ECM Records

Stephan Micus: Ocean (ECM 1318)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Stephan Micus
Ocean

Stephan Micus voice, sho, nay, shakuhachi, Bavarian zither, hammered dulcimer
Recorded January 1986
Engineer: Martin Wieland

Stephan Micus is more than the sum of his parts. The German-born multi-instrumentalist has done that rare thing: absorbed rather than pilfered a wealth of musical traditions and means and molded from them an entity all its own. As one of his earlier recordings for ECM, Ocean is a tinted window into an artistry of full-blown brilliance. Part I opens with his unaffected, wordless incantation before opening into a flower of hammered dulcimers. As the mournful cries of the nay replace his voice, it is as if the bodily has become breath incarnate, airing out its gentle patchwork of sound in a breezy sky, while meditations rise like pedestals beneath souls. The shō (Japanese mouth organ) opens Part II, treading its feet upon cloud, every step forward an exhalation, every step backward an inhalation, such that one remains poised on the brink of falling. From this congregation of threads arises a shakuhachi, unspooling in reverse, its fatigued song but a dream on a wistful day. Zithers enter in with their skittering rhythms, fluttering like the wings of some vast diurnal insect whose wing covers are its feet, and for whom landing is but a memory of a past in which humans never spoke. In the opening dulcimer meditation of Part III, we feel the kinship into which Micus so profoundly invites us, a promise of stillness in its embrace. The shakuhachi whispers its secrets across the waters, ending in a delicate waterfall, a lifetime’s worth of tears compressed into a single fade and pooled in the cupped hands of silence. Part IV ends (or does it begin?) with a moving shō solo, which turns like a crystal spun from Philip Glass-like filaments and melted by body heat into a fluted garden, churning with the song of every earthworm below.

Micus lets unfold a territory so personal that it becomes selfless, somehow unmarked the human elements of its creation. In his playing, names, labels, and covers, even personages and politics, cease to matter. The only restriction is its very lack. Such music goes beyond the pathos of meditational action, looking into the soul of stillness, where only music can express that which all the languages of the world, lost and extant alike, never could. Their cage is not one that surrounds us but one we surround with the promise of creation, waiting with closed eyes and open hearts.

<< Keith Jarrett Trio: Standards Live (ECM 1317)
>> Masqualero: Bande À Part (ECM 1319)

John Abercrombie: Current Events (ECM 1311)

| Tyran Grillo

John Abercrombie
Current Events

John Abercrombie guitar, guitar synthesizer
Marc Johnson bass
Peter Erskine drums
Recorded September 1985 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Current Events marks an incubatory period of sorts for John Abercrombie. The evolving guitarist found willing collaborators in drummer Peter Erskine and bassist Marc Johnson, both of whom decorated his synth-heavy experiments with bold care. Erskine excels in the more upbeat numbers, bringing sparkle to “Clint” and to an all-acoustic version of “Ralph’s Piano Waltz” (see Timeless and Towner’s Solo Concert for reference). The ghostly intro of “Alice In Wonderland” wings into a free-flowing liquid of a tune that will tug at your childhood. Each touch of cymbal is a splash and the bass a slinking amphibian making its way to the present with a jewel of remembrance in its mouth. The loving acoustic solo “Lisa” segues into “Hippityville,” which somersaults along Abercrombie’s electronic ladder. “Killing Time” (exactly what this album doesn’t do) modestly titles a shimmering veil of slumber, carried into wistful awakening by declarations from the trio in full. Last is “Still,” a carpet for Johnson’s lumbering gait and the shimmering cellular network of Abercrombie’s acoustic. Sharp and gorgeous.

This is for the most part a subtle album, though it does possess its fair share of catharses, and promises new returns every time. Like the last track, it slides into your soul before you know it, making it one of Abercrombie’s most enjoyable dates.

