ECM Records

Kenny Wheeler: around 6 (ECM 1156)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1156

Kenny Wheeler
around 6

Kenny Wheeler trumpet, fluegelhorn
Evan Parker soprano and tenor saxophones
Eje Thelin trombone
Tom van der Geld vibraharp
Jean-François Jenny-Clark double-bass
Edward Vesala drums
Recorded August 1979 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

For his third ECM outing as leader, Kenny Wheeler offers up this set of six originals among some of the finest support ECM had to offer at recording time. The reed-work of Evan Parker in particular proves to be a prophetic addition to Wheeler’s rounded edges.

Like the wordplay of first cut (“Mai We Go Round”) the album as a whole is twice removed: once from the immediate expectations born of past projects, and once more from the often earthly shapes of those projects. This time around, Wheeler is happy to tiptoe over the clouds, reaching for the sun that illuminates their cauliflower topsides. A pliant intro urges us down the rhythmic paths of Jean-François Jenny-Clark (bass) and Tom van der Geld (vibes), along which Wheeler crafts the tenderest of songs. At heart a lullaby, it is lively on the surface, so that we always remain half awake, our eyes glazed by an interest in the musical moment. All of this stretches a diffuse canvas across which Parker splashes the enchanting wisdom of an aurora borealis in fast forward. After this dip into limpid waters, Wheeler breaks out the gorgeous ”Solo One.” Floating on a studio echo with great care, his tone is tender yet immovable, and moves like a human body after an epic recovery. “May Ride” lays another solid foundation between bass and vibes and the subterranean patter of Edward Vesala on drums. Wheeler stays fairly centered, letting out the occasional squeal, and sets up a fantastic solo—one of the album’s best—from trombonist Eje Thelin. After a few doodles from the horns, “Follow Down” unfolds in a parabolic blade, thereby tilling a nutrient-rich soil for Parker’s brilliance. Vibes curl their reverberant fingers alluringly along the edge of our attention before horns and arco bass fall into line. A splash of water dispels our reveries in the propulsive “Riverrun.” Wheeler and Thelin swing from every branch with an unwavering sense of play, granting Vesala a few moments in the spotlight before ending tenderly, conservatively, with the ballad “Lost Woltz.”

A lush and consistent album, around 6 takes on a life of its own with every listen, and deserves a place in any self-respecting jazz collection.

<< Pat Metheny Group: American Garage (ECM 1155)
>> Jack DeJohnette New Directions: In Europe (ECM 1157)

Old And New Dreams: s/t (ECM 1154)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1154

Old And New Dreams

Don Cherry trumpet, piano
Dewey Redman tenor saxophone, musette
Charlie Haden bass
Ed Blackwell drums
Recorded August 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Hot on the heels of Old Friends, New Friends comes Old And New Dreams, an operation meant as a new flagship for Ornette Coleman, whose lack of enthusiasm for the project left a gap duly filled by Dewey Redman. The result is this delightful excursion into post-bop outlands that sounds as alive as ever. Two Coleman pieces comprise nearly half of its duration—which is saying much, for like many of ECM’s joints of the 70s, this one breezes by in under 50 minutes. The first Coleman piece, “Lonely Woman,” walks the tightrope stretched by Haden, who hugs the solo spotlight after a string of progressive fadeouts in this otherwise drum- and horn-heavy opener. Redman and Cherry elicit a peculiar distance in their playing, speaking in tongues from beyond a wall of silence. The second is the more upbeat “Open Or Close.” Its buoyant drumming and unhinged horn soloing do nothing to obscure Haden’s brilliance as he kick-starts his usual pensiveness into overdrive. Not to be outdone, Blackwell whips his snare into a froth before the group reconvenes.

With these territories covered, each band member completes the experience with one tune apiece. Blackwell’s “Togo” is a prime vehicle for Cherry, as is the latter’s own “Guinea.” The music here is reflective of the long journey that had led Cherry from the limelight into political protest and back into ECM’s fold. We hear this in his biting themes and pianistic wanderlust. Redman breaks out the musette (or suona, a Chinese shawm) for his “Orbit Of La-Ba,” a mystical detour into sere grooves. “Song For The Whales,” courtesy of Haden, is the last piece of the puzzle, and shows the bassist in a more experimental mode. Even as he glides along his harmonic slides like some large creaking vessel that is part cosmic ship and part bird, we are held firmly into place. Drums and horns tremble like the very gut of the earth letting its voice be known.

