ECM Records

Jan Garbarek & Kjell Johnsen: Aftenland (ECM 1169)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1169 2

Aftenland

Jan Garbarek tenor and soprano saxophones, wood flute
Kjell Johnsen pipe organ
Recorded December 1979 at Engelbrektskyrkan, Stockholm
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

If improvisation is a form of meditation, then meditation is also a form of improvisation. In being at peace with what one plays, one lives it.

Jan Garbarek is, of course, one of ECM’s longest standing composers and saxophonists, yet he is first and foremost a spectacular improviser who often manages to reach farther than (I imagine) even his own expectations in touching new melodic concepts. Paired with the Spheres-like church organ of Kjell Johnsen, he plumbs the depths of spiritual and physical awareness in a way that few of his albums have since. Here more than anywhere else, he shapes reverberation into its own spiritualism, exploring every curve of his surrounding architecture, every carved piece of wood and masonry.

The title track opens with a viscous solemnity, ever in shadow, while “Syn” reaps even more intense crops from the ethereal harvest it has sown. A trio of miniatures clustered around the session’s center reaches even more intimately into its heartbeat. “Kilden” seems to drip from the chapel ceiling like a weeping fresco. Garbarek unveils the rare recorders for a more playful exchange in “Spill.” “Iskirken” grips the heart with its piercing keen, dividing cloud and rain with the light of grief that shines like no other in times of greatest darkness. Lastly, the hurdy-gurdy drone of “Tegn” strings a delicate safety net for Garbarek’s robust defenestration.

This album predates his later Officium project by fourteen years, but is in parts just as effective in its vaulted evocations of hidden chants and invisible voices. At times, it also reminds me of the Licht/Haino/Hamilton/MLW one-off, Gerry Miles, only with less turbulent folds.

This is a pensive album, an unsung classic in the Garbarek oeuvre, filled with more than enough revelations to lodge a place in your musical heart.

<< Reich: Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase (ECM 1168 NS)
>> Haden/Garbarek/Gismonti: Folk Songs (ECM 1170)

Art Ensemble of Chicago: Full Force (ECM 1167)

| Tyran Grillo

Art Ensemble of Chicago
Full Force

Lester Bowie trumpet
Joseph Jarman reeds, flute, gongs
Roscoe Mitchell reeds, percussion
Malachi Favors Maghostus bass, percussion, melodica, vocal
Famoudou Don Moye sun percussion
Recorded January 1980 at Columbia Recording Studios, New York
Engineer: David Baker
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Full Force begins in cool breath and ends in scalding heat, the inhalation and exhalation of its own mission. As one comes to expect from any AEC outing, tonal colors are on a mission to envelop us. Despite what the title would have you believe, this is an album of staggering subtlety and finesse. That being said, it is also an intense experience. The first such intimations appear early in “Magg Zelma,” which amid a delectable gamut of percussive signatures begins like an iteration of John Zorn’s Cobra—duck calls share the air with gongs, brass, and mysterious whistles—before the muddy bass of Malachi Favors is cross-hatched more regularly by cymbals and winds. Rhythmatist Don Moye keeps us in the loop as our reedmen crack a freedom egg. Big band horns carry us along through tight harmonies in “Care Free,” which lasts all of 51 seconds, prelude to the Mingus tribute “Charlie M.” Here, the mood and melody recall “A Sentimental Journey,” if through raunchier diction. An unhinged bass solo and some swanky sax from Roscoe Mitchell underline its narrative flow. “Old Time Southside Street Dance” christens itself with a bottle of fire. Laced with an incredible alto solo sustained by circular breathing and equally inexhaustible energy, this tune is perfectly programmed as the penultimate catharsis. A string of solos from trumpet, soprano, and bass skid into the finish line by the skin of their teeth.

These vagabond musicians prove their inventiveness at every turn, and nowhere more so than in via the Baroque chamber instruments woven into the prismatic title track. They hurtle forth with all the potential of a tornado compressed into a dot—a sweeping yet brief gesture, a calling out, a fluttering drum, a distorted voice, a bout of laughter, and a resolute twang running its fingernail around the edge of an enormous sonorous quarter.

