s spindly ruminations. Vasconcelos adds a vocal swoon for effect. These two tracks are the heart of the album and could continue for its full length if they wished. “The Voice” begins with Andersen’s sustained calls, drawn out like cloud wisps on the horizon and providing a long-forgotten plain for the rhythm and tackle of Vasconcelos’s well-traveled feet. Andersen dips into some electronic augmentations, sounding like an infant foghorn with melodic growing pains. “The Woman” is a beautiful little duet for percussion and bass that works its tender embrace one muscle of sentiment at a time. Andersen’s deft monologue of serpents and harmonics carries the conversation over into “The Place” at a more urgent pace, working sidelong into an inspiring spiral. “The Drink” is another transportive duet, swaying like a caravan transport in the unforgiving sun. Next is “Main Man,” which jumps back into the rhythmic deep end with some funkier vibes, while “A Song I Used To Play” is a slow and tender build to Towner’s 12-string ebullience. “Far Enough” is another haunting drone of spectral footsteps that brings us into “Jonah,” a bass solo that smiles with all the wonder of new life.
This album is something of a sleeper ECM hit and worth seeking out for fans of any and all of these musicians. Don’t pass it up.
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Masqualero
Re-Enter
Arild Andersen bass
Jon Christensen drums, percussion
Tore Brunborg tenor and soprano saxophones
Nils Petter Molvær trumpet
Recorded December 1990 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Three years after leading Aero, Arild Andersen’s Masqualero outfit—by now a quartet with Jon Christensen on drums, Tore Brunborg on saxophones, and Nils Petter Molvær on trumpet—returned to ECM’s Rainbow Studio with a solid follow-up. On this outing the band seems most comfortable in its shoes, and uses that confidence to travel more abstract avenues of expression. The strident opening statement in the title cut is a case in point, for its conventions quickly slide down a banister of drums into a groovy bass line, mere preamble to some wild conversation between Molvær and Brunborg, who rock that fulcrum with unrelenting conviction. (Note also their smoldering handoff in “Gaia.”) The latter’s gorgeous soprano brings out more of the same in “Lill’ Lisa” over some touch-and-go drumming from Christensen and Andersen’s echoing draws. Even subtler acts of sonic pension like “Heiemo, Gardsjenta” and “Find Another Animal” pull at frayed seams in delightful ways. “Little Song” is, in scope, anything but, expanding as it does far into the horizon of its intimacies. And if John Zorn’s Masada is your bag, then you’re sure to be delighted by “There Is No Jungle In Baltimore.” Masqualero crosses the finish line with time to spare in “Stykkevis Og Delt,” ending with a concoction that is equal parts elegy and tribute, as monochromatic and cloudy as cover photograph.
I feel fortunate to have encountered most of Arild Andersen’s work in chronological order. Doing so has allowed me to witness with fair proximity the evolution of his craft. The sound of his amplified instrument here is thick and honest, at times unassuming yet more than willing to muscle its way to the top when needed. Due to its meandering nature, Re-Enter is as much about feeling as it is about the means of expressing it. It wants to emote rather than simply describe its stories, and this is what separates Andersen from the pack. A getaway for the heart, this one.
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Arild Andersen
Sagn
Arild Andersen bass
Kirsten Bråten Berg vocals
Bendik Hofseth tenor and soprano saxophones
Frode Alnæs guitar
Bugge Wesseltoft keyboards
Nana Vasconcelos percussion, vocals
Recorded August 1990 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Arild Andersen
Sagn was the result of a commission for the 1990 Vossajazz festival that sealed the collaborative spirits of singer Kirsten Bråten Berg and bassist Arild Andersen. Blending folk songs from their native Norway, along with jazz and rock elements, the two shared the stage with percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, saxophonist Bendik Hofseth, pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, and guitarist Frode Alnæs. While we don’t have (so far as I’m aware) a live recording of what was surely an historic occasion, we do have this ECM studio rendition, buffed and polished to a mirror’s shine.
The album’s multilayered concept is perhaps best demonstrated in the title track, which opens with an ambient drone (something akin to the lull of train tracks) before awakening to the rhythm of Vasconcelos’s touches and Berg’s unmistakably equally earthy elements. Her voice binds this album together, even as it scatters its pages to the wind. Hofseth, bearing a proud stamp of influence from Jan Garbarek while being no mere epigon, traces lines in the sand with his tenor. These Andersen is happy to overstep in that gentle way he has.
