ECM Records

Keith Jarrett: New Vienna (ECM 2850)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarret
New Vienna

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded live July 9, 2016
Goldener Saal, Musikverein, Vienna
Producer: Keith Jarrett
Engineer: Martin Pearson
Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Cover design: Sascha Kleis
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: May 30, 2025

Today marks the 80th birthday of Keith Jarrett, one of the most uncompromising visionaries of modern music. Although he is unlikely to be heard from again in a live setting, we can rejoice that ECM still has recordings in its vault waiting to be released. Among them is New Vienna, the label’s fourth document from the pianist’s final European solo tour (the previous recordings being Munich 2016, Budapest Concert, and Bordeaux Concert). The title of the present disc is a nod to his seminal Vienna Concert, recorded 25 years earlier, almost to the day.

Part I jumps into the bramble of our expectations and slinks through the sticks and foliage with the litheness of a mountain lion. The music evolves in a convoluted dance, moving ever forward to its sudden cessation. In light of such focused energy, it’s only fitting that the shadows of Part II should cast their pall over the scene at hand. Rather than tell a story, each resonant chord lingers long enough for us to come up with our own, so that by the end of this meditative slip, we are closer neither to the destination nor the point of departure. The applause between this and Part III is especially jarring, even as it prepares us for the latter’s spell-breaking properties. Every stomp of its feet is a declaration of the shorter forms that Jarrett came to favor in his latter-day performances. Part IV is an anthem for the soul, drawing a dangling hand through the waters of reflection on its way to the opposite shore. A brief shift into dissonance in the final leg is the only tinge of regret we encounter.

The balladic Part V represents a sea change in the program, channeling feelings so familiar that we must close our eyes to contain them. Every new layer reveals an older memory—this one of a hermetic childhood, that one of an unbridled young adulthood, and yet another of generations interconnected by love—leaving behind a gift unwrappable by time and space. The rise and fall of Jarrett’s left hand mimics the trepidations of an anxious heart that finds truest release at the keyboard alone. The hall recedes, the audience fades, and the lights dim until there is only vibration existing for no other sake than its own.

Part VI is the aftermath of an argument. An unnamed protagonist picks up the physical and immaterial pieces of what has just transpired in the hopes of refashioning them into a semblance of unity. But no matter how much he tries, the cracks are always visible. Part VII evokes the mourning of self that follows, creating hope from scratch before the clouds have a chance to weep. The increasingly dense textures come across as simultaneously desperate and liberated, while Part VIII cleans the proverbial slate with a brief yet cathartic blues. The gospel-infused Part IX is a return to form, giving joy to everything it touches. This glorious turnaround shows us that hope is a many-pronged path. And of all the places it might take us, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” couldn’t be more suitable. Its timelessness is the frame of a building that continues standing even when the mortar crumbles away. And as the winds blow through its open walls, they seem to whisper, “In a life filled with so much wonder, melodies are the only language that matters.”

Keith Jarrett: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (ECM New Series 2790/91)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded May 1994 at Cavelight Studio, New Jersey
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Cover photo: Mayo Bucher
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 30, 2023

In his 2014 monograph, The Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, music historian David Schulenberg paints a compositionally focused portrait of Johann Sebastian’s second son. Despite living in his father’s shadow, his influence managed to shine a light through the veil of history by way of his seminal Essay on the True Manner of Playing Keyboard Instruments and the conduit he was purported to have furled between the Baroque and Viennese Classical schools. As a composer of nearly 1,000 works, his oeuvre is nothing to sneeze at, nor his style, as much an example of evolution in and of itself as of eras retrospectively defined. 

As Paul Griffiths notes in the liner text for the present album, which documents Keith Jarrett’s traversal of CPE’s Württemberg Sonatas, the ocean between father and son may seem vast, even as it churns with currents of familiarity in concert with calls from more distant shores. Dedicated to Carl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, this collection “makes the point about inheritance avoided, or qualificated, or contradicted, or accepted, whether with gratitude or resignation.” Although nominally composed in 1742/43 for the student who would soon ascend to his dukedom, Griffiths observes, “More likely it was for his own fingers he was writing, and for his own ears.” Jarrett, having only heard these pieces on harpsichord, felt compelled to make a piano version, resulting in this home studio recording from 1994, likewise also for his own fingers and his own ears. All the more honored we should feel to have it available three decades later.