Now occupying a well-earned place among ECM’s carefully chosen Touchstones series, this may just be the best entry point into the AEC’s fantastic ride.

<< Enrico Rava Quartet <<Ah>> (ECM 1166)
>> Reich: Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase (ECM 1168 NS)

Enrico Rava and Thomas Stöwsand (ECM 1166 & 1224)

| Tyran Grillo

On October 5, 2006, the audible world lost a tireless champion. Thomas Stöwsand was a musician and journalist by trade when he joined forces with Manfred Eicher in 1970. Over the next decade he helped lay earth for the secluded pantheon that the label would soon become. From early on he believed that the best way to promote ECM’s quickly growing scene was to bring it directly to the consumer. The crowning achievement of his efforts was the booking agency Saudades Tourneen, which he founded in 1983. Consequently, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, and Pat Metheny found themselves touring for the first time before European audiences. A healthy chunk of Stöwsand’s complete roster reads like an ECM hall of fame: John Abercrombie, Bill Frisell, Egberto Gismonti, Ralph Towner, Paul Motian, Dave Holland and many others all had the great fortune of being sucked into his whirlwind of passion. “I know he loved their music,” observes Nonesuch’s Bob Hurwitz, “but I think Thomas loved them as people even more.” This was, as Hurwitz goes on to say, a part of his legacy. I imagine it is also part of the legacies of every musician he represented. These were the people he surrounded himself with, the ones who fanned a flame much too extroverted to contain. Stöwsand lived fast, drove fast, and seems to have made connections as easily as one might breathe. His personal touch was felt, and still is felt, worldwide, as Saudades carries on his mission through the pioneering forces of John Zorn, the Kronos Quartet, Fred Frith, and the many others who funnel decades of close working relationships with the man into their unquenchable creative thirsts.

Yet behind his acute business acumen, infectious personality, and resounding laugh, Stöwsand was also quietly producing a fascinating catalogue of albums. Nearly all of these were available only on JAPO, though thankfully a gleaming handful of Manfred Schoof material has since been reissued on CD. There were two albums, however, that dropped needles directly to flagship vinyl. Both were recorded with Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava’s fledgling quartet at the famed Tonstudio Bauer and were the only two Rava albums not produced by Eicher. The first of these, the curiously titled >>Ah<< (released 1980), featured bassist Giovanni Tommaso and drummer Bruce Ditmas, while 1982’s Opening Night placed Rava alongside bassist Furio Di Castri and the great Aldo Romano on drums. Both feature Franco D’Adrea, whose pianism lights up even the darkest corners. Bafflingly, neither album has felt the touch of a laser, and so, for what it’s worth, here’s a play-by-play.

ECM 1166

Enrico Rava Quartet
>>Ah<< (ECM 1166)

Enrico Rava trumpet
Franco D’Andrea piano
Giovanni Tommaso bass
Bruce Ditmas drums
Recorded December 1979 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Thomas Stöwsand

Feeling a little under the weather? Then open up and say Ah, because Doctor Rava is in! This warm rainy day session is the perfect sonic elixir for what ails you. The sumptuous diagnostics of “Lulu” lay their pianistic hands upon us first, and with them the album’s leitmotif. Rava and D’Andrea are in fine conversational form here, as they ever are, cracking open a Pandora’s Box of free improv before re-attuning to a smoldering vamp. Rava starts us off strongly in “Outsider,” in which he swings his rhythm section around and around like children holding hands in a field. A swift kick from Ditmas brings us solid thematic closure. “Small Talk” allows Tommaso his just airtime in what is by far the highlight of the examination. Rava checks our pulse in the groovier “Rose Selavy,” breezes wistfully through the title track, and gives way to “Trombonauta,” the album’s brief yet impactful ballad, before ending “At The Movies.” This eclectic ode breathes with the magic of Cinema Paradiso while threatening to topple from the weight of its own remembrance.