<< Chick Corea: Trio Music, Live In Europe (ECM 1310)
>> Miroslav Vitous: Emergence (ECM 1312)

Jan Garbarek Group: Wayfarer (ECM 1259)

| Tyran Grillo

Jan Garbarek Group
Wayfarer

Jan Garbarek tenor and soprano saxophones
Bill Frisell guitar
Eberhard Weber bass
Michael DiPasqua drums, percussion
Recorded March 1983 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The Jan Garbarek Group has ever been among ECM’s more formidable. Its winning inclusion of bassist Eberhard Weber ensured a fluid foil to Garbarek’s scalpeled lines. The brief tenure of guitarist Bill Frisell made that balance even more promising. That being said, Wayfarer tends to meander as much as its eponymous protagonist, although who’s to say this wasn’t the intention. Gone is the full-on dreaminess of Paths, Prints. In its place: a session that walks in a half-sleep through picturesque territories without ever really looking at them, never quite knowing which reality it is committed to. Drummer Michael DiPasqua gives us hope in the inaugural “Gesture,” carrying over the cymbal rides one misses in Jon Christensen’s absence, but his surroundings only seem to wander in circles. “Gentle” is another case in point, though Weber manages to enliven this piece into something beautiful. At ten and a half minutes, “Pendulum” is the album’s central epic and gives Frisell plenty of room to stretch. But the ponderousness wears thin, and one loses sight of the destination. Likewise, “Spor” seems more like a studio warm-up to something that never made the final cut. The album’s reigning exception is the title track, which from a brooding crawl through dimly lit catacombs bursts with DiPasqua’s incredible frenzy as Frisell sharpens his axe along the periphery. It also gives us a taste of the old Garbarek.

Despite occasional flashes of brilliance and fine musicianship all around, the themes on Wayfarer are relatively weak and don’t seem to add up. In my journey through ECM’s back catalogue thus far, this is the only Jan Garbarek Group album I would hesitate to recommend. This may be one, however, to grow with time.

<< Oregon: s/t (ECM 1258)
>> Chick Corea/Gary Burton: Lyric Suite For Sextet (ECM 1260)

Chick Corea: Trio Music, Live In Europe (ECM 1310)

| Tyran Grillo

Chick Corea
Trio Music, Live In Europe

Chick Corea piano
Miroslav Vitous bass
Roy Haynes drums
Recorded September 1984 in Willisau and Reutlingen
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In 1983 the Keith Jarrett trio was just getting on its feet. That shadow would prove to be a difficult one to step out of in the coming decades. But if anyone could have thrown a light onto it, it was Chick Corea, who, along with bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Roy Haynes, emoted a live recording for the ages. Corea seems to have done much soul searching in the 70s, and on this set one hears his chrysalis crackle with uncontainable vivaciousness. After his warm intro, “The Loop” kicks off the band’s deep combinatory powers with fortitude. Vitous is a joy to experience, his rich, oblong sound surrounding us like a wooded glade, brought to the life by the rustlings of Haynes’s snare and the trickling sunlight of Corea’s keys. “I Hear A Rhapsody” cocks its ear toward rapture. Lost along the winding staircase of its motive, it is a while before we realize these musicians have been keeping us in sight all along. We are reminded of this with every shift, and in the way Corea draws Haynes into whimsical conversation. “Summer Night / Night And Day” gives us the album’s first double-header, Vitous fluttering his wings in ways few others can. From this upbeat wonder, the trio transitions seamlessly into its inverse, seeming to fill every gap in the former’s carving with glorious relief. The second double-header tears a page from the Scriabin playbook with “Prelude No. 2,” making for one of Corea’s most beautiful stretches of internal life ever committed to disc. This bleeds into the staggered breathing of “Mock Up.” Vitous solos us through “Transformation,” while “Hittin’ It” pours the light on Haynes. Eicher has done us a service in including these, for, as so often happens in jazz recordings, long solos are either cut or curtailed. Yet here they are fully fledged elements in the album’s molecular pathways. We end on “Mirovisions,” which writes an arco bass across soaring pianism before diving hawk-like into the Valley of the Groove. A colorful unraveling follows, marked by flashes of buoyancy against a thoughtful backdrop.

A perfect album from Alpha to Omega, this is one of ECM’s finest and a delightful new addition to my Top 10. Invigorating to the last.