Sonata I in a minor is glorious from the start. There are moments of intense poignancy, as in the Moderato, while the faster outer layers elicit feelings of joy that are always undercut by what Griffiths calls a “sad grace” throughout (I might also call it a glorious melancholy). The final movement, marked Allegro assai, carries astonishing depth in tow. What seems a lightly articulated dance has room for so much more than the listener can calculate. Jarrett brims with vitality and precision without ever letting go of the improvisational spirit for which he is known on the jazzier side of things.

The sheer clarity of Jarrett’s voicings, a profound match for the younger Bach’s own, is fully displayed in Sonata II in A-flat major, of which the concluding Allegro is especially vibrant for its multifaceted joys. Like a brick wall, each layer staggers, parallel to every other layer below and above it, adding strength to the overall design and function.

The opening of Sonata III in e minor is perhaps the most glorious of them all, revealing its heart from the first sweep of the second hand. The Adagio is nostalgia incarnate, while the Vivace—the briefest movement of the collection—peels itself away with unfiltered love. The pauses in Sonata IV in B-flat major make for passionate contrast, yielding an Andante of great beauty. Working in stepwise formation, it is a DNA helix surrendering to melodic sequencing.

The more these sonatas develop, the more they veer toward Father Bach, especially in the Adagio fugue of Sonata V in E-flat major. With sweeping intimacy, it pieces together its puzzle between gusts of wind and spirit. The final Sonata VI in b minor is another inwardly focused distillation that defends variegations of light and shadow. The clocklike Adagio is a gem, while the final Allegro glistens in the setting sun. Each is a different keyboard, two eddies in a bay coming together harmoniously, speaking the same truth but with different tongues.

Fred Hersch: Silent, Listening (ECM 2799)

| Tyran Grillo

Fred Hersch
Silent, Listening

Fred Hersch piano
Recorded May 2023 at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Cover: Andreas Kocks
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 19, 2024

“I don’t use ideas. Every time I have an idea, it’s too limiting and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven’t run out of curiosity.”
—Robert Rauschenberg

After making his ECM debut with trumpeter Enrico Rava on 2022’s The Song Is You, pianist Fred Hersch releases his first solo album for the label. Pleased with the feel of recording at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI and the piano on which he played that spontaneous session, he felt committed to the idea of returning to the same space and instrument. In the album’s EPK, Hersch speaks of the title as connoting not listening silently but rather a mode of patience from which music grows of its own accord, as is immediately palpable in “Star-Crossed Lovers.” Through the keyhole of this Billy Strayhorn/Duke Ellington classic, we glimpse a realm only articulable in notecraft such as this. Hersch’s sense of touch is profoundly ahead of so many other players, his feeling for melodic form (not just prettiness for the sake of it) giving flesh to every bone.

After such a suspension, the abstractions of “Night Tide Light” set the stage for a swath of freely improvised and original music. They break the spell without ever removing its base components, distilling them into a new tincture for creative souls. Upon drinking it, the mystical aura of “Akrasia” pulls away the proverbial veil to reveal a not-so-proverbial landscape populated by memories knowable only to the listener. As starlight weaves through dampened strings, we are shown new constellations in our image. As the story goes, Hersch brought his sheet music for this original composition, which he realized was on the floor after the recording started, so he just played the beginning and went from there. “Aeon” is one of a few titles taken from the oeuvre of painter Robert Rauschenberg and speaks more to the transcendence at play here. “Volon” is another, working dissonance into a grammar all its own.

The title track is pure transcendence. Improvised without preparation, its feeling is never stable. It wavers between weightless highs and gravid lows—the very qualities of life itself. “Starlight” is perhaps the most descriptive title for the album. It flirts with Debussy’s Clair de Lune before veering off along its own paths, always keeping a toe in the former’s shadow. Distant fires, whispering of a destructive power that looks beautiful from afar, burn quietly. “Little Song,” originally written for the duo project with Rava, receives its premiere here. It’s a tune that bends itself in three dimensions to the listener’s ear, needing nothing but its heartbeat as accompaniment.

“The Wind” (Russ Freeman) is a first take that flows as if it were the tenth. There is something nostalgic about its contours, a certain magic of the past that permeates so many of ECM’s past solo piano gems, including Keith Jarrett’s The Melody At Night, With You and Paul Bley’s Solo in Mondsee. Similarly, this must be heard from beginning to end to be appreciated fully. Hersch lets the sounds go wherever they must, never forcing the keys where they will not bend. It ends with a rustling of leaves, a stirring of the soul, and a baptism of moonlight. The standard “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise” is a nod to Hersch’s self-professed hero, Sonny Rollins, whereas “Winter Of My Discontent” is an inspiration to itself. Like James Joyce at his most accessible, this is modernism given a fine mesh through which to steep its tea. Thus, the predetermined is not a seed but a base layer for something humane to be built on top. The taller it gets, the more it reacts to the wind, never toppling but gracing the clouds with its teetering metronome.