This is a superb album, and regardless of whether these dreams are old or new, they never seem to fade. What makes it so strong is its careful balance of sidewinding monologues and the sense of direction that a full band sound brings. One craves that sound throughout and the expectation it manifests, so that when it comes in such thick doses, it heightens our involvement in the listening. It acknowledges us.

<< Ralph Towner: Old Friends, New Friends (ECM 1153)
>> Pat Metheny Group: American Garage (ECM 1155)

Ralph Towner: Old Friends, New Friends (ECM 1153)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1153

Ralph Towner
Old Friends, New Friends

Ralph Towner 12-string and classical guitars, piano, French horn
Kenny Wheeler trumpet, fluegelhorn
Eddie Gomez bass
Michael DiPasqua drums, percussion
David Darling cello
Recorded July 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

This set of six extended pieces—each penned by Ralph Towner—is like the flipside of his classic Solstice. From the moment we step into its sound-world with the resplendent 12-string of “New Moon,” we know this will be a path from which we may never wish to stray. Towner’s unexpected French horn adds shading and depth to his already gossamer billows, leaving the fluegelhorn of Kenny Wheeler to snake through Michael DiPasqua’s lucid drumming as the unmistakable cello stylings of David Darling arise from the depths of our expectations. Darling, a personal favorite among ECM-represented artists, proves to be a welcome, if nearly ineffable, presence. One hears shades of his classic Darkwood unfolding like a meandering dream in “Yesterday And Long Ago,” while “Beneath An Evening Sky” weaves twelve strings through six over his ornamental crosshatchings.

Not unlike the album as a whole, “Celeste” forges an uplifting sort of melancholy, heard in Towner’s heartwarming pianism and in Wheeler’s boldly sketched lines. Moments of sheer majesty quickly succumb to underlying reveries, awaiting the “Special Delivery” of Eddie Gomez’s vocally infused commentary. This leaves only “Kupala,” which shows off Towner’s fine muting technique, brushed drums adding a touch of age. Running his fingernails along the edge of this sonic quarter, Towner opens the floor to a magic that only the listener can supply.

I know it’s nothing new to say, but albums like this always put me in awe of jazz, an art form in which a musician can surrender oneself so freely to the musical moment and yet just as easily anchor oneself in explicitly composed material. Likewise, Towner’s music, and especially that collected here, is something into which one can read experiences that are at once rooted in the physical world and firmly bound to a realm where physicality is a myth. Like its own mythology, it is creation and dissolution made one. It ends in a slow fall, laying itself down like a flower upon its own grave.

<< Jack DeJohnette: Special Edition (ECM 1152)
>> Old And New Dreams: s/t (ECM 1154)

Haden/Garbarek/Gismonti: Magico (ECM 1151)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1151

Charlie Haden
Jan Garbarek
Egberto Gismonti
Magico

Charlie Haden bass
Jan Garbarek saxophones
Egberto Gismonti guitars, piano
Recorded June 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Along with the work of CODONA, Magico is perhaps a forerunner in what would come to be known as “world music,” and a pinnacle among ECM’s fruitful productions of the 1970s. Although the talents assembled could hardly be more geographically disparate, their musical heartbeats trace the same calm graph across the EKG paper that is our appreciation. What appears a modest effort in number (the group gives us a humble quintet) plies massive depths in execution. The tracks “Bailarina” and “Silence” alone comprise more than half of the album’s duration. The former’s graceful arcs and burnished veneer sparkle with understated virtuosity, while the latter features some of the gentlest relays between Garbarek and Haden alongside Gismonti’s frothy pianism. The jangly guitar of the title track guides us confidently through Garbarek’s incisive overlay before Gismonti switches over to classical on through “Spor.” Haden’s unassuming posture yields its darkest colors here, drawing a thick arco line beneath our feet just as we are about to fall. Where the album began in a blur, with “Palhaço” it ends in rounded focus, rendered portrait-like in pastels of agreement.

A companion album to the later Folk Songs, this is an all too easily overlooked soundtrack to a beautiful life, brimming with passions of the quietest kind. Like its title, it is a little piece of wonder wrapped in an enigma too real to deny.

