ECM Records

Gary Burton Quartet: Real Life Hits (ECM 1293)

| Tyran Grillo

Gary Burton Quartet
Real Life Hits

Gary Burton vibes, marimba
Makoto Ozone piano
Steve Swallow bass guitar
Mike Hyman drums
Recorded November 1984 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Vibraphonist Gary Burton was one of the hottest things around in the 1980s, his quartet a springboard for up-and-comers like Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone, who shines alongside bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Mike Hyman as if he’d grown up with the guys. A sparkling talent, Ozone adds color where there is only monochrome, and vice versa. He is at once ethereal and down to earth, emotes with a sweeping grandeur yet regales us with his intimacy at the keyboard. The syncopations he adds to the album’s two Carla Bley tunes are head-on wondrous. These include the complex title number, with its deft interweaving of vibes and keys, and the sprightly “Syndrome.” Like its eponym, this opener is an inescapable groove of activity, a fiery yet clean spring to concerted action. Swallow is in his usual leapfrog mode here, jumping from one palette of energy to another with ease. Ozone also grounds us deeper than we’d ever expect in the bassist’s “Ladies In Mercedes,” a groovy montuno exercise that features marimba in place of vibes.  Burton makes the normally muted instrument sparkle with his pointillism, which also boggles us with its precision in German Lukyanov’s “Ivanushka Durachok” (a rare dip into Russian jazz). With its catchy bass line and effervescent vibes, this piano-driven head nod is right where you want to be. Three slices of nostalgia round out the set, including the gorgeous seesaw of Duke Ellington’s “Fleurette Africaine” and John Scofield’s “The Beatles” (John Scofield). These quiet vessels carry us into the waters of Ozone’s own balladic contribution, “I Need You Here.” Bubbling with Burton’s exceptional mallet work, this tearjerker hits us where it hurts.

This is yet another solid outing from Burton and company. Like the cover art, it is something of a collage that makes for a complete portrait of a time and place, a snapshot with a living soundtrack. This is real life.

<< Dave Holland Quintet: Seeds of Time (ECM 1292)
>> Jan Garbarek Group: It’s OK to listen to the gray voice (ECM 1294)

Terje Rypdal/David Darling: Eos (ECM 1263)

| Tyran Grillo

Terje Rypdal
David Darling
Eos

Terje Rypdal electronic guitar, casio mt-30
David Darling cello, electric cello
Recorded May 1983 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renewed.
–Alfred Lord Tennyson

Eos. Greek goddess of the dawn. Aurora to the Romans. She of the rosy fingers and golden arms. A welcome companion as we take in these private explorations from Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal and American cellist David Darling. Although further collaborations would reveal themselves on The Sea and Skywards, it was on Eos that they first tested the former’s mettle against the latter’s fluid tensions. The session begins where you might, depending on your temperament, least or most expect: in the solar eclipse of “Laser.” Rypdal sharpens his tools alone, raining sparks and molten glass. From this lit match burns a slow and epic fuse in the 14-and-a-half-minute title improvisation. Here the unlikely duo charts its deepest waters, covering our expectations in a muslin screen. Like a dream, it pulls at our feet with heartrending pathos, Rypdal bleeding coronas as he croaks into life. After this graft of spiritual skin, we continue our slumber in “Bedtime Story,” where an angelic drone cradles Darling’s plaintive acoustic and finds a willing partner in Rypdal’s amplified warble. Yet the skies begin to pale in “Light Years,” where the promise of interstellar travel becomes a fantasy for the lonely. As the stars wash into a white blanket around us, we see in the eyes of the cosmos a dire reflection. The world as we know it has vanished, and we are the only ones left with any concept of time. Our guide is the “Melody” that follows. Its wrists are frail, dusted like Saturn’s rings, and equally impossible to grasp. Still they lead, bringing to bear a false promise in “Mirage.” Rypdal’s snaking lines burrow into this pizzicato landscape without ever looking back, shaking off the residue of memory in favor of an enlightened solitude. This leaves us in the sweetness of “Adagietto,” where loving arms grow from dark matter like dandelions, blown into countless galaxies by the breath of Theia herself.