John Scofield: Uncle John’s Band (ECM 2796/97)

| Tyran Grillo

John Scofield
Uncle John’s Band

John Scofield guitar
Vicente Archer double bass
Bill Stewart drums
Recorded August 2022 at Clubhouse Studio, Rhinebeck, NY
Engineer: Tyler McDiarmid
Cover photo: Fotimi Potamia
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 13, 2023

Since entering the JAPO sublabel on Peter Warren’s out-of-print Solidarity in 1982, guitarist John Scofield skipped between ECM and its sister imprints for decades as a sideman. And while he has only begun headlining sessions for producer Manfred Eicher in the present one, his storied discography on Verve, Blue Note, and elsewhere leaves indelible fingerprints across the fingerboard in this laser-focused studio outing with bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Bill Stewart. Their interactions are as varied as the tunes from Scofield’s pen that activate them, and his chosen points of contact from a wide swath of the American canon only make their energy that much more electric.

Speaking of Scofield’s writing, of which this two-disc album gives us seven substantive examples, we can hardly encounter it without marveling at the vivaciousness he brings to every turn of phrase. Whether in the folkloric delicacy of “Back In Time” or the tongue-in-cheek virtuosity of “The Girlfriend Chord,” he never backs down from the opportunity to tell a meaningful story—nowhere more so than in “Nothing Is Forever,” a tender yet muscular tune dedicated to his son, Evan Scofield, who died in 2013 at the age of 26. Whatever the shade, he lets his expressivity chart its own path.

Toing the line between funk and swing, “Mask” (a reference to the pandemic) welcomes the listener with its headnod-worthy goodness. Masterful playing all around heightens the trio’s cohesion as a unit. “How Deep,” a standard 32-bar jazz, also swings with consummate intuition. Its nostalgic sound finds kindred vibes in “TV Band,” which finds the composer in a guttural mode, with a touch of country twang for good measure. His guitar stays crunchy even in milk, giving us one burst of flavor after another. Finally, “Mo Green” expands his older original, “Green Tea.”

Although Archer and Stewart shine throughout, they are particularly brilliant in their take on Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Anchored by a cycling guitar loop, the album opener takes its time to build, locking step before veering into unexpected directions. Only when the bass solo brings a hush to the scene do we remember that the looping guitar has been going all along. In addition to effortless readings of “Budo” (Miles Davis), “Ray’s Idea” (Raymond Brown), and “Somewhere” (from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story), Scofield shines in his playful rendition of Neil Young’s “Old Man,” a song he now relates to in an experiential way. Even the standard “Stairway To The Stars” seems as though it were written yesterday. In addition to its loveliness, the engineering is superb (Stewart’s brushes sounding especially lucid and present).

All good things come to an end with the title track. This Grateful Dead classic shows the trio in their finest hour. “I love playing this way with Vicente; he knows what to do, as does Bill,” says Scofield in the liner notes. “I feel like we can go anywhere.” And with all the fresh, chameleonic goings on here, it’s hard to disagree.

Elina Duni: A Time To Remember (ECM 2781)

| Tyran Grillo

Elina Duni
A Time To Remember

Elina Duni voice
Rob Luft guitar
Matthieu Michel flugelhorn
Fred Thomas piano, drums
Recorded July 2022 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Mastering: Nicolas Baillard
Cover photo: Nicolas Masson
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 16, 2023

And I will face the sea
that will bathe the pebbles.
Caresses of water, wind and air.
And light. Immensity.

So begins A Time To Remember, the latest box of newly minted coins to be placed alongside the others that singer Elina Duni has contributed to the ECM treasury. The song, “Évasion” (Escape), with music by Duni and guitarist Rob Luft and lyrics by Belgian-Israeli poet Esther Granek, is a paean to the stripping of hearts and minds down to their barest elements. Admirers of 2020’s Lost Ships will find the band more cohesive than ever, four hedges whose shapes have expanded and intertwined into one larger formation. Multi-instrumentalist Fred Thomas contributes flowing pianism to the set’s opener, while Matthieu Michel adds a voice of his own through the flugelhorn, all of it cradling Duni’s journey from wave to wave, carrying eras of history compressed into every exhalation. On the next shore awaits “Hape Derën” (Open The Door), one of two Albanian traditionals on the program, the other being the enchanting “E Vogël” (Little One), in which Duni and Luft weave through the air as birds in flight. Thomas adds light drums and percussion to this scene of domestic comforts, while Duni’s voice is as delicate as rice paper, softening the glare of remembrance from beyond the pale. “Mora Testinë” (I Grabbed The Water Jar), a folksong from Kosovo, completes the ancestral triangle with whims of flirtation and potential romance, Luft’s guitar sailing crystalline waters, as Duni and Michel move forth in unison of theme and purpose.

Singer and guitarist are the primary creative forces behind the texts and composing, respectively. The title song is one of a quadriptych from their adoring collaboration. Recalling the great folkish ballads of the 1960s and 70s (I sense the fingerprints of Tim Buckley or even Dan Fogelberg), it finds collective purpose in its individualism, where the love one shares with another, soul to soul, stands as the only monument to a world where towers and altars and fallen into dust. Meanwhile, “Whispers Of Water” and  “Sunderland” offer dreamier energies, the latter nestled in more quotidian surroundings:

Cars and spaces
Concrete erases my state of mind
But somehow
The heart is on rewind

This is the core of their navigation, where a split between the flesh and the environments it inhabits functions as its own safety net. Even the wordless “Dawn” transpires as a meditation, the meaning of which is never in doubt.

A curated smattering of touchpoints rounds out the story arc. Charlie Haden’s “First Song” finds the musicians in the most fragile mode, letting the innocence of Abbey Lincoln’s heartfelt lyrics blossom without getting in the way of their fragrance. Even Luft’s fuzzy electric works beneath the voice rather than through it. The Stephen Sondheim classic “Send In The Clowns” stands out as a surreal addition. To hear something so mainstream takes us out of body. Like “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” in the opening of the Disney/Pixar film WALL-E, it’s almost as if the world for which it was created is gone. Instead, it exists on its own terms, haunting outer space with echoes of a planet left to die. “Mallëngjimi” (Nostalgia), with music/lyrics by Rashid Krasniqi, expresses a kindred longing for an Albania that no longer exists. Even the unison of flugelhorn and voice, expanded by pianistic harmonies, can only be a closed circle. The standard “I’ll Be Seeing You” is another step out of time. It’s as if the Great American Songbook were an unfinished sentence on the tip of the cosmic tongue. Accompanied only by acoustic guitar, Duni’s voice recedes, forever unrequited.

Just as light and shadow need each other to survive but never fully comingle, each song on A Time To Remember gives shape to the rest. Their unity is born in contrast, taking shape as one of my top ECM albums of the decade.

Arve Henriksen/Harmen Fraanje: Touch of Time (ECM 2794)

| Tyran Grillo

Arve Henriksen/Harmen Fraanje
Touch of Time

Arve Henriksen trumpet, electronics
Harmen Fraanje piano
Recorded January 2023 at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Cover photo: Max Franosch
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 26, 2024

Touch of Time marks the debut of a duo project from Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen and Dutch pianist Harmen Fraanje. Their alchemy of original material, yielding equal parts silver and gold, may just be the finest ECM album of 2024.

A slightly metallic drone runs through the spinal cord of “Melancholia,” where Henriksen’s keening sensibilities and Fraanje’s edgework coalesce into a time-lapse portrait from multiple angles. Through this canvas, we are introduced to a nostalgia that runs deeper than the memories of a single lifetime. Rather, the encounter feels multi-generational and shields its candle against the gusts of history without so much as a flicker of doubt. This truth holds throughout the session, culminating in the searching movements of “Passing On The Past.”

Going one step further into these concentric pieces brings us to “The Beauty Of Sundays,” in which the creative signatures of these two sonic greats are so enmeshed that picking apart where one ends and the other begins grows more difficult as the melodies unfold. Even in “Red And Black,” which is largely pianistic, one feels pieces of each in the other.

All the tunes herein are living photographs. “Redream” is a decidedly familial one that arrives at a gong-like interior. “Winter Haze” suggests an externally manifested yet internally understood landscape, as much rural as it is urban.

Whereas in “The Dark Light,” Henriksen plays chordally through the trumpet with electronic shrouds dissolving to reveal an eddy of piano, the title track unleashes an ocean in which sand castles are dissolved by the tide of mortality. 

“What All This Is” and “Mirror Images” comprise the central dyad. Between the former’s soft textures (a sensitivity that turns stone into feathers) and the latter’s technological swirl, there is so much light that we can only close our eyes against the dawn and be grateful for all that brought us to these moments.

This is music that looks in the mirror until it slips through the glass to take the place of its own reflection.

Matthieu Bordenave: The Blue Land (ECM 2783)

| Tyran Grillo

Matthiew Bordenave
The Blue Land

Matthieu Bordenave tenor and soprano saxphones
Florian Weber piano
Patrice Moret double bass
James Maddren drums
Recorded October 2022 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Cover: Fidel Sclavo
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 26, 2024

In this follow-up to 2020’s La traversée, saxophonist Matthieu Bordenave again joins subtle forces with pianist Florian Weber and bassist Patrice Moret, now adding drummer James Maddren. The result is a new songbook written by the bandleader for the group at hand.

Weber paints with the broadest brush, taking account of every bristle in his articulations of time and space. His protracted intro to “La Porte Entrouverte” sets a vivid scene, only to dismantle and rebuild it over and over again, until Bordenave’s soprano populates it with his own shadow, along with those of Moret and Maddren in tow. This understated foundation allows brief yet virtuosic flights to grace the air with their murmurations. The title track is a more abstract wonder that dabs its brush into a palette of even finer details. Dampened pianism weaves through caressed drums and a distant tenor before the bass drops its harmonic stones into the water.

When speaking of a band’s cohesive sound, one often means to imply that the musicians fill in one another’s gaps. Here, however, they open one another’s gaps so intuition might have more leeway for self-development. Even when taking on John Coltrane’s “Compassion,” the set’s only apocryphal tune, their penchant for freer expression (note the spiritedness of Weber’s solo) takes precedence over any notions of faithfulness. “Cyrus” is likewise a masterclass in letting an atmosphere speak for itself. The title is descriptive, conjuring images of clouds and the peace one derives from watching them drift by. Its guiding arpeggios carry us without force into the darker caves of “Refraction” before light welcomes us at the other end with “Distance,” laying down a bespoke groove that keeps us on our toes.

“Three Four” does something one doesn’t often hear in jazz by sounding simultaneously nocturnal and diurnal, leaving us suspended somewhere in the middle. “Timbre” features needle-threading sopranism and is a highlight for its breathy transparency. The final word belongs to “Three Peaks,” affording an aerial view of a place we can only dream of—if only because it is so real. Thus, what seems to be a contradiction on the surface becomes an entity unto itself, ever traveling onward without a GPS.

Florian Weber: Imaginary Cycle (ECM 2782)

| Tyran Grillo

Florian Weber
Imaginary Cycle

Florian Weber piano, composition
Anna-Lena Schnabel flute
Michel Godard tuba, serpent
Quatuor Opus 333
Corentin Morvan euphonium
Jean Daufresne euphonium
Patrick Wibart euphonium
Vianney Desplantes euphonium
Lisa Stick trombone
Sonja Beeh trombone
Victoria Rose Davey trombone
Maxine Troglauer bass trombone
Recorded July 2022 at Sendesaal, Bremen
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Mixed March 2023
by Manfred Eicher, Florian Weber, and Michael Hinreiner (engineer)
at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich
Project coordinator: Thomas Herr
Cover photo: Fotini Potamia
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 13, 2024

Florian Weber returns to ECM with something transcendent in Imaginary Cycle. This suite for piano, brass ensemble and flute began with conversations between the German pianist and producer Manfred Eicher, whose shared pictorial imagination lit a fire that continues to burn long after the listening experience is through. Thus, the title precisely expresses where the music lives, breathes, and congregates. Divided into four main parts—“Opening,” “Word,” “Sacrifice,” and “Blessing”—themselves consisting of four subsections, and bookended by a Prelude and Epilogue, the result is one of the most heartfelt creations to grace the label in years.

With its somewhat abstract and fleeting atmosphere, the decidedly pianistic intro is the dust from which the Adam and Eve of what transpires are fashioned. As he plays, Weber sings softly in counterpoint (channeling Keith Jarrett at his most tender) before shifting into an arpeggiated architecture. From here, he imagines a liturgical structure in what Friedrich Kunzmann in his liner notes calls “a transfigured Mass, stripped of its dogmatic structure and expanded with the improvisational language of more modern designs” and further echoed by the call and response of piano and brass.

The same path of development repeats itself, the sonic equivalent of italics for emphasis, as the horns arise once again from beneath the floorboards. Tense chromatic strains bleed through the shroud of time as if in search of a chalice in which to be collected and held high. Meanwhile, stepwise gestures in the piano trace the contours of prayer.

With the addition of flutist Anna-Lena Schnabel, we encounter echoes of Heinz Holliger (especially his Scardanelli-Zyklus). Like a shakuhachi mimicking a crane, her instrument steps carefully in the water, trying not to disturb its own reflection. Here is also where tuba player Michel Godard brings inner voices to the fore, while the others wail in slow motion. These transubstantiations culminate in “Sacrifice,” which reaches for that unarticulable line where cloud and firmament kiss each other. The rarely heard brass instrument known as the serpent (also played by Godard) slithers into view, cradled by its more attuned offspring. Its contrast with the flute evokes the glint of moonlight on a tepid pond. Both rely on the surface tension between them, culminating in two profound duets with Weber.

Schnabel and Godard (now on tuba) start the final benediction as a duo, laying the foundation for runs across a weathered keyboard. There is a brightness here that sings. The sounds of wind through noteless brass follow, leading to a jazzy burst of joy in Weber’s solo. With heavy emotion but a light touch, he sets up the ending as a new beginning.

As idiosyncratic as it is non-idiomatic, Imaginary Cycle is undeniably special and belongs at the right hand of classics like Officium, which Weber cites as a key inspiration (along with composers Carlo Gesualdo and Orlando di Lasso). What we have, then, is the mind of a translator turned into a Book of Hours, marking our passage from life to death and back again. Would that such restorations were not so often silenced in today’s world.

Sinikka Langeland: Wind And Sun (ECM 2776)

| Tyran Grillo

Sinikka Langeland
WInd And Sun

Sinikka Langeland vocals, kantele, Jew’s harp
Mathias Eick trumpet
Trygve Seim tenor and soprano saxophones
Mats Eilertsen double bass
Thomas Strønen drums
Recorded June 2022 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Martin Abrahamsen
Mixed at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich
by Sinikka Langeland, Guido Gorna, and Michael Hinreiner
Cover photo: Dag Alveng
Produced by Guido Gorna
Release date: September 15, 2023

It walks and walks
and all the dead are with us
the dead too walk and walk
in us
–Jon Fosse

Sinikka Langeland has given breath to lungs far beyond the inner sanctum of the body, both through her salt-of-the-earth singing and unmatched touch of the kantele. And while she is ever an unfettered soul, unafraid to cross physical and metaphysical borders, there’s something particularly special about the assembly of musicians on Wind And Sun. With trumpeter Mathias Eick, saxophonist Trygve Seim, bassist Mats Eilertsen, and drummer Thomas Strønen, she brings life to the poetry of Jon Fosse as if it were the most natural process in the world—and perhaps, for her, it is. 

“Row My Ocean” sets a mood of sound and spirit. Its image of pushing against the water to move forward is the band’s modus operandi. It takes the rhythm of the waves not as a challenge to overcome but as a guiding heartbeat. This underlying pulse continues in the title track, an understated yet no less powerful instrumental that shines its way into fantasy and, in a later sung version, reveals secrets of the sea with maternal urgency.

The feet of Langeland’s composing fit perfectly in the shoes of Fosse’s verses. Her fluid yet pointillistic approach to “It Walks And Walks” echoes the poem’s dark yet life-affirming slant. As the gravity of land replaces the freedom of the waves, we feel the weight in our legs and feet and stumble into “Boat in Darkness,” where solitude becomes a path to resolution. Meanwhile, “Hands That Held” snakes and wanders as if accustomed to the uncertainty of living in the moment, unfolding in the album’s most haunting melody. Even “A Child Who Exists” (co-written with Geirr Tveitt) suffers no loss of space in being accompanied only by Seim. Neither does “Wind Song,” in which Jew’s harp and kantele dance as their own light source in the night.

Langeland’s kantele playing seems to get more enchanting with every release, and in “When The Heart Is A Moon,” we hear just how masterfully delicate her contact can be. It sparkles without offending the eye and takes our ear by the hand. The band is also locked into a faithful unity with the listener. Even Eick’s rising solo, a bird in low flight, never loses sight of its shadow throughout “I Want To Listen To The Angels,” while Eilertsen’s arco streaks and Strønen’s brushes evoke a subtle blues in “A Window Tells” and “The Love,” respectively. Band unity is on full display in the triptych of “You Hear My Heart Come” / “These Inner Days” / “Let The Rain Breathe,” where a single note needs forcing. Like the journey as a whole, every twist and turn speaks freely from the heart in the fullness of knowing that the destination is already behind us.