<< Dino Saluzzi: Once upon a time – Far away in the south (ECM 1309)
>> John Abercrombie: Current Events (ECM 1311)

Dino Saluzzi: Once upon a time – Far away in the south (ECM 1309)

| Tyran Grillo

Dino Saluzzi
Once upon a time – Far away in the south

Dino Saluzzi bandoneón
Palle Mikkelborg trumpet, fluegelhorn
Charlie Haden bass
Pierre Favre percussion
Recorded July 1985 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

There is an effusive quality to bandoneón virtuoso Dino Saluzzi’s art, one that speaks of the past, which through slogs of time becomes recoverable through the hope of performance. Listen to the sonic photograph that develops in “José, Valeria And Matias” this becomes clear. Every face is a memory incarnate, speaking with the voices of a hundred. Bassist Charlie Haden and trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg round out the album’s histories, along with percussionist Pierre Favre, whose rustlings shake a metallic tree of its own. Mikkelborg proves himself more than adaptable to these uncharacteristic circumstances, and Haden, as ever, is no mere accent but a living, breathing songster, ever open to the resonance of harmony. The titles of each track tell stories in and of themselves while also telling a larger narrative together. “And The Father Said… (Intermediate)” strings a contemplative (and what about this album isn’t?) duet between Saluzzi and Haden (who broadens the reflections that so deepened “José…”) before Favre’s earthly drums draw us upright into “The Revelation (Ritual).” Over a swelling gong and skipping snare, Mikkelborg and Saluzzi spin a frantic spell. “Silence” is a heartening solo from Saluzzi that ebbs like the tide and saunters into the verdant landscapes of “…And He Loved His Brother, Till The End.” Mikkelborg’s sensitivity swings in slow motion here from Haden’s tether. Favre returns in “Far Away In The South…,” painting the empty spaces with his embracing nature. In this 16-minute saga of intimate proportions, we get the album’s most dynamic changes, a mosaic of improvisatory energy, a sometimes-playful excursion into recollection. The quartet finishes with “We Are The Children.” The sun of this anthem burns away the rain, bringing together each signature in a field recording of children at play.

Once upon a time… is a language unto itself, a study in movement and matter. This recording is also a testament to ECM’s meticulous production values. Guaranteed to wash your soul clean.

<< Shankar/Caroline: The Epidemics (ECM 1308)
>> Chick Corea: Trio Music, Live In Europe (ECM 1310)

Ralph Towner/Gary Burton: Slide Show (ECM 1306)

| Tyran Grillo

Slide Show

Ralph Towner classical and 12-string guitars
Gary Burton vibraphone, marimba
Recorded May 1985 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

When one thinks of pairing vibraphonist Gary Burton with another soloist, Chick Corea comes foremost to mind. Burton’s work with guitarist Ralph Towner could hardly be more different, for where the former configuration funnels into a colorful storm of activity, in the latter we find far more intimate gestures articulated in monochrome. Case in point: “Maelstrom,” which starts us on the inside, spinning on its edge like a coin teetering at the promise of rest. Towner is as delicate as ever, fitting his harmonic staircases into Burton’s Escherian architecture with ease. This piece also highlights Towner’s compositional talents, which make up eight of the album’s nine tracks (the only exception being the slice of sonic apple pie that is “Blue In Green”). Towner and Burton frequently swap roles (“Vessel” being one notable example) and do so with seamless charm. Between the waking dawn of “Innocenti,” which features a rare turn from Burton on marimba, and the flurried “Around The Bend,” there is plenty of range to delight and calm the senses in turn. In the latter vein, we have “Beneath An Evening Sky,” a canvas of hues as muted as its title would suggest. The combination of Towner’s twinkling 12-string and Burton’s “vibrant” aurora lures us into a life of fantasy, where “The Donkey Jamboree,” a jocular ditty comprised of slack guitar and marimba, gives us a taste of sand and sunlight. “Continental Breakfast” (compliments of the Hotel Hello?) keeps the energy going in a travelogue of morning train rides, while “Charlotte’s Tangle” loosens the seams of the sky above.

This follow-up to the duo’s 1975 Matchbook is every bit as lovely as its predecessor, only this time around the atmospheres are deeper, richer with detail. Worthy.

<< Gidon Kremer: Edition Lockenhaus Vols. 1 & 2 (ECM 1304/05 NS)
>> First House: Eréndira (ECM 1307)

Terje Rypdal: Chaser (ECM 1303)

| Tyran Grillo

Terje Rypdal
Chaser

Terje Rypdal guitar
Audun Kleive drums, percussion
Bjørn Kjellemyr basses
Recorded May 1985 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