<< Keith Jarrett: Eyes Of The Heart (ECM 1150)
>> Jack DeJohnette: Special Edition (ECM 1152)

Keith Jarrett: Eyes Of The Heart (ECM 1150)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1150

Keith Jarrett
Eyes Of The Heart

Keith Jarrett piano, soprano saxophone, osi drums, tambourine
Dewey Redman tenor saxophone, tambourine, maracas
Charlie Haden bass
Paul Motian drums, percussion
Recorded May 1976, Theater am Kornmarkt, Bregenz (Austria)
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

With Eyes Of The Heart, musician’s musician Keith Jarrett landed one of his last American Quartet flights. This live performance, recorded just one month after The Survivors’ Suite, is a journey of different stripes. Jarrett whoops with delight as he opens Part One amid a congregation of drums. The kalimba-like bass of Charlie Haden hops from one foot to another as Jarrett looses a soprano sax into the prevailing winds. Only later does the expected piano shine through his fingertips. Writ somehow large with modest articulations, his right hand brings gradual insistence until the melody and the moment become one, each frame sped into a moving image. Part Two begins with more lovely pianism, this time with grittier chording and the added sheen of Paul Motian’s kit work. An insistent vamp unravels Dewey Redman’s dazzling tenor, and cushions the applause that follow. The tripartite encore is an uplifting, jaunty exposition. Some fantastic drumming and elegant exchanges between soprano and tenor dim themselves silent before the altar of Jarrett’s concluding piano solo.

Just when I think I’ve encountered the extent of Jarrett’s immeasurable talents, he surprises me with an album like this. It’s always a pleasure to hear his peripheral instrumental work, for his talents at the keyboard transfer effortlessly to reed by way of our grateful hearts. Perhaps the title is more than just a metaphor.

<< Barre Phillips: Journal Violone II (ECM 1149)
>> Haden/Garbarek/Gismonti: Magico (ECM 1151)

Barre Phillips: Journal Violone II (ECM 1149)

| Tyran Grillo

Barre Phillips
Journal Violone II

Barre Phillips bass
John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet, synthesizer
Aina Kemanis voice
Recorded June 1979 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Barre Phillips’s music always seems to be more about the obscuring than about what is being obscured. Such a description, I hope, does not merely practice what it preaches, but instead gives insight into his modus operandi. For this suite of six parts, ranging from organic to synthetic and back again, Phillips is joined by frequent collaborator John Surman and vocalist Aina Kemanis. The combination proves to be a formidable one. Phillips brings a delicate intensity to every cell of musical information he divides, especially in the slow buildup of Part III, while Surman threads not a few needles with the bevy of reeds at his disposal. He magnifies our deepest love with an earthy bass clarinet in Part IV. Here, Kemanis’s lilting themes dance with his distanced soprano, painting less jagged lines than she does in Part I. The Brian Eno-esque synths of the latter inject the album with fragrant warmth that Kemanis sustains beautifully with every syllable she sings. Part II harbors the deepest shadows, through which Phillips works his way toward the first lit street he can find. Part V is dedicated to Aquirax Aida, a.k.a. Aida Akira (間章), a music critic and producer deeply committed to free jazz artists like Phillips, leading down a sibilant path toward the final Part VI. This backwater fantasy bounces with the twang of a jaw harp, anchored by Surman’s organic woodwinds and brought home by Kumanis in smooth gradations.

To call any Phillips project “unique” is to commit the commonest of platitudes. His ability to draw a cello’s breath from a bass’s body is nothing short of astonishing. Every inch of his instrument seems to offer up a melody. Were this journal ever to materialize on paper, we would see that it had been written in an erratic but always legible sonic calligraphy.

<< John Surman: Upon Reflection (ECM 1148)
>> Keith Jarrett: Eyes Of The Heart (ECM 1150)

John Surman: Upon Reflection (ECM 1148)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1148

John Surman
Upon Reflection

John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet, synthesizers
Recorded May 1979 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I imagine that John Surman’s first solo album for ECM was something of a revelation when first released. Having already provided his sequined elegance to a handful of productions, the English reedman shows us the breadth of his wingspan in this remorsefully out-of-print pool of limpid brilliance. The sequencer of “Edges of Illusion,” recalling the title cut off Azimuth’s debut album, immediately carries us into a uniquely melodic sound-world. Where some might exploit such a transcendent ostinato as mere atmospheric backdrop, Surman engages with it as an equal partner, experiential in dimension, existential in effect. He adds welcome traction via a gravelly baritone, even as he bores out a winding melodic core with soprano.