<< Gary Peacock: Shift In The Wind (ECM 1165)
>> Art Ensemble of Chicago: Full Force (ECM 1167)

… . …

ECM 1224

Enrico Rava Quartet
Opening Night

Enrico Rava trumpet, fluegelhorn
Franco D’Andrea piano
Furio Di Castri double bass
Aldo Romano drums, guitar
Recorded December 1981 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Thomas Stöwsand

“I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” welcomes us with open arms as Rava skips, keens, wails, and laughs his way along this journey filled with nostalgia and multilingual communication. D’Andrea is downright ecstatic as he stumbles into a teaser of an ending. The title track is the album’s showpiece, unraveling from its languorous intro into an urgent stretch of virtuosity. Rava brings unwavering life to his playing, always playful, always present. “Diva,” on the other hand, is far mellower and arches its back across dusky skies.

Side B kicks off with a “Grrr.” Aside from being perhaps the greatest title in the Rava catalogue, it also ignites D’Andrea as he runs through prickly fields with supremely targeted chording. “F. Express” brings some pop to the album’s snap and crackle, further accentuated by unstoppable antics at the piano, while “Venise” again turns down the lights to a comforting level of solitude. “Thank You, Come Again” brings some rat-a-tat-tat platitudes to bear upon one of Rava’s catchiest tunes. Replete with cascading pianism and downright transportive trumpeting, this is as good as it gets.

This diptych shows off Rava at his liveliest and hones noticeable edges in the freer passages. For this listener, however, D’Andrea nails the spotlight every time he puts his fingers to those black-and-whites, leaving us with two exciting dates that are beyond ripe for reissue, and which are a vibrant testament to a producer, promoter, and friend whose indelible fingerprints continue to glow in even the darkest ignorance.

<< Jan Garbarek: Paths, Prints (ECM 1223)
>> Dewey Redman Quartet: The Struggle Continues (ECM 1225)

Gary Peacock: Shift In The Wind (ECM 1165)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1165

Gary Peacock
Shift In The Wind

Gary Peacock bass
Art Lande piano
Eliot Zigmund drums
Recorded February 1980 at Columbia Recording Studios, New York
Engineer: David Baker
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Though cataloged as a Gary Peacock joint, Shift In The Wind has Art Lande written all over it. It shows a different side of Peacock as he is taken in unforeseen directions by the grace of that delicate Lande touch. The latter’s pianism is majestic yet intimate in the opener, “So Green,” and sets the stage for an album in which he and Peacock share most of the compositional credit. The two consistently turn fleeting moments into epic sentiments, and vice versa, all the while thrown skyward by Eliot Zigmund’s hip sensibilities at the kit. With completion of these exercises, “Last First” comes as a fresh sunrise. With its solid arpeggios and bright rolls in the piano’s upper register, it teeters between reverie and jubilation, brought to fullest equilibrium in Peacock’s solo turn. The title track soars between whistles through detached mouthpieces, whispering piano, and percussion. So begins an abstract free-for-all which, like an ephemeral tornado of blown leaves, makes recognizable shapes out of stillness. This, along with “Fractions” and “Centers,” takes a divisional approach to the cumulative. “Caverns Beneath The Zoth,” on the other hand, funnels into a steady counterpoint. The trio lays the icing on the cake with “Valentine,” a precious ballad that exposes the magic of which Lande is capable at his best.

This is a vital session in the archives of everyone concerned, bringing home as it does a focused sense of craft, performance, and, above all, sensitivity. Lande, it bears repeating, dominates as much as one of his delicate sensibilities can, while Peacock carries his characteristically somber brand of exuberance to new depths.