1985’s Chaser finds Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal in cahoots with drummer Audun Kleive and bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr. From what I can gather, even some die-hard Rypdal fans are turned off by this one. I can only scratch my head at such reactions, because for me the results are powerful and memorable. Rypdal’s strong-armed phrasing makes the nine-minute opener, “Ambiguity,” a bitter piece of chocolate indeed, but Kjellemyr’s caramel center gives us just the sweetness we need to balance it out. It takes a few minutes to accustom oneself to the sound, but once the rock grabs hold it is difficult to deny. The trio shifts gears with “Once Upon A Time,” which sounds like a film noir that never materializes, if only because there is no one around to populate it. It is the slow blaze of a metal barrel fire pit, a cityscape obscured by sewer steam. For “Geysir,” Rypdal hooks his fluid anchor through a snaking Eberhard Weber-like bass, finding light, cold and subterranean, in every echo. The nighttime feel of “A Closer Look” ports us into “Ørnen,” a deep spiral of hard-won energy—the badlands compressed into 6.5 minutes of emotive genius. Also masterful is the title track. This tender ode to art rock evokes youth and electricity, charging us for the keening embrace of “Transition” and on through “Imagi (Theme),” this last a flexing muscle through which the band separates strength into chains of non-strengths, looking past the façade of power to the surrender that begets it.

Rypdal has singlehandedly honed his axe into an exacting, if serrated, edge. Forged in fire and ice, his sound sings as it lives: nakedly and brightly. This is without a shadow one of Rypdal’s best and belongs alongside such classics as Descendre and his self-titled debut on the throne of his craft. Due to its wide range, to which one finds touchpoints in the work of guitarists as diverse and Buckethead and Bill Frisell, this is as broad a portrait as one can expect to find of a consummate artist who has, in ECM, found a loving home.

<< Marc Johnson: Bass Desires (ECM 1299)
>> Gidon Kremer: Edition Lockenhaus Vols. 1 & 2 (ECM 1304/05 NS)

Charlie Haden: The Ballad Of The Fallen (ECM 1248)

| Tyran Grillo

1248

Charlie Haden
The Ballad Of The Fallen

Charlie Haden bass
Carla Bley piano, glockenspiel, arrangements
Don Cherry pocket trumpet
Sharon Freeman French horn
Mick Goodrick guitar
Jack Jeffers tuba
Michael Mantler trumpet
Paul Motian drums, percussion
Jim Pepper tenor, soprano saxophones, flute
Dewey Redman tenor saxophone
Steve Slagle alto, soprano saxophones, clarinet, flute
Gary Valente trombone
Recorded November 1982, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Don’t ask me who I am
Or if you knew me
The dreams that I had
Will grow even though I’m no longer here.

Jazz is a music of oppression, or rather about resisting it. As such, it has the potential to liberate listeners—and, perhaps more importantly, performers—in ways that few other genres can. Which is precisely the paradox of the purist: in order to get to the heart of jazz, one must shut up and feel it. Intellectualizing just gets in the way. Charlie Haden is a purist, but it took him years to achieve that title, and his Liberation Music Orchestra represents a coming into his own as a musician, as a human being, as a force of peace and respect.

The LMO took shape at a time of upheaval. The Vietnam War was coming to a head, and the taste it seems to have left in Haden’s mouth could only be washed out with music. Through his sporadic activities with the LMO (the collective has averaged only one album per decade since its inception in the late 1960s), Haden now had a voice with which to purge widening circles of listeners of the warmongering and corruption he saw all around him until, hopefully, those circles began to touch. It was the voice of those who could not speak except through histories, a voice honed in the communal spirit that breathes through every note he’s played since.

Haden never chose his material in the authorial sense; the politics chose him. By the time of The Ballad Of The Fallen, the Reagan administration was pouring military spending into Central America, where Contra death squads left tens of thousands dead and corrupted countless others by covertly sponsoring dictatorial regimes and, by extension, their drug cartels. This brings us to Haden’s purism in another sense: as a onetime narcotics addict long since sober, he knew well the dangers of letting go of music’s hand. And so, through this second recording he and the LMO inscribed a poem of mourning for those who lost their lives in such conflicts, as well in the Spanish Civil War, for he might very well have become an indirect casualty had he not been awakened. Such motivations were never a gimmick in Haden’s hands, and the balanced arrangements, courtesy of Carla Bley, speak to (and for) hearts and minds committed to outreach.