From here we travel the length of an entire seasonal cycle, each point on the compass like a year divided. “Gardsjenta” continues this wintry mix, whitewashing us into the young dawn of “Eisemo,” in which Andersen’s lyrical swings first come into prominence amid Vasconcelos’s scrapings. The latter offers a deeper, worldly feel throughout “Toll,” for which Andersen offers a head nod to Eberhard Weber. ECM artist influences continue in “Draum,” in which Alnæs lends a Terje Rypdal brand of melancholy to the album’s first intimations of spring before opening into some powerful screaming from Hofseth (a cathartic moment). Wesseltoft cradles the past in the vocal territories of “Laurdagskveld,” while “Tjovane” (heard more recently on Trio Mediaeval’s Folk Songs) sends us forward into the band’s ecstatic synergies. “Sorgmild” is by far the album’s most breathtaking. Hofseth’s tenor sings like the wind and primes us for a tender solo from Andersen. After the diffusion of “Svarm” and “Gamlestev,” the syncopations of “Reven” bring us into a lively summer. It is also a mysterious summer, whose dreams are played out in a smattering of rounded tracks until the winds of “Belare” whip up a storm of leaves, bringing us full circle into the icy depths and ending this masterful album on a trailing brushstroke.
Sagn is a massive effort, one of ECM’s fullest on a single disc, and stands as Andersen’s most personal statement to date.
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Masqualero
Aero
Arild Andersen bass
Jon Christensen drums
Tore Brunborg tenor and soprano saxophones
Nils Petter Molvær trumpet
Frode Alnæs guitar
Recorded November 1987 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Arild Andersen
Arild Andersen found one of his clearest avenues of expression with Masqualero, a group that brought him notably together with trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær, saxophonist Tore Brunborg, and drummer Jon Christensen. On Aero, the group’s second album for ECM, he is joined also by Frode Alnæs, whose looming drones ebb and flow throughout the title opener, which seems to materialize out of nothing into a looming figure of delicate comportment and elegant mind. It is this figure whose footsteps Andersen articulates. In “Science” this figure shows us it can dance, fashioning a partner out of snatches of rain and cloud, autumn and snowdrift. The confidence of that stride is expressed in the superb dynamic contrasts of the band, only to be unraveled through Brunborg’s platonic soprano into a sonorous vulnerability. Despite his penchant for lush enigmas, Alnæs isn’t above flicking a brief allusion here to “Flight of the Bumblebee” from the end of his sonic cigarette. Andersen opens “Venise” alone before smoothing out its wrinkles through Christensen’s delicate shaker and gurgling snare. Molvær is beguiling here, all the more so for being backed by the ghostly draws of Alnæs’s electric. “Printer” busts out a decidedly fatter sound, marked in the shift to alto sax. Guitar lines scratch the earth with their steel-stringed nails, Andersen licking the background like a flame all the while. “Bålet” opens in a quiet electronic swamp that sounds more like something off of Jon Hassell’s Power Spot, which is to say it comes across as highly organic in spite of the technological enhancements. Alnæs floats some lanterns from the book of Rypdal on the icy stream that is “Return,” which is kept from freezing over by Andersen’s buoyancy, and resolves into an eddy of brass. We come at last to “Bee Gee.” Molvær’s muted wings balance Andersen’s deep twangs, threaded by a fragile shaker. The loveliness intensifies with Brunborg’s soprano and in the lilting crawl of the guitar, which carries us out in heavenly repose.
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Masqualero
Bande À Part
Arild Andersen basses
Nils Petter Molvær trumpet
Tore Brunborg saxophones
Jon Balke piano, synthesizer
Jon Christensen drums, percussion
Recorded August and December 1985 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Masqualero
Masqualero was the Arild Andersen Quintet by another name, a name that both tipped its hat to Wayne Shorter while casting its gaze toward a future that was decidedly Andersen’s. Note the formidable cast of up-and-comers: Nils Petter Molvær on trumpet, Tore Brunborg on saxophones, and Jon Balke on keys. Add to that Jon Christensen on drums, and one can hardly go wrong. Andersen himself flexes his compositional muscles on three cuts, filling each with his depth of tone. Yet his presence is, as ever, non-invasive, and allows a porous democracy to seep through. The skipping snare and soaring trumpet of “3 For 5” throw a lacy net over Balke’s gorgeous strains, leaving us buffed for the varnish of “Natt.” In this we find one spiral after another, sliding down the throat of the freely improvised “Sort Of” before cresting on the wave of “Vanilje.” Andersen digs deep for this one, excavating cloudy jewels of wisdom. Balke’s “Bali” is especially moving and finds unity in Brunborg’s horn. A rolling drum solo closes this frenetic weave. Christensen throws his compositional hat into the ring with “Tutte,” a stretch of arco strains and slow tumbles. Molvær does likewise with “No Soap (A Jitterbug Jamboree),” another stunner that glows at the edges. “Nyl,” Balke’s other offering, draws a protracted groove, indicated by bass and then set free into an expanse of vocal energy.