<< John Abercrombie Quartet: Abercrombie Quartet (ECM 1164)
>> Enrico Rava Quartet <<Ah>> (ECM 1166)

Sam Rivers: Contrasts (ECM 1162)

| Tyran Grillo

1162 X

Sam Rivers
Contrasts

Sam Rivers soprano and tenor saxophones, flute
George Lewis trombone
Dave Holland bass
Thurman Barker drums, marimba
Recorded December 1979 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

It’s a funny thing about getting lost: the more one tries to do it consciously, the more one discovers new pieces to fit into the jigsaw puzzle of familiar things. Jazz legend Sam Rivers, who made his only other ECM appearance on the classic Conference of the Birds, proved this sonically when he brought his patented “inside-out” technique to bear alongside Dave Holland, George Lewis, and Thurman Barker upon this free jazz date from 1979. Now in his 88th year, Rivers’s legacy continues to yield new nuggets of audio wisdom through such albums as Contrasts.

The album opens in “Circles” with some chewy improv. Thick horns and brittle drumming provide plenty of interplay to keep our wits on a tight leash. Lewis seems the most at home here, providing a bubbling cauldron of likeminded flights. It is the first in a smattering of freer tracks, the others being the slowly building “Solace” and perhaps the most abstract aside, “Images.” This leaves us with a hefty set of rhythm-driven powerhouses. “Zip” tightens the purse strings with an ever-moving tenor for some wholesome, head-nodding goodness. This joint also serves up a heaping drum solo on the side. Our frontman opts for flute in the swinging “Verve” with a renewed spring in his step. Convincing monologues from Holland and Lewis ease into a slow and timid end. “Lines” reprises that contagious soprano sax against an omniscient rhythm section before bowing out for some quality bass time. “Dazzle” brings exactly that, freeing our minds with a Braxton-esque tenor and tap-dancing bass work. Lewis is more than up to the task, scurrying in with Rivers in their joint commitment to going deeper.

As one of ECM’s bolder sessions, Contrasts deserves shelf space right next to George Adams’s Sound Suggestions. It is nothing if not about contrasts: the cohesive and the fractured, uprightness and vertigo. Colorful, straightforward, stirring.

<< David Darling: Journal October (ECM 1161)
>> Azimuth: Départ (ECM 1163)

David Darling: Journal October (ECM 1161)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1161

David Darling
Journal October

David Darling acoustic and electric cello, voice, percussion
Recorded October 1979 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Having recently seen the film adaptation of James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, which cycles through the book’s eight manifold insights on the path to another, the number nine is fresh in my mind. And so, as I pore through the sonic pages of David Darling’s Journal October on this fallen winter night, I inevitably see each of its nine tracks as an insight in and of itself. Darling’s music is one of ECM’s most invaluable treasures, and one could hardly find anything more beautiful than what he has left behind in its archive. His electric cello bays like a resurrected voice, an insight in and of itself into the lucidity of “Slow Return.” This introductory track is also the longest, drawing every jagged line like the echo of a mountainous horizon. From this potent doorway issues a host of transient forms.

Darling shifts the chronology of his recollections, grafting each to the new experiences of these studio performances. Their breath fills the album’s two solo cello improvisations, each of which cycles through grief’s most harrowing stages toward an inner peace. Rapture comes through in his involuntary vocalizations, in the dissonances that feed them. Darling foregrounds his body in “Solo Cello And Voice,” a self-division of high reaches and archaeological digs, while “Far Away Lights” gives us a taste of his pizzicato technique, which on his electric cello resounds like a tambura undone.

Two Darling touchstones—“Minor Blue” and “Clouds”—also make their first appearance in Journal October, both revisited in his masterful 8-String Religion. The former comes across with more impactful effect, less obscured by gossamer veils of reverb. The latter’s rocking ostinato buoys atmospheric vocals with vulnerable clarity, amplified harmonics ringing out with all the power of a waterfall compressed into a single string. The closing piece sails like an entire biography gathered into one vessel. Notes ascend into birdcalls, circling a teetering falsetto that reshapes the drone dynamic as one suspended rather than suspending.

This album began a walkabout of sorts that has borne some of ECM’s most humbling revelations. Such sounds still the heart and lure our inner eyes with their slow-motion lobs. Darling clears out the detritus of arrangement, the ornaments of song, and the obligations of tradition, forging an improvisatory path that is all his own. It may be trimmer than his later treks along more fluid paths, but his subtle intensities are all there, waiting to embrace the next aching spirit that comes along.

<< Steve Swallow: Home (ECM 1160)
>> Sam Rivers: Contrasts (ECM 1162)

Steve Swallow: Home (ECM 1160)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1160 2

Steve Swallow
Home

Sheila Jordan voice
Steve Kuhn piano
David Liebman saxophones
Lyle Mays synthesizer
Bob Moses drums
Steve Swallow bass
Recorded September 1979 at Columbia Recording Studios, New York
Engineer: David Baker
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Quiet as is proper for such places;
The street, subdued, half-snow, half-rain,
Endless, but ending in the darkened doors.
Inside, they who will be there always,
Quiet as is proper for such people—
Enough for now to be here, and
To know my door is one of these.
–Robert Creeley, “Return”

Home is a title, and an album, of many masks. Though by the time of this recording, bassist Steve Swallow had been involved in a string of projects with Gary Burton and Carla Bley, here his creative sediments sifted into their comfort zone on a label that was to become a home in and of itself. A kindred home may be found in the poetry of Robert Creeley, whose tender colloquialism is Swallow’s sounding board throughout. With the unmistakable smolder of Sheila Jordan’s vocal warmth, its meaning is never lost. Recorded just two months after Playground and featuring three from that Steven Kuhn-led quartet (Swallow being the only substitution), Home betrays yet another of its valences through the sympathetic approach of its musicians.

Lilting and lovely are the names of the game in “Some Echoes.” The verdant synth work of Lyle Mays draws us immediately into Dave Liebman’s soprano leaps. The rasp of each inflected phrase wafts like a breeze through the open doors of the album’s cover, bringing with it the scents of a long-dead memory gradually reanimated with every freshly raked word. These Jordan plants carefully and from a safe distance, allowing Kuhn’s busy fingers to prance across the ivories in her afterglow (“She was young…” and “Colors”). During the slow-motion somersault that is “Nowhere one…,” a sumptuous horn pulls out any lingering threads from Jordan’s introductory call to melodic arms. Rather than see the battlefield as a place of violence, however, the music embraces it as a place of adoration; a landscape replete with fading lives and their instant renewals. In all of these, we feel the nostalgia that enlivens such lyrical swathes as the title track and the engaging “In the Fall.”

The album saves its most indelible marks for those moments where whimsy and mysticism entwine. The pinnacle thereof is reached in “Ice Cream.” From Swallow’s sublime opening to Jordan’s varicolored sprinkles, not to mention a cosmic turn from Kuhn, this one caramelizes to perfection. The playfulness continues in “Echo,” which not only sports Liebman’s best solo in the set, but also practices what it preaches with some didactic volleys between Kuhn’s right and left hands. The band plays us out in the throes of “Midnight,” where quotations of “Three Blind Mice” rub shoulders with a haunting drone before falling into a stream of nocturnal consciousness. The moonlight of Jordan’s voice at last cuts a soft figure from the clouds, becoming one with the dawn.

Swallow is a joy. He is always on the move, bringing a range of moods to the table. From the swagger of youthful ignorance to the pensive affair between the self and regret, it’s all here in one slick package. Jordan’s involvement makes it all the more so. In contrast to her extended poetics in Playground, here she is the keystone to the music at hand, setting the stage for every scene. One need only listen to the way she infuses “You didn’t think…” with such guttural optimism using only a couplet to gain insight into her brilliance.

This is simply infectious music, smooth and tessellated, with not a single false step to be noted.

<< Steve Kuhn/Sheila Jordan Band: Playground (ECM 1159)
>> David Darling: Journal October (ECM 1161)

Bill Connors: Swimming With A Hole In My Body (ECM 1158)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1158

Bill Connors
Swimming With A Hole In My Body

Bill Connors guitars
Recorded August 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Bill Connors’s follow-up to his solo debut, Theme To The Guardian, is more than the latter’s other half; it is a deeper look inward. From the moment we step “Feet First” into this veritable sonic field, there is moonlight to be savored. It is a place where shadows open their arms to embrace other shadows. From the playful (“Frog Stroke”) to the plaintive (“Wade”), the inspirational (“Sing And Swim”) to the romantic (“Surrender To The Water”), Connors covers a travel diary’s worth of temporal terrain in 43 minutes. These qualities crumble like spring snow, each a reflection upon slightly disturbed surfaces. Other pieces, like “Survive” and “With Strings Attached,” lie somewhere between a wing’s beat and a song. All the more the appropriate, then, that we should end with “Breath,” expelling the very air that will condense into the lifeblood of the earth.