“Els Segadors” (The Reapers), a song of revolt from the Spanish Civil War that would later become an anthem for the Catalan Republic, begins with a somber elegy for brass, which then flowers with the introduction of a funereal snare and glockenspiel. With this somber tone set, the heartrending El Salvadorean song that makes up the title track finds ground in Haden alongside Motian’s drums and the acoustic guitar of Mick Goodrick. The words it only hints at were discovered on the body of a student protester, who along with others died by military hands during a university sit-in. After two darkly lit marches, each insightful horn solo therein a message in a tarnished bottle, we arrive at “Introduction To People.” Bley’s first of two contributions to the album has the sweep of some of the early Arild Andersen quartets and is only enhanced by her rolling pianism and Haden’s ever-pellucid bass. Her second piece is “Too Late,” a pensive duet for piano and bass that frays into majestic horns. It is also the session’s heartbeat.

The Chilean freedom fighters’ anthem “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” lifts us upon a delicate floating carpet of horns, who continue to emote in the heavier “Silence” (Haden’s sole composition and among the session’s more powerful) that follows. In this chain of four-step phrases, we find ourselves lost in the memory of that which we can never know. Goodrick spins chant-like threads throughout “La Pasionaria,” suspended like stars while Dewey Redman plots his tenor along less determinable trajectories. Bley’s keys whip like a sidewinder through this rare breath of hope while Haden emotes as nowhere else. The Catalonian song “La Santa Espina” reprises the martial feeling with which the album began and breaks into a powerful reinstatement from brass.

This is a continuous suite of moods drifting through a passage in foliated time. The album’s resignations are palpable at every turn, each inhaling mourning and exhaling hope. This is death and memory, rebirth and diffusion, the flame of a forgotten past kept alive in the cavity of an unparalleled instrument and its practitioner.

<< Lester Bowie: All The Magic! (ECM 1246/47)
>> Harald Weiss: Trommelgeflüster (ECM 1249 NS)

Keith Jarrett Trio: Setting Standards – New York Sessions (ECM 2030-32)

| Tyran Grillo

2030_32

Keith Jarrett Trio
Setting Standards – New York Sessions

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock double-bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded January 1983 at Power Station, New York City
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“I feel we are an underground band that has, just by accident, a large public.”
–Keith Jarrett, on his trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette

The piano is considered by some to be a “complete” instrument. On it, one can compose anything from a simple etude to the grandest of symphonies, and its most adored practitioners may be said to be whole at the keyboard. The beauty of a player like Keith Jarrett is that he makes the piano sound so gorgeously incomplete, emphasizing as he does the unfathomable volume of sentiments he would convey through it if given the time. As it is, we get the barest taste of immortality. Jarrett carries the entire weight of any composition in even the most linear of melodic lines. In doing so, he opens doors that few could step through unharmed.

And yet, step through them the rare soul has, and perhaps none so ingenious as bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette. When listening to the bliss that rolls off Jazz’s proverbial tongue throughout Setting Standards, however, we must constantly remind ourselves that the three albums collected therein represent the first time Jarrett, Peacock, and DeJohnette had ever stepped into the studio as a bona fide trio. The three men were, of course, far from strangers, but produced such unreal synergy in these unrehearsed sessions that they might as well have been cut from the same cloth. The trio would also prove in a way cathartic for Jarrett, who was already beginning to buckle under the pressures of an increasingly demanding listenership. For this, he turned to the tried and true, if not to the plied and blue, for solace.

With Standards, Vol. 1 (ECM 1255) Jarrett and company set things straight from the get-go by showing us the “Meaning Of The Blues.” This swath of melodious rain is the trio form at its best and never lets up until the very end. DeJohnette’s charcoal sketches in background add a quiet boldness. “All The Things You Are” is a more lighthearted, though no less intense, construction, and haunts Peacock’s nimble fingerwork with a visceral chord progression. Smoothness abounds in “It Never Entered My Mind,” a gentle tune that puts a new twist on the pessimism of balladry by resolving itself at moments into a hopeful groove. A hefty splash of freedom awaits us in “The Masquerade Is Over.” Peacock is on fire here, giving just the sort of fuel that Jarrett sets to such glorious conflagration. The latter’s soloing proves that not only is the masquerade over, but also that these musicians never hid behind masks in the first place. If any single facet of this jewel can be singled out, it is the stunning fifteen-and-a-half-minute rendition of “God Bless The Child” that concludes it. Peacock excels, taking the swing around the bar and back again.