Other passages show Surman’s penchant for drawing with folk pigments. Of this, the jig “Caithness To Kerry” and the Nyman-esque geometry of “Prelude And Rustic Dance” and “Filigree” are the clearest examples. More somber moments abound in “Beyond A Shadow” and “The Lamplighter,” both of which feature synths and bass clarinet. Each pulls a distinct string of floss through cosmic teeth. At times delicate, at others cathartic, its sonic plaque streaks like shooting stars into silence. A brief aside of whimsy finds us in “Following Behind.” This lovely fling between baritone and echo chamber wipes the slate clean for the arpeggiated “Constellation” with which the album closes.

From soulful solos to one-man ensembles, Surman does it all with the signature intonation and robotic syncopations that make him one of the finest at the reed. One of the most elegant saxophonists represented on ECM, or on any other label for that matter, he brims with information to be pored through and deciphered with each renewal.

<< Nana Vasconcelos: Saudades (ECM 1147)
>> Barre Phillips: Journal Violone II (ECM 1149)

Nana Vasconcelos: Saudades (ECM 1147)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1147

Nana Vasconcelos
Saudades

Nana Vasconcelos berimbau, percussion, voice, gongs
Egberto Gismonti guitar
Members of Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart
Mladen Gutesha conductor
Recorded March 1979 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

For his third solo release, first and only for ECM under his name, the extraordinary percussionist Nana Vasconcelos created an album that grows. It has taken me a few uninterrupted sessions to appreciate the depths of Saudades, which continue to reveal themselves with every listen. Vasconcelos fronts the best with “O Berimbau,” a 19-minute ode to the metallic scrapings of its eponymous instrument. Utilizing human breath and strings, he renders a beatific icon with bare means. Breaks yield mock birdcalls for a highly filmic and contextual sound that locates us in living spirit. “Vozes” is simply those, weaving fricatives through a loom of nostalgia-laden strings. A rather different congregation of voices awaits us in “Ondas,” speaking in konnakol. Tablas and melodic rows, plowed by shakers and cowbell, channel irrigation into “Cego Aderaldo.” This, the only non-Vasconcelos piece on the album (by compatriot and musical partner Egberto Gismonti), opens with the liquid guitar of its composer in a precisely syncopated journey of intense focus. “Dado” reprises the berimbau, unaccompanied, fading into a climate of arid reflection.


From the back cover of the original vinyl (photo by Roberto Masotti)

Saudades is a self-portrait in sound. Vasconcelos plays as one communicates, with the immediacy of speech and the lingering effects of bodily gestures. This minimal approach yields a broadening territory of fallow lands. His is not simply a musical language but language, period.

<< Double Image: Dawn (ECM 1146)
>> John Surman: Upon Reflection (ECM 1148)

Double Image: Dawn (ECM 1146)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1146

Double Image
Dawn

David Samuels vibraharp, marimba
David Friedman vibraharp, marimba
Harvie Swartz bass
Michael DiPasqua drums, percussion
Recorded October 1978 at Talent Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Double Image was the intermittent project of Davids Friedman and Samuels, whose vibes and marimbas found likeminded company in session musicians Harvie Swartz and Michael DiPasqua on Dawn, the second of only three albums for the group and their only for ECM. Having two jazz percussionists in the same space was something of a rarity in the late seventies, when the album was recorded, and perhaps contributed to its being swept under the carpet over time. What we have, however, is a smooth and airy set of four extended pieces more than worthy of a reissue.

Every gesture therein is artfully considered, as demonstrated to delightful effect in the opening “Passage.” Swartz’s buttery soft bass adds girth to the Friedman/Samuels nexus, where light and darkness walk hand in hand. While DiPasqua baits a hook for every loop, vibe notes hang like keys from a chain, swinging in a steady hand with a pleasant jingle. For the final stretch, marimbas smoke from a flame of cymbals before vibes recap with a sublimely resolute chord. These plaintive measures continue in “The Next Event,” where the marimba broadens its wingspan into “Sunset Glow.” And as that honeyed bass trickles slowly back in, the shaded sound is fleshed out into a colorful fan of sunrays. Swartz beatifies the final “Crossing,” which, over a steadily popping snare, flows with calm virtuosity before breathing down the neck of finality.

This album makes a fine addition to any mallet enthusiast’s collection and proves that, even as its drowsiest, ECM quietly towers above the rest. A personal favorite among the label’s painted covers as well.

<< Miroslav Vitous: First Meeting (ECM 1145)
>> Nana Vasconcelos: Saudades (ECM 1147)