The strength of Bande À Part lies in the writing, ever rooted in the soil of reflection. Andersen’s is a sound-space where we may float or lie prone as we see fit, laughing and crying in the same breath. An essential release for Andersen enthusiasts that speaks to the heart of his craft.
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Arild Andersen
Molde Concert
Bill Frisell guitar
John Taylor piano
Arild Andersen double-bass
Alphonse Mouzon drums
Recorded live August 1981 at the Molde Jazz Festival, Norway
Engineer: Tore Skille
Arild Andersen created some of the most melodic jazz in the latter half of the twentieth century, and the music on this CD reissue of 1981’s (A) Molde Concert adds 20 glorious minutes of unreleased material to this historic date at the prestigious Norwegian festival. Here, the bassist is joined by names which, though now celebrated, were still fledgling at the time: guitarist Bill Frisell (still seeking out his characteristic warble among the increasingly populated trees of the 1980s), pianist John Taylor, and ex-Weather Reporter Alphonse Mouzon on drums. These days, such a line-up would create another—long out the door of wherever they might be playing. Yet if the audience’s reactions are any indication, back then it must have been a welcome surprise.
After an elastic opening, “Cherry Tree” slingshots into a set consisting entirely of Andersen originals, save for the romping “Dual Mr. Tillman Anthony” (Miles Davis) that concludes the show. From the beginning, the breadth of arrangement is apparent, Frisell laying out embracing themes as Andersen and Mouzon work double time. A tumbling Taylor spins his own brand of liquid magic into “Targeta,” bringing its blissful chording into a slow-motion groove. If every solo tells a story, then most prosaic on Molde is Frisell’s here. “Six For Alphonse” is a standout. Featuring rich interplay between guitar and piano, it also explodes with a stellar solo from Mouzon. “Nutune” is far more viscous, a creeping vessel over the helm of which hunches Andersen’s loamy bass. His subsequent duet with Frisell in “Lifelines” dances Weber-like and carries us gently into the epic “The Sword Under His Wings,” which after a few stirrings of blown leaves, spirals into a more shapely cyclone. Andersen delights with a rare arco solo before springing into a forward groove backed by Mouzon and Taylor as Frisell hurls his bends skyward. After the whimsical provincialism of “Commander Schmuck’s Earflap Hat,” the rough-hewn ore of Frisell’s strings hardens into “Koral.” The band’s inspiring precision works to a heartwarming finish that is the essence of Andersen’s soulful wit. “Cameron” bristles with Frisell’s sonic quills, each brushed back carefully with the grain, while “A Song I Used To Play” serves up a steaming bowl of nostalgia.
Andersen’s recognition of these young talents is proof of both his incisive mind and welcoming spirit. The depth of his choices is enhanced by the pristine recording, which holds up well after all these years. For those Andersen fans wanting the perfect balance of ice and fire, look no further.
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Arild Andersen
Lifelines
Arild Andersen double bass
Kenny Wheeler fluegelhorn, cornet
Steve Dobrogosz piano
Paul Motian drums
Recorded July 1980 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
After an explosive introduction, Arild Andersen’s Lifelines kicks us like a soccer ball down the field of “Cameron,” where we are intercepted by Steve Dobrogosz’s swirling keys. Into this hammered storm, Andersen drops his bass, keeping us centered in this staggering opener. And staggering this album most certainly is, resting on a fine edge of airtight cohesion and loosened seams. We find more of the same in the loveliness of “Dear Kenny” and in “A Song I Used To Play,” both teetering on a line drawn to Andersen’s careful scale. Even the ballads seem to flirt with a great precipice. Falling from the haloed clouds of “Prelude” and into the depths of the two-part title piece, we find ourselves smack dab in Enrico Rava territory. The album’s highlight comes in the form of “Landloper,” a 50-second bass solo that sparks the inner fire of “Predawn.” In keeping with his penchant for optimistic endings, Andersen gives us “Anew.” Paul Motian is delightfully frenetic here and matched by Dobrogosz’s erratic song, veiled only by the sustain pedal’s illusory veneer.
What moves me most about Andersen’s approach to the bass is his ability to hold onto a quiet heart even at his most ecstatic moments. Like ECM’s other great veteran, Charlie Haden, he always keeps himself firmly rooted in the melody. Wheeler and Motian prove loyal allies, regaling us like wizened elders with tales of old. The real star of this date, however, is Dobrogosz. In his only ECM appearance, the American-born pianist (now a longtime resident of Stockholm) seems as if he could expound for hours upon every motif and never repeat himself. He is the kindling that keeps this music burning, slow-roasting it to irresistible succulence.
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Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 