Every cell of Swimming… throbs with aquatic humility throughout its gallery of miniatures. Connors’s fingers are always in motion, transporting us to a place where rain never comes but where the sun is almost always hidden. Despite what the title might have you believe, there is no diving to be experienced in this album until you, fair listener, take the plunge.

<< Jack DeJohnette New Directions: In Europe (ECM 1157)
>> Steve Kuhn/Sheila Jordan Band: Playground (ECM 1159)

Jack DeJohnette New Directions: In Europe (ECM 1157)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1157

Jack DeJohnette New Directions
In Europe

Jack DeJohnette drums, piano
Lester Bowie trumpet
John Abercrombie guitar, mandolin guitar
Eddie Gomez bass
Recorded June 1979, Willisau, Switzerland
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

There is a moment in “Bayou Fever” when Jack DeJohnette, showing his adeptness at the keyboard, lapses into “America the Beautiful.” This brief quotation anchors the piece, making it all the more poignant for having appeared in this historic live set. This eighteen-and-a-half-minute juggernaut is as gentle as it is lengthy, and embodies well the lively spirit that infused the drummer’s New Directions project. With the introduction of Eddie Gomez on bass, we hear the call of vocation, the instinct that allows us to persevere through even the most trying circumstances, if only to taste the beauties of creation one more time. Six-stringer John Abercrombie weaves his fingers through the loom of reflection, adjusting the microscope until the dividing cells of Lester Bowie’s trumpet come clearly into focus. This quintessential chunk of tactile birth cycles through a chain of experiences, each the sum of another life before. Once DeJohnette reverts to his forte, he nurtures an inward-looking fluttering of sticks. Abercrombie matches with a fluttering of his own as his nimble hands leap across the fingerboard with an energy that seems to draw audible gasps of expectation from the audience, but which never quite materializes into the full rupture we might expect. One hears in this not hesitation, but rather a more subdued commitment to melodic integrity that praises the living effect of performance over its virtuosity.

It’s a far cry from the album’s opener, “Salsa For Eddie G.,” which begins in the mountains before sliding down their sunlit faces amid scintillating articulations from Abercrombie. With prime support on all sides, DeJohnette is free to move forward without ever looking back. No matter how exploratory he becomes at the skins, his foot keeps the hi-hat going steady, leaving crumbs of light on a dark and winding trail. “Where Or Wayne” begins quietly enough, but then strains a terse improvisatory energy through a fine mesh. The palpable charm throughout provokes laughter from musicians and audience alike. During this portion of the show, DeJohnette introduces the musicians, after which Bowie returns to the foreground and blows out the candle with a flourish of finality.

While the music on In Europe does stretch its very skin to the limits, especially in the trumpet, it manages never to injure itself irreparably. The closest we get to pure abandon is “Multo Spiliagio,” a free-for-fall which contorts its body through many acrobatic challenges. Yet even the most explosive moments are somehow delicately circumscribed. It is an exercise in maturity and critical thinking that ends in sheer delicacy.

This altogether respectable outing gives us a concerted taste of an unrepeatable period in musical history, a time in which the music world’s progress was being most clearly charted on the jazz stage. The concert is miked in such a way that the listener feels situated right between audience and band. We can almost imagine Bowie—this recording’s brightest star—roaming about the stage, projecting his cackling brilliance into every corner of the venue, and hopefully further onto the shelf of any lover of marvelous music.

<< Kenny Wheeler: around 6 (ECM 1156)
>> Bill Connors: Swimming With A Hole In My Body (ECM 1158)