<< Kenny Wheeler: Double, Double You (ECM 1262)
>> Alfred Harth: This Earth! (ECM 1264)

Michael Fahres: piano. harfe (ECM New Series 1281)

| Tyran Grillo

Michael Fahres
piano. harfe

Polo de Haas piano
Gyde Knebusch harp
Paul Godschalk live electronics
Hans Stibbe live electronics
Digital Recording, August 1982, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

German-born, Netherlands-based composer and sound installation artist Michael Fahres flirted with ECM for the duration of this single album only. Simply titled after its two central instruments, this vinyl-only rarity gives healthy intimations of the electro-acoustic depth for which he is now so highly regarded.

We find in both of these early pieces a sense of self-directed wonder, as if one’s reflection has come to life and danced a version of the future. The low note that spawns a taped echo in piano sets just such a tone. A crack in the window of our desires spiders its way to the edges, falling into the garden when it has nowhere else to go. Every shard sprouts legs and trips through the underbrush. Foxes and moles—each a clouded memory returning with soft vengeance—nip at their ankles like herding dogs. The live piano stares into a digital mirror. Thus confronted with its mortality, it grows still, like a foot poised above a landscape of eggshells. Behind closed eyes, it falls into looped miracles. The jangle at the periphery, never clear before, is now crystalline. Voices tremble, a flock of rubber bands falling one at a time into a synthetic gallop. Veins resonate, each the tube of a televised existence. Your hand passes through childhood like the illusion it is, a canopy of little legs kicking above its Alvin Lucier-like current. They crawl over one another as high as they can, growing more distorted with every promise, until there is only shadow to hold you.

But then, in harfe, strings are touched by flesh, each unfolding a city map. Streets hum like birth. (The atmosphere reminds me of a Zeena Parkins performance I once attended as a teenager: an undercurrent of restless comfort bedding naked scrawls.) Between watery ascents and muddy stumbles, someone speaks: “The voice of reason is the one that achieves distance.” There is a beating of the string, subtle and barely noticeable. A knock at the door of a museum where only the debris of earthquakes is shown. A meditation without eyes, a prickling of hairs, an imploding temple. There is something sacred implied here. Its transcendence melts into a single piece of candy, placed on a serpent’s tongue. The trees buckle their knees in guttural pathos, every torn root a string plucked by green hands. The sky awakens, pouring its flood into a restorative nightmare. Finis.

In spite of my unsettling impressions, I would never characterize this album as such. There is something hopeful about its inventiveness. In exploring the contours of ruin, it holds itself aloft, away from those whose only desire is to crush music into a dark key. The lock to that key is nowhere but here, floundering like a fish cradled back into a sea of twilight.

<< Jack DeJohnette’s Special Edition: Album Album (ECM 1280)
>> Chick Corea: Voyage (ECM 1282)

Hajo Weber/Ulrich Ingenbold: Winterreise (ECM 1235)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1235

Hajo Weber
Ulrich Ingenbold
Winterreise

Hajo Weber guitar
Ulrich Ingenbold guitars, flutes
Recorded March 1982 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I came as a stranger; as a stranger now I leave.

I know nothing of Hajo Weber and Ulrich Ingenbold beyond the incandescent duets these two guitarists buried in the snowy recesses of Winterreise (Winter Journey), one of ECM’s greatest forgotten treasures. The title, of course, evokes Schubert, and the comparison may not be so arbitrary, for like the famous song cycle it speaks with hushed clairvoyance. Weber and Ingenbold bring distinct flavor to this session, dividing themselves at four compositions apiece.