<< John Surman: Such Winters of Memory (ECM 1254)
>> Charlie Mariano: Jyothi (ECM 1256)

… . …

ECM 1289

Standards, Vol. 2 (ECM 1289) is a shaded glen in Volume One’s verdant forest. Its mood is summed up perfectly in the title of the opening “So Tender,” which after a slow intro falls into the unity that so distinguishes this trio. Jarrett dances not on air but on fire in his pointillist lines, while Peacock and DeJohnette both captivate with their subtle, popping sound. “Moon And Sand” is an equally smooth ride through less traveled territories and finds Jarrett in a gentler mood. DeJohnette is also at his most delicate here, drawing circles in the sand with his brush. For “In Love In Vain” Jarrett spins from thematic threads a twin self, who for all his similarities breathes a different sort of politics in one of the set’s finest tunes. With every grunt, Jarrett voices only the tip of his creative iceberg. Peacock delights with a very elastic solo, which no matter how far it stretches stays locked to its theme as if by finger trap. Jarrett is at his lyrical best in “Never Let Me Go,” and skips to his Lou in “If I Should Lose You” before laying down the poetry of “I Fall In Love Too Easily” with a thick, tangible power.

<< Eberhard Weber: Chorus (ECM 1288)
>> Everyman Band: Without Warning (ECM 1290)

… . …

ECM 1276

Prior to the release of Setting Standards, I hadn’t yet encountered the free play session that is Changes (ECM 1276) and what a joyful surprise it turned out to be, for never has the trio emoted in such a blissful mode. “Flying” is a heavenly diptych honed in delicacy and abandon. Here the band describes a decidedly aquatic territory, each tattered thread of melody flowing like the tendrils of a throbbing deep-sea creature whose eyes are its hearts. Jarrett spreads and shoots straight like an octopus, every pad suctioning to a new and exciting motif. Peacock, meanwhile, threads his fingers through a vast oceanic harp, stretching his emotive capacity to its limits. DeJohnette surfaces with a deeply digging solo before we end with Jarrett alone in a quiet, dissipating reflection. Peacock trails his starfish of a bass line through the pianistic coral reef of Part 2, he and DeJohnette inking their solos before hollering their way into an inescapable passion. The set ends in the refractions of “Prism.” And indeed the trio as a unit is not unlike a prism, separating every ray of light into its composite colors, likewise every ray of darkness into its whispered secrets. Jarrett’s expulsions heighten every inarticulable word that he writes, the breath of an energy that cannot be contained. The farther these reveries drift, the more life experience they carry back into the fold when they return.

<< Arvo Pärt: Tabula rasa (ECM 1275 NS)
>> John Adams: Harmonium (ECM 1277 NS)

… . …

In a society gone astray from musical immediacy, it’s safe to point out Jarrett’s nexus as one of the more reliable vestiges where melody still blooms. With an average track length of nine minutes, these are quiet and endlessly interesting epics. Say what you will about Jarrett’s singing, which has sadly turned not a few off from these recordings, but I believe Peter Rüedi puts it best in his insightful liner notes when he says, “His groans and vocal outbursts, considered by many to be a quirk, are in fact nothing but a form of suffering at the thought that the abyss between the piano and sung melody can ultimately never be bridged, not even by Jarrett himself.” To these ears, Jarrett’s voice welcomes us into the intimacy of his creative spirit, so unfathomably expanded in the company of two fine musicians (and even finer spirits) whose talents can’t help but sing in their own complementary registers. And on that note, we mustn’t forget the contributions of Jarrett’s band mates, who constitute far more than anything the mere rubric of “rhythm section” might ever imply. How can we, for example, not shake our heads in wonder at DeJohnette’s consistent inventiveness, which singlehandedly reshaped the idioms at hand. And then there is Peacock, who for me is the bread and butter of the first two sessions. So carefully negotiating his path through various leaps and bounds, he seems to anticipate everything Jarrett throws his way. Just listen to his soloing on “It Never Entered My Mind” and “God Bless The Child,” and these words will mean nothing.

Through the two standards albums, Jarrett put the “Song” back into the Great American Songbook, and in Changes enlarged it with “Prism.” Now given the proper archival treatment in this 3-disc Old & New Masters edition commemorating 25 years of music-making, this unassuming surge of sonic bliss is now ours to cherish at will.

The camaraderie expressed in the booklet’s final session photo speaks for itself: