ECM Records

Alexander Lonquich: Plainte calme (ECM New Series 1821)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Plainte calme

Alexander Lonquich piano
Recorded January 2002, Radio Studio DRS, Zurich
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

A year and a half after debuting with the label on Odradek, German pianist Alexander Lonquich stepped into the studio to record Plainte Calme, his first solo recital for ECM. Lonquich is a player of dialogues: between himself and the music, between himself and himself, between the music and itself. Balancing a remarkably delicate touch with a strong attack when needed, his playing throughout this all-French program bodes well in the session’s rounded engineering.

The Impromptusof Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) provide listeners with the most earthbound motifs on which to train their ears. Written between 1882 and 1909, these were never conceived of as a set, a fact underscored by their being scattered throughout the program. Although they incorporate influences from Chopin and from mentor Saint-Saëns, these pieces bear echoes in a chamber very much their own. Beyond the obligatory descriptor of “impressionistic” I am wont to attach to such music, there is an undeniably filmic energy therein. One can almost hear horse carriages and lovers’ talk, unaccompanied but for the whisper of their own song. Affection pours through every section with the temerity of a field mouse, while at the same time rolling itself down hills of youth into some of the composer’s most unadulterated expressions of joie de vivre on record—Lonquich’s performances thereof punctilious and perfect.

The 1929 Huit Préludes pour piano of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was a discovery for me. This treasure was his first published work, written during his student days at the Paris Conservatoire. Already the synaesthetic composer was experimenting with color, which he splashes almost Pollock-like into a monochromatic world. One encounters a more weathered feel in comparison to the surrounding works, each a fresco in a monument which, though scarred by the passage of time, in its own way has become more beautiful, more like itself. Even at this early stage Messiaen folds every pleat with a reverence and sensitivity beyond his years. Yet there is far more than shadows and contemplation going on in this tapestry. There is also animation, the twisting and turning of life itself in all of its dramatic changes, though always ending as if to undermine that drama as but an illusory skin to stillness.

In light of these denouements, the formidable Gaspard de la Nuit of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) feels like a bucket of dreams poured into the mind’s eye. This early work was written in 1908 after poems by Aloysius Bertrand and reflects the persistence of a composer who, as a student of Fauré at the Conservatoire in 1896, was famously expelled due to his inability to write an “adequate fugue.” Unfazed, he continued to sit in on Fauré’s class and honed what would become his hallmarks, which one notices to hardly greater effect than here. “Ondine” takes the most transcendent approach to the medium, seeming to stitch with an angel’s hair atmospheres of such rippling grace that one can only feel them below the skin, trembles of anticipation that are their own rewards. We find ourselves knee-deep in an inimitable sort of magic, growing into a quicksand of caresses in “Le Gibet,” while in “Scarbo” we are thrown into a new journey that leads us up the spiral staircase of the final Fauré Impromptu, at the top of which waits the destiny living inside all of this music: namely, the need to close eyes, spread wings, and jump.

Lonquich treats every note like its own voice in the grander unity of the choir, as it were, and brings an almost philosophical edge to his painterly renditions. He can sound like two musicians, one the light of the sun and the other its warmth. His sound bounces off the lockets of maidens in distant tower windows, their dreams of music suspended from the forests through which many a knight has traveled. Their voices come to us only now, at last requited in the body of an instrument that has never quite sung like this before.

One of the finest solo piano records on the New Series thus far.

Ingrid Karlen: Variations (ECM New Series 1606)

| Tyran Grillo

Ingrid Karlen
Variations

Ingrid Karlen piano
Recorded January 1996, Schloßbergsaal, Freiburg
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Swiss pianist Ingrid Karlen makes her ECM debut with Variations, of which the program is as provocative as the title is vague. Beyond variations in the traditional sense, these are, rather, mise-en-abymes of abstractions. Or so they might at first aural glance seem, for within these sometimes troubling clusters of false starts breathes a unity at once organic and contrived. Anton Webern’s Variations for Piano, op. 27 (1935/36) is the primary example, for the only variations they seem to engender stem from that which cannot be notated. These pieces behave as might a solo violin sonata, jumping fluidly and bow-like through their ephemeral 12-tone links. They are the anti-motif, a stretch of childhood unable to be sifted.

If these constitute the program’s foundation, then Valentin Silvestrov’s Elegy (1967) is its hollow keystone. Dedicated to ECM regular Alexei Lubimov, this sonic egg is just that: indestructible when pushed from both ends, yet vulnerable to the slightest variation of pressure at its middle. Not unlike the program as a whole, its open spaces are there for us to project our desires and expectations in a space where they will not be judged.

Petrograd-born composer Galina Ustvolskaya is channeled to us via two pieces which, though they make up more than half of the album’s playing time, are selfless constructions. In both the Sonata No. 3 (1952) and the Sonata No. 5 (1986), the sheen of declaration quickly fades in interrupted washes of high/low contrasts hugging a forlorn middle register. Karlen stretches both like freshly dyed cloth in a stream, occasionally beating them against a rock for emphasis. Only at such moments do we realize the heights to which we have ascended. The gentility leading up to these thrashings is all the more swooning for its being whittled at by a blade of intense virtuosity. Ustvolskaya’s music inhabits a fascinating middle ground, neither melodic nor indecipherable, lying somewhere between the permanence of the scar and the ephemerality of the suture.

Where else to end but at the beginning? Pierre Boulez’s Douze notations pour piano (1945) is the composer’s Opus One and reason enough to experience this recital. The sheer depth of dramaturgical whimsy in these little sketches makes for a thoroughly engaging experience, which I can only imagine blossoms a hundredfold at the keyboard.

This daring recital is not the first I would recommend among the growing number available on ECM. This is not a critique, but simply a word of caution to the faint of heart. Still, no matter how convoluted the music becomes, it is never cloudy or obscure. The brilliance of Karlen’s program is to be found in her shaping of negative space, in precisely what is not being played. It is into this extra-musical aspect where I believe she wants to draw our ears. And if we are willing to join her, we might very well find sunlight where only shadows seem to roam.

<< Charles Ives: Sonatas for Violin and Piano (ECM 1605 NS)
>> Wheeler/Konitz/Holland/Frisell: Angel Song (ECM 1607)

Thomas Demenga plays J. S. Bach/B. A. Zimmermann (ECM New Series 1571)

| Tyran Grillo

Thomas Demenga
J. S. Bach/B. A. Zimmerman

Thomas Demenga cello
Thomas Zehetmair violin
Christoph Schiller viola
Recorded February/July 1995
Engineer: Terje van Geest
Produced by Manfred Eicher

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven.

Cellist Thomas Demenga continues his Bach project by juxtaposing the Baroque master’s d-minor Suite No. 2 with the work of Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), one of the most important non-Darmstadters after World War II. As ever, Demenga makes a convincing argument for the pairing (interestingly enough, most of the criticism of Demenga’s project sees the Bach as filler). In this case, Zimmermann is something of an effortless choice, for his fondness of quotation and respect for tradition were at the heart of his artistry. His approach to time in this regard was particularly significant, drawing on intersections of influence through a wide range of trends and idioms.

Thus do we find ourselves in the comforting waters of Bach’s generative whispers from the moment we dive in. For this performance Demenga adopts the approach of a viola da gamba player (to greatest effect in his raspily inflected Courante). This sound draws out the music’s inherent gaseousness, in which one feels something dark and cosmic taking shape. Demenga’s notecraft ensures that every molecule feels connected through a legato of silence. He digs as deep as he can for those distinct Bach lows, plows double stops as if they were fertile fields, and maintains subtle independence of line in the Sarabande. He bows the Menuets as if with shadows, then elicits one of the finer renderings of the Gigue I’ve yet heard, striking a fine balance between jubilation and regret.

The boldness of this architecture may seem an ill fit to Zimmermann’s sonatas, which despite their meticulous scoring also call for an improvisatory approach. This puts the musician in a potentially compromising space, though if anyone is up to the challenge, it’s Demenga. Many of Zimmermann’s works were considered unplayable when first written, the Cello Sonata of 1960 not least of all. Drawing from his usual pool of spatial and temporal concerns, the piece moves beyond the Romantic notion of cello as vox humana and into the realm of speech, action, and embodiment. In his liners, Demenga notes a particularly difficult passage in the first movement, which encompasses three distinct time-layers: “while the upper voice, played on the bridge, produces a continuous ritardando, the middle one is the most striking, because of its very large range and numbers of notes played pizzicato, and then the lowest, played on the nut of the bow, sounds like a scarcely perceptible accelerando.” Despite its brevity, unpacking the finer implications thereof took Demenga weeks to perfect.

That said, like all walls it can be, and is, overcome in such a way as to render those difficulties invisible and meaningless. It is a testament to his playing that the potentially distracting technicalities of this music become vital mechanisms to their own forgetting. In addition, the more the music progresses, the more one realizes that its virtuosity stems not only from the obvious difficulties, but more importantly from the way the performer must treat every cell as its own motivic entity while maintaining a sense of continuity (as in the “Fase” movement). Between the boldly intoned opening and the ethereal resolutions of “Versetto” we feel the cellist walking the edge of our Umwelt, stitching a morpheme for every step like a bead into patchwork.

Before this we are treated to two nearly intriguing sonatas. The Violin Sonata of 1951 was written after the composer’s concerto for the same. Demenga’s conceit is strengthened by a B-A-C-H cipher and likeminded spirit (notably in the Toccata). From the Paganini-esque heartbeat to the dramatic pizzicato slap that closes it, this is a tapestry of musical lines that is sure to delight. Christoph Schiller makes delicate work of the 1955 Viola Sonata thereafter and undoes a few of the frays left dangling. Subtitled “To the song of an angel,” the one-movement sonata was written in memory of the composer’s daughter Barbara, who died soon after her birth. This self-characterized “chorale prelude” is based on Gelobet seist Du Jesu Christ and tracks a pseudo-scientific journey of private inquiries. At times the instrument duets with its own implications, while at others it shatters itself into a hundred pieces.

This program is about nothing if not intimacy. Not only by virtue of the solo repertoire—Zimmermann himself believes the solo to be the only way by which one may access an instrument’s “almost inexhaustible power”—but also because of the way in which that repertoire speaks through the hands of such capable musicians. This is no-frills playing of music that, while at times distorted, rings forever crystalline in our memory of it.

<< Eleni Karaindrou: Ulysses’ Gaze (ECM 1570 NS)
>> Dave Holland Quartet: Dream Of The Elders (ECM 1572)

AM 4: …and she answered: (ECM 1394)

| Tyran Grillo

 

AM 4
…and she answered:

Wolfgang Puschnig alto saxophone, alto flute, hojak, shakuhachi
Linda Sharrock vocals
Uli Scherer piano, prepared piano, keyboards
Recorded April 1989 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Four years before stepping into the studio to record the Korean crossover project Then Comes The White Tiger alongside the influential SamulNori, saxophonist and flutist Wolgang Puschnig and vocalist Linda Sharrock stepped into ECM’s Rainbow Studio with pianist Uli Scherer as AM 4 for an equally unusual project. Blending poetry and Nordic folk roots with jazz and subtle instrumentation, …and she answered: is as open-ended as the colon of its title. Sharrock captivates wherever she is featured in this project, though perhaps nowhere more so than in the opening “Streets And Rivers” (am I the only one who is reminded of Ani DiFranco’s “Buildings and Bridges”?), which parallels the pathos of life and the literatures through which we seek to divide it. Its synthesizer undercurrent and Jon Hassell-like blips unfurl a pathway for Pushcnig’s breathy alto, both matched by Sharrock’s languorous diction. The following track is as haunting as its title. “And She Answered: ‘When You Return To Me, I will Open Quick The Cage Door, I Will Let The Red Bird Flee’” paints a wide landscape populated with Puschnig’s animal cries. Through these horns a muted piano string drops its heavy footfalls and spins from its wool a yarn of darkness. All of this time in the field, as it were, leaves us open to a wrenching interpretation of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” Here Sharrock is like a catalyst for instrumental change, leaving Puschnig and Scherer to navigate the channels of her words with a cartographer’s exactitude (the two likewise shine in the duo cut “Bhagavad” and in “Far Horizon”). This is one of two standards to creep into the mix, the other being a pointillist rendition of “Over The Rainbow,” which enchants with wisps of the familiar in an otherwise distant wash of flute and echo. Puschnig turns inward with “The Sadness Of Yuki.” The lipped strains of the shakuhachi thread the piano like time itself. We catch only flashes of imagery: a girl’s face, a bleak and oppressive house, an existence destined for ghostly things, as might be spoken through the aphasia of “Oh!” The latter brings the most rhythmic elements to bear on this eclectic set, and speaks to us through the shawm of its gamelan-encrusted interior. All of which leaves us alone with the intoned question in “One T’une,” of which gongs and air are a way of life.

ECM has thankfully made this overlooked release available through digital download, and it bears seeking out for those wanting to step off the label’s beaten path.

<< First House: Cantilena (ECM 1393)
>> Bach: Goldberg Variations – Jarrett (ECM 1395 NS)

Misha Alperin/Arkady Shilkloper: Wave Of Sorrow (ECM 1396)

| Tyran Grillo

Misha Alperin
Arkady Shilkloper
Wave Of Sorrow

Misha Alperin piano, melodica, voice
Arkady Shilkloper French horn, jagdhorn, fluegelhorn, voice
Recorded July 1989 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With Wave Of Sorrow, Misha (then Mikhail) Alperin began what has proven to be a fruitful relationship with ECM. Though the Ukraine-born pianist has but a modest discography on the label, each recording brims with the folklore of his sensitivity. Since this date he has spun a telepathic relationship with trumpeter Arkady Shilkloper, and the results on this duo album are as unique as their players. Alperin offers a set of ten original compositions, each, in spite of the intimate arrangement, a grand and sweeping thing. Not unlike label mate Richie Beirach, his architecture is ambitious in its scope and clarity yet rarely deviates from the warm embrace that births it. One hears this in the opening “Song,” to which Shilkloper adds the bay of a hunting horn. Like many of the pieces that follow, it smacks of tradition even as it shines with modern interpretation. Yet this is also a world of shadows, for in the title piece (one of the most affecting melodica solos you will ever hear) we can intuit a web of tortured histories and only hints of the happiness that may unravel it. Shilkloper arrives toward the end bathed in ECM’s plush reverb, seeming to hang from the tail of Alperin’s breathy comet like a child of the night. Still, this date is not without its fun. “Unisons,” for example, casts the two musicians in a decidedly vocal mold as they rap and tap their way through a cathartic romp. “Poem” similarly allows Shilkloper to come out of his lyrical shell into a full-blown dance. Alperin also offers up a few piano solos, of which “Prelude in Bb minor” is the most evocative—a shaft of moonlight through which the dust of a wanderer’s journey casts its sparkle. Other highlights include the simple yet ingenious motivic arcs of “Short Story” and Shilkloper’s distant mutes in “Miniature.”

The contradiction of the album’s title is that so much of the music springs to its feet, all the while harboring a matrix of oppression and exile. We hear this especially in the solo “Epilogue.” The atmosphere is dim yet also sparkling, as if it were a harsh present slumbering behind the illusory veil of a memory, fond and forever lost.

<< Bach: Goldberg Variations – Jarrett (ECM 1395 NS)
>> Shankar: nobody told me (ECM 1397)

First House: Cantilena (ECM 1393)

| Tyran Grillo

First House
Cantilena

Ken Stubbs alto saxophone
Django Bates piano, tenor horn
Mick Hutton bass
Martin France drums
Recorded March 1989 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After a memorable ECM debut with Eréndira, the talented quartet of saxophonist Ken Stubbs, pianist Django Bates, bassist Mike Hutton, and drummer Martin France—a.k.a. First House—followed up with an even more effective chunk of progressive jazz in Cantilena. From the first soulful licks of the title opener, we know we are in for something special and from the heart. The composer’s alto draws us into the night with recumbent charm, thereby opening an ambitious set that delivers everything it promises and more. Like a model posing for a painting, its contours come into representational being only through an artist’s touch. This leads us into the connective tissue of the piano, which seems to blossom, lured by the alto’s return to a place where dreams can be made real. From this we are introduced to the writing of Bates, of whose “Underfelt” the theme is anything but as it sneaks its way through a burrow of circular motives. Stubbs shells out some incredible improvisation here, working his way far beyond the corners of the page. The Bates train continues on through the whimsies of “Dimple,” for which he clashes horns with alto against exemplary and jaunty support from Hutton and France. More of the same energy awaits us the sprightly abstractions of “Low-Down (Toytown),” to which the rubato slice of blues that is “Sweet Williams” (Bates) is indeed a sweet preamble, while the urban sprawl of “Jay-Tee” features the date’s most spirited soloing from our two lead melodicians. The Bates sector rounds out with the vastly energizing “Hollyhocks,” which features rolling harmonies in the pianism and a spate of resplendent energy that grabs us hook, line, and sinker into the contemplative yet all-too-brief tenderness of Eddie Parker’s “Madeleine After Prayer” (the only non-group tune on the record), which is spun through “Shining Brightly” into a horizon backlit by hope. Once again the alto hollows out our bones and fills them with the marrow of sentiment. Some tracings from Bates initiate “Pablo,” thus ending the album where it began: in a dream where music is the only language that remains.


Original cover

Of the many strengths First House possesses, it is the compositional prowess within that shines above the rest. The group’s robust musical ideas have immense staying power, and in combination with such a smooth blend of the forward-thinking and the classic, one would be as foolish as Oliver to ask for more in a jazz outfit.

<< Keith Jarrett Trio: Changeless (ECM 1392)
>> AM 4: …and she answered: (ECM 1394)

Abercrombie/Johnson/Erskine: s/t (ECM 1390)

| Tyran Grillo

 

John Abercrombie
Marc Johnson
Peter Erskine
s/t

John Abercrombie guitar, guitar synthesizer
Marc Johnson bass
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded April 21, 1988 live at the Nightstage, Boston
Engineer: Tony Romano
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After the resounding success of their two studio albums, Current Events and Getting There (with Michael Brecker), guitarist John Abercrombie teamed up with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Peter Erskine for this wondrous live 1988 recording from the Nightstage in Boston. It’s crystal clear from the groove laid down by Johnson and Erskine in the opener, “Furs On Ice” (think Getting There), that each of these men travels the edges of a constantly shifting yet with-it triangle. Abercrombie spins some Frisell-like chording before emerging with a soaring synclavier line in this, one of two Johnson-penned tunes, the other being a trimmed-down version of his “Samurai Hee-Haw” (see Bass Desires). Replacing Bill Frisell and John Scofield is no small order, yet Abercrombie fills these shoes with plenty of funk to spare. That unmistakable bass line, in fact, courts some of the most electrifying improv heard in a while from Abercrombie, who brings a Hammond organist’s sensibility to the proceedings via his fiery macramé. Erskine is also fantastic here. Abercrombie turns up the heat even more on his own two contributions. “Light Beam” is a particularly well-suited vehicle for synth guitar, and indeed seems focused like a laser splashed through the prism of his rhythm section. This is followed by a drum solo from Erskine, who shows us a nifty thing or two from his skill set, particularly in his dialoguing between bass drum and toms, before Abercrombie’s classic “Four On One” (from his seminal 1984 joint, Night) plies its musings and rounded edges with the record’s crunchiest playing. The three continue to converse beautifully in their group improv piece, “Innerplay.” Notable for Johnson’s delightful string games, it is a lasting testament to the powers of spontaneity.

The rest of the set is filled to bursting with a hefty portion of standards. Between Erskine’s delicate rat-a-tat timekeeping in “Stella By Starlight” and the delicacies of “Alice In Wonderland” (into which the rhythm section eases so carefully one feels more than hears it), there is much to stimulate repeated listening. Yet it is in “Beautiful Love” that we find the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. From the gentlest guitar solo Abercrombie spins a song even as he unravels it into a water-skating journey so gorgeous it almost weeps. The trio’s finest moment and easily one of Abercrombie’s most inspired (and inspiring) improvisatory passages on record. The final “Haunted Heart” almost reaches those same depths, smoothing out an extended guitar intro into a velvety soft ballad that stirs us into a pool of melting chocolate and lets us steep.

A sublime recording from musicians at the top of their game, for a game this most certainly is, played by those who know the rules as well as anyone.

<< Terje Rypdal: Undisonus (ECM 1389)
>> Thomas Demenga: Bach/Carter (ECM 1391 NS)

Stephan Micus: The Music Of Stones (ECM 1384)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Stephan Micus
The Music Of Stones

Stephan Micus shakuhachi, tin whistle, stone chimes, resonating stones, voice
Elmar Daucher resonating stones
Günther Federer resonating stones
Nobuko Micus resonating stones
Recorded 1986 at Ulm Cathedral
Engineer: Martin Wieland

Elmar Daucher’s resonating stones have haunted me since I first heard them on Klangsteine-Steinklänge (released 1990 on ProViva). While not conceptually unique (stone instruments, notes Micus, have at least a 2500-year history), Daucher’s playable sculptures nevertheless speak with voices all their own. They are, as anyone familiar will tell you, enchanting enough on their own terms, but to hear them in the context of Stephen Micus’s visceral melodies is to hear them as the source of some nameless creation. For the most part Micus has had free reign in recording for and submitting his work to ECM producer Manfred Eicher, who commits the material to disc as an acolyte might transcribe a master’s words. But for this project he took a rare dip into the pool of collaboration along with his wife Nobuko, Günther Federer, and Daucher himself all playing resonating stones. Add to these Micus’s unique instrumental prowess in the reverberant embrace of Germany’s Ulm Cathedral, and the results are as profound as they are extraordinary.


Micus and Daucher at Ulm Cathedral

The stones come alive in Part 1. Their voices hum through the listener’s bones. A shakuhachi begins its bird-like dip from the heavens, touching its wings to freedom. In its song one finds a cave, never knowing what will be heard, for under the cover of that night there is but a single voice calling (or is it weeping?) for someone. Two hands hold a song of water, turning it like a teacup held high in the absence of ceremony for the gods to drink. The shakuhachi then becomes a woodland creature who knows the trees well enough to skip through the branches blindfolded. The striking of the stones in Part 2 therefore startles with a blast of light. With the delicate force of a prepared piano or gamelan it is at once metal and flesh. One feels within it a sense of coming together through falling apart, a slow dissolve into unity at a molecular level. Part 3 introduces a penetrating tin whistle, and with it a feeling of windswept plains and distant shorelines, the continued gonging of the stones like cow bells in the pastures. Underlying rhythms carry over into Part 4, embracing an elemental sound in their tectonic heart, in which every seismic shift carves a new glyph of experience. Part 5 is a shakuhachi solo, tremulous and breaking. Spun of cloud and snow, it is a crane’s inner life unfolding before the dawn. Micus lets his throat unspool at last in Part 6, making music out of the very air around him. Which brings our attention to the one uncredited stone sculpture in all of this: the very cathedral itself, which has collected and preserved the footprint of every note played and which imparts its histories to us in an everlasting whisper.

<< Terje Rypdal: The Singles Collection (ECM 1383)
>> The Hilliard Ensemble: Perotin (ECM 1385 NS)

Shankar: nobody told me (ECM 1397)

| Tyran Grillo

Shankar
nobody told me

Shankar double violin, vocals
V. Lakshminarayana violin, double violin, vocals
Ganam Rao vocals
Zakir Hussain tabla
Vikku Vinayakram ghatam
Caroline vocals, tamboura
Recorded 1989 at The Complex, Los Angeles
Engineer: Billy Yodelman
Produced by The Epidemics (Shankar & Caroline)

After the uncharacteristic misstep that was The Epidemics, Shankar returned to his roots with nobody told me and showed us that his flair for Carnatic vocals is almost as deeply fleshed as his improvisational gifts on the double violin. And while he has never quite recaptured the magic of Who’s To Know, that same generative spirit is present here in every gesture of his bow. The recording is far more intimate than anything else he has put out. For that reason alone it bears repeated listening and the nuances that repetition brings to each new experience. He is also accompanied by some staggering talents, among them V. Lakshminarayana (father of the venerable L. Subramaniam and pioneer of the Indian violin, he died the year following this session), Zakir Hussain on tabla (who, if you’re reading this, probably needs no introduction), and ghatam master Vikku Vinayakram. The session is rounded out by vocalists Ganam Rao and Caroline, the latter of whom also provides the foundational tamboura drone throughout.

The most heartening moments are to be found between Lakshminarayana and Shankar, whose exchanges in the opening Chittham Irangaayo constitute a spiritual conversation to which the listener can only nod. From tender beginnings, their stichomythia of the rustic and the laser-like opens into a broader language as the rest join in the fray. Shankar emerges from this milieu with beautifully articulated chording and pizzicato accentuations in turn before bowing his way into a rousing finish. Vocals predominate the Chodhanai Thanthu that follows. The unrestrained cadences therein bring us to the root of this music, which at its best floats straight from the body and into the heart of the divine. Only with the introduction of percussion and violin do words step out onto the histrionic stage, taking us by the hand into the brief yet inescapable Nadru Dri Dhom ­Tillana, a fitting end to a raw and impassioned document of collective music-making.

<< Misha Alperin/Arkady Shilkloper: Wave Of Sorrow (ECM 1396)
>> Charles Lloyd: Fish Out Of Water (ECM 1398)