Weber’s are meandering. Filled with pauses and reflections, they measure the passage of time in breaths. Ingenbold gilds the wood-grained lily of “Der wundersame Weg” (The Miraculous Way) with a trembling flute. Gentle footsteps trade places with an unfamiliar cry, meditating on a horizon which, once distant, is now close enough to pluck and make music out of. “Zweifel” (Doubt) plays like its shadow, dancing through dreams as if this were the only possible means of expressing itself. The tides shift with “Drehung in der Luft” (Rotation in the Air), a floating reverie insulated from the cold, while the flamenco kiss of “Filmmusik” washes up on Aegean shores. The air is moist, glowing in the moon’s lantern light.

Ingenbold’s sound-world is more continuous, treating Weber’s backdrops as canvases for a virtuosic appliqué. His “Karussell” is the session’s masterstroke, and puts me in mind of the early cinematographs, spun into impossible animation through a gallery of slits, each the promise of an ephemeral life. The title cut teeters on a whisper. Amid a rustling of wings and tail feathers, the blade of uncertainty falls from the throat of time behind a shining veil of recollection. A child dances where children cannot be seen, but is safe beneath the snow, where spring hides from all. “Sommerregen” (Summer Rain) fulfills the promise made at the album’s outset. It is the Golden Fleece without curse, the light of better days without the pain of absence. We feel the wind on the rims of our ears, hoping for sunlight, but instead experience something far more invigorating: the song of melting ice. Ingenbold dons a flute’s clothing again in “Son’s Song.” A lullaby wrapped in dawn’s brittle skin, it wishes away evil even as Weber chases away the nightmares with his light. The music becomes flesh, the flesh becomes music, and the music becomes love.

Winterreise is a poetic diary that deserves only poetry in return, and ranks alongside Bill Connors’s Theme To The Gaurdian and Ralph Towner’s Solo Concert as one of ECM’s most evocative guitar dates. As long as a reissue seems unlikely, make this your first vinyl rediscovery.

<< Everyman Band: s/t (ECM 1234)
>> Arild Andersen: Molde Concert (ECM 1236)

Schubert: Sonate B-Dur op. posth. D 960 – Edition Lockenhaus, Vol. 3 (ECM New Series 1682)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1682

Edition Lockenhaus, Vol. 3:
Franz Schubert: Sonate B-Dur op. posth. D 960

Valery Afanassiev piano
Recorded July 1985 at the Lockenhaus Festival
Engineers: Peter Laenger and Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Gidon Kremer

With over 100 recordings of Franz Schubert’s last sonata, one might ask: Why another? Valery Afanassiev gives us a resounding answer with this performance from the 1985 Lockenhaus Festival (a last-minute substitution for a canceled trio), bringing to glorious life what Bryce Morrison has called “the pianist’s Hamlet.” As a swan song, the B-flat Sonata may easily be read as a tarnished mirror where our mortality balks at its own reflection. Yet in the listening, I am wont to hear not the looming specter of death, but rather the fluttering of a curtain letting in the light. Like a piece of fruit rotting in reverse, the B-flat Sonata awakens to find that its decay was but a dream, that it is as crisp and as ripe as the day it was born.

As it stands, Afanassiev’s interpretation is broader than most and respires through a powerful dynamic range. In his liner notes the Moscow-born pianist speaks of absolute truth, and of how the low flutter of the opening movement—what he calls “the most uncanny trill in the history of music”—grounds us from our high horses. For him, this sonata is a monstrous thing, the shock of horror behind a veil of art. He also critiques himself for leaning on sentimentality, though I think we can forgive his brazenness, for it is of the gentlest kind.

The first movement begins where many would end: in utter suspension. Every rustling is a bird falling into an abyss of yearning, where memories collide with the yet to be. Voices bubble up from that seismic trill, shielding us from our own expectations. Afanassiev’s punctuations are expectorate and his ascending lines as lilting as they are forlorn. Implications of perpetual motion interlock their fingers with weighty pauses and distant considerations, resolving into stained-glass intimations of “Adeste Fideles.”

The formidable Andante—a Largo in Afanassiev’s hands—whispers in half-light. He builds this slow prance brick by ephemeral brick, as if through a haze of recollection. At eleven and a half minutes, it is among the longest versions on record, and clothes a heart that one finds beating even more nakedly in the piano works of Valentin Silvestrov. Reason enough to own this disc.

After the stark wash of this silent film, we are thrown into the sparkle of a Technicolor spectacle in the Scherzo before sliding down its rainbow into the final Allegro. Here Afanassiev’s deep breath acts as emotive bellow, seeming to blow dust at the feet of the finale, which remains frozen in mid air—racing but never quite touching ground, flapping but never quite lifting off.

Despite the breadth of his tonal spectrum, Schubert is not a composer who works in gradations, but in densities. The light is always there. We simply see or less of it depending on how porous the scrim of the music becomes. Some sections, like the opening leitmotif, are latticed; others are tightly woven baskets; still others, nets through which any hope may pass unfiltered. It is music that works in ages, by turns dancing and hunched on the gnarled cane of infirmity.

If Schubert speaks in tenses, then Afanassiev is a master conjugator. This is a rendering at once flagrant and conservative. A valuable performance to have on record.

<< Paul Giger: Ignis (ECM 1681 NS)
>> John Abercrombie: Open Land (ECM 1683)

Steve Tibbetts: Exploded View (ECM 1335)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Steve Tibbetts
Exploded View

Steve Tibbetts guitars, tapes, kalimba
Marc Anderson percussion
Bob Hughes bass
Marcus Wise tabla
Claudia Schmidt voice
Bruce Henry voice
Jan Reimer voice
Recorded 1985-86 in St. Paul, Minnesota
Engineer: Steve Tibbetts
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Two chipmunks of the oak at last found a way into the tree house, and would run cheerfully over us, breathing our heated breath; they slept in Blink’s lap for three days of blind violent storms that sheathed the forest in ice, which seemed to make music in the fine blue morning that followed, music too blinding to look at.
–John Crowley, Engine Summer

Bless the day Manfred Eicher decided to give Steve Tibbetts his own country in the ECM continent, where he has produced some of the label’s most transportive folkways. On Exploded View, we get a few licks of the fire that would utterly consume us in The Fall Of Us All (if not the other way around). This sits somewhere between that later masterpiece and the quieter heart of Northern Song. “Name Everything” bursts like a freshly lit match onto a geyser-pocked landscape, each beat from percussionist Marc Anderson an eruption of steam that proclaims the earth’s inner desires. “Another Year” is anchored by a glistening acoustic and gilded by that incendiary electric as spiraling internal avenues come to a head in an expansive choral palette. “A Clear Day And No Memories” carries on those vocal menageries with the prominent cries of Claudia Schmidt, who trails her song across an oceanic sky. These quiet into an acoustic aside, alive with rhythmic whispers. The pliant guitar of “Your Cat” is a wonder to behold in the full efficacy of its power, and evidences Tibbetts’s programmatic flair: the music is indeed feline in the way it arches its back, wiggles and pounces, purrs and dreams of the savannah, plays and loves. “Drawing Down The Moon” locks us into the subtlest of grooves, linked by the forward-looking tabla at its core, while “The X Festival” throbs with the voice of history. This superb blend of local and far-reaching mysteries cracks open the dawn, spilling its sunny yolk across the floodplains. The album’s most rhythmically intense moments can be found in “Metal Summer,” which again thrums at the core of something ineffable yet so visceral it can never be denied. Forgoing speech, its finds its voice in the elemental language of grinding flame that is Tibbetts’s modus operandi. Last is “Assembly Field,” another biting trek that ripples across the sands with the slow-motion whip of a sidewinder in search of an oasis it already carries inside, finding solace at last behind the closing eyes of a shimmering acoustic reflection.

Tibbetts chooses his grooves and comings together with tact and with grace, so that we never forget the vivacity of their placement. He shines his light through a necklace of motifs and cellular sound paintings. Take, for instance, the short but unforgettable “Forget,” which has all the makings of a universal anthem. It bristles with a fast head nod and electrical break in the production, keying us in to the malleable style of its surroundings. Like the guitarist at its center, it pulls the strings of time rather than plucking them for trite effect. In doing so, it unleashes an entire culture’s worth of footsteps.

<< Keith Jarrett: Spirits (ECM 1333/34)
>> Meredith Monk: Do You Be (ECM 1336 NS)

Keith Jarrett: Spirits (ECM 1333/34)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Spirits

Keith Jarrett piano, flutes, soprano saxophone, guitar, percussion
Recorded May through July 1985 at Cavelight Studios, New Jersey
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher

Spirits is more than a jewel in the rough. It is the rough of a jewel. By this, I mean to say that through its hard-won journey Keith Jarrett has peered into the heart of darkness that is life and compressed it into a diamond so honest that no amount of polishing will wear away its blemishes. Recorded at his home studio, then post-processed by ECM engineer Martin Wieland, this is a most personal album of boundless expression. Then again, so is every Jarrett album. The difference is in the instrumentation: an unusual array of flutes, keys, and percussion, overdubbed in various combinations and densities (Jarrett even picks up a guitar, which he treats more like a sitar). Jarrett also sings, wails as if in and of the earth, finding in Nature a single feather plucked from nowhere. Bird-less, it has no recourse to flight, and can only call to a sky it will never know.

Though splashed over two discs in 26 parts, this heartrending session takes breath into the same pair of lungs throughout. Moods range from jubilation to a burrowing pensiveness, but always with an ear attuned to catharsis. The nearly two-hour purge turns repression into a path, beginning deep in the heart of ritual, where drums and flutes tread in place of feet and throats, and ending in the recesses of a Renaissance dream, where shepherds, troubadours, and shamans share their slumber. Jarrett’s occasional chants flirt with the exigencies of articulation, all the while forming steady yet somehow ungraspable touchstones along the way. The expected pianism is kept to a graceful minimum, giving way instead to wondrous ruminations on soprano saxophone and other suspended airs.

In so many other hands, such an album would come across as a trite exercise in tribalism, but in Jarrett’s it emotes with full transparency. By far his most colorful release, it marks a shift in method. Where before he charted every possible recess of the structure at hand, here he allows that structure to build itself around him in a shelter of the psyche. The result is a freestanding insight into the pathos of creation. Probably not the one you’ll want to start with, but by no means a prism to bar from the light of your curiosity.

<< Paul Hindemith: Viola Sonatas (ECM 1330-32 NS)
>> Steve Tibbetts: Exploded View (ECM 1335)

Gary Burton Quintet: Whiz Kids (ECM 1329)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Gary Burton Quintet
Whiz Kids

Gary Burton vibraphone, marimba
Makoto Ozone piano
Tommy Smith saxophone
Steve Swallow bass
Martin Richards drums
Recorded June 1986, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

This aptly titled date from the Gary Burton Quintet showcases two wunderkinds: saxophonist Tommy Smith and pianist Makoto Ozone. It was Chick Corea who recommended the up-and-coming Smith, just 18 at the time, as a Burton sideman. One year later, Smith was thrust into the ECM spotlight, bringing his robust tenor voicing to one of the finest outfits in the business. And speaking of Corea, one would be hard-pressed to find a more kindred spirit than Ozone, who at 25 was already a longtime phenom in his native Japan, and whose tutelage at Berklee led him to work with Burton.

These talents are showcased not only technically, but also compositionally. Smith leads the way with “The Last Clown.” This warm, nocturnal cityscape is the perfect appetizer for what’s in store. The space afforded to every musician is a testament to the group’s democratic flair. Those unmistakable vibes glisten like rain-slicked streets, Burton taking his sweet time to let every note sing, while Ozone deepens the proceedings with every key he touches. Yet the pianist shines brightest in his own two upbeat contributions. Of these, “La Divetta” shows the group at its finest and is honed to a formidable edge by Smith’s aerial attack and the breakneck pacing of drummer Martin Richards. The balance of Ozone’s “Yellow Fever” is invigorating to say the least. Burton shows off his mindboggling precision, as do Smith and Ozone, one cream to the other’s coffee. Both of these pay homage to Corea, whose tune “The Loop” caps off a diamond-solid set. A couple of rarities complete the picture. “Soulful Bill” is a lovely ballad that features an even lovelier bass line from Steve Swallow, who dances with his own quiet magic through a gallery of fine solos. And the mid-tempo “Cool Train” brings on the love tenfold, especially in its sweeping pianism, which here recalls Bruce Hornsby.

The themes on Whiz Kids are ripe, the playing even more so, and the recording pristine. This is a quintessential example of ECM’s tender side, perfect for those lazy afternoons during which dreaming is the best kind of travel. Sadly, this smooth-as-silk recording would mark the end of Burton’s 14-year run on ECM. All the more appropriate, then, that his selfless respect for new generations of talent should take center stage.

<< Jon Hassell: Power Spot (ECM 1327)
>> Paul Hindemith: Viola Sonatas (ECM 1330-32 NS)

Enrico Rava/Dino Saluzzi Quintet: Volver

| Tyran Grillo

 

Enrico Rava
Dino Saluzzi
Volver

Enrico Rava trumpet
Dino Saluzzi bandoneón
Harry Pepl guitar
Furio Di Castri bass
Bruce Ditmas drums
Recorded October 1986 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Before the title of Volver (Spanish: to return; to come back) graced Pedro Almodóvar’s colorful 2006 film, it found a home two decades previously on the cover of this most intriguing date from bandoneón master Dino Saluzzi, who joins the roving Enrico Rava Quartet. Harry Pepl starts things off right with a plaintive guitar in “Le But Du Souffle,” providing a yielding surface for Saluzzi to carve his ethereal shapes. Add to this the earthbound bass of Furio Di Castri and Rava’s heavenly blowing, and you get a formula for pure sonic bliss. This typically rubato ECM intro smoothes into the jaunty territories of “Minguito,” which form a unique sound brought to fervent life by Bruce Ditmas at the kit. After a killer thesis statement, Rava draws from a single note an ever-flitting butterfly of a solo. Pepl follows in his wake with effervescence, plowing that same field of perpetual energy before Saluzzi arcs forward with the album’s most resplendent solo. The rhythm section builds to fervor underneath him, as if pointing fingers skyward in want of flight. “Luna-Volver” is a lilting piece for bandoneón alone, which in this resonant space develops like a sepia-tinted photograph, a tender prelude to the ecstatic expression of audible love in “Tiempos De Ausencias.” A slab of free jazz awaits us in “Ballantine For Valentine,” which from a wrenching Bill Frisell-like guitar throws delicious textures to the wind before the dark spiral of “Visions” catches the light of finality as if on a glassine edge.

The band gives plenty of space to contemplate each section, taking long, deep breaths between solos. Like a tree, the results maintain rootedness, no matter how high they climb. Rava is the sap through its veins, Saluzzi the sunlight in the branches. The two make for quite a pair, and it’s a shame they never conversed more often. My only caveat is the mid-heavy production. While normally I like being drowned in reverb, in this case it’s just a bit too plush for its own good. It obscures some of the finer gradations of the musicianship and forces a final fadeout into premature silence.

<< Christy Doran: Red Twist & Tuned Arrow (ECM 1342)
>> Keith Jarrett: Book Of Ways (ECM 1344/45)