Jazz

Nitai Hershkovits: Call on the old wise (ECM 2779)

| Tyran Grillo

Nitai Hershkovits
Call on the old wise

Nitai Hershkovits piano
Recorded June 2022 at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Cover photo: Jean-Guy Lathuilère
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: November 10, 2023

After playing as a sideman in Oded Tzur’s quartet, pianist Nitai Hershkovits makes his solo ECM debut in a largely improvised recital. Its title pays homage to his former piano teacher, Suzan Cohen (the penultimate “For Suzan” bears her name), resulting in a total of 18 vignettes, each a variation on the theme of gratitude, heritage, and the creative spirit. From the first blush of “The Old Wise,” one feels a blend of past and future colors blending across the canvas of the present. Like much of what transpires thereafter, moments of sheer synchronicity give way to hints of breakdown, yet always manage to stay together. As cycles of commentary swirl around each other in one larger mixture of memories, feelings at once familiar and unfathomable dance in the foreground. Whether in the chromatic embrace of “A Rooftop Minuet” or the delightful games of “Intermezzo No. 4” and “Intermezzo No. 3,” Hershkovits fuses classical and jazz impulses. The latter sprout up even higher in “Majestic Steps Glow Far” and “Dream Your Dreams,” where desert flowers bloom. Whereas one sounds like a lost standard translated from fragments of memory into a coherent whole, the other (by Molly Drake) is only one of two covers (the other being Duke Ellington’s “Single Petal Of A Rose”) to grace the program.

In tracks like “Enough To Say I Will,” tender beginnings give way to subtle leaps of faith, each lasting the length of a breath or two, before gentle dissonances prevent us from falling into fantasy. The reality of things becomes clearer as virtuosity sheds one snake skin after another, texture taking precedence over key. “Mode Antigona” is among the set’s most lyrical turns (the others being “Of Trust And Remorse,” “Late Blossom,” and “In Satin”). Like the rest, however, it’s never content to stay in one place but rather gives itself over to the whims of the air currents in the room. It’s as if the flow of time itself were a conductor treating every deviation of the score as an opportunity for discovery. Further treasures abound in the rushing river of “Mode Brilliante” and the smoky piano bar vibes of “This You Mean To Me.” And in the quiet exuberance of “Of Mentorship,” we find remnants of all that came before, joy reigning supreme.

Mette Henriette: Drifting (ECM 2766)

| Tyran Grillo

Mette Henriette
Drifting

Mette Henriette tenor saxophone
Johan Lindvall piano
Judith Hamann violoncello
Recorded 2020-2022
Munchmuseet, Oslo
Engineer: Peer Espen Ursfjord
Mixed April 2022
Studios La Buissonne
by Manfred Eicher, Mette Henriette, and Gérard de Haro (engineer)
Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Cover photo: Ørjan Marakatt Bertelsen
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 20, 2023

Eight years after making her self-titled ECM debut in 2015, saxophonist Mette Henriette returns to the label with her anticipated follow-up: the aptly titled Drifting. While the word has for us delicate connotations, it stems etymologically from the Proto-Indo-European dhreibh. Thus, it originally implied moving a large number of things, such as driving sheep. The present program of 15 pieces, spun into three-dimensional webs with pianist Johan Lindvall and cellist Judith Hamann, welcomes both meanings, along with many magnitudes between.

Henriette describes the present material as oriented toward growing, and it’s effortless to see why. Beyond the initial seeds, much can be discovered in subsequent waterings. Her distinctive register is no less powerful for its quietude and perhaps even more so for its forays into virtuosic flashes. Put another way, she is interested not in nouns and verbs but in the indefinite articles and prepositions that give them direction. Once again, the intensity of understatement reigns supreme.

Choosing favorites is fruitless, not only because they’re all so beautiful in their way, but also because the narrative unfurls as one connected sequence of events. For while “The 7th” introduces with a brief, stepwise introduction and “Solsnu” completes the circle with a creaking of wood, breath, and string, the text that binds them is written in starlight and wind. Much of what we encounter within ends just as it begins to take shape, letting the rest of its life travel of its own volition. This self-sufficiency is the profoundest remainder of Drifting, wherein dreams of birds (“Čađat”) and icy breath (“0 º”) kiss the cheek of non-existence.

As brief as some pieces are, including the haunts of “Čieđđa, fas,” “Crescent,” “Divining,” to call them vignettes feels wrong, as this implies there is some form of restriction at play. Rather, these are cells in the act of division, each iteration more exponential than the last. As such, change is always waiting around every corner. This is why even the more playful “Chassé” and “A Choo” (the latter a deconstruction of “The Knuckle Song”) so organically twist themselves into something other than themselves. Because they are not bound by time, neither are they committed to a specific form. As in “Indrifting you,” the music is always on the verge of falling one way or another. The instruments sway in and out of frame as a woven instrument in aggregate. At their center is the title track, which holds the moonlight like a tether to some longed-for dream and never letting go, even in adulthood. It makes you want to cry, wondering why you just stood there watching yours float until it popped like a dying star overhead…

Trygve Seim/Frode Haltli: Our Time (ECM 2813)

| Tyran Grillo

Trygve Seim
Frode Haltli
Our Time

Trygve Seim soprano and tenor saxophones
Frode Haltli accordion
Recorded June 2023, Himmelfahrtskirche, Munich
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Cover photo: Thomas Wunsch
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 13, 2024

For the past 25 years, saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli have compacted dirt together as musical allies one step at a time. In this successor to 2008’s Yeraz, the duo opens a new door of their advent calendar into a world of freshly tilled land.

The set is pillared by four improvisations, each of which blends into a through-composed selection. Across this spectrum, they carve into introspection and extroversion, and back again. Seim has such an ancient approach to the modern reed, which at his lips sounds like a duduk, as Haltli’s wingflaps take his uplift to heart. Delicacy abounds, along with mature textural contrasts, each of which elicits a mood, a picture, a song. In “Shyama Sundara Madana Mohana,” a North Indian folk song, higher notes seek transcendence, while colors come alive in Igor Stravinsky’s “Les Cinq Doigts No. 5.”

Aside from “Oy Khodyt’ Son, Kolo Vikon,” a traditional Ukrainian lullaby rendered with just as much freedom and love as anything unscripted between them, the album is largely self-composed. From Haltli’s “Du, mi tid” to Seim’s “Elegi,” they plant one careful seed after another, watering with patient listening. The gradualness of their hindsight pays commensurate deference to the subject matters at hand. It is as if theirs was a world of shadows whose existence is discernible only because of the light they carry. Although we cannot know for sure where they are going, the music hints at a destination known only to the subconscious mind. Rising tensions mingle with artful release as the landscape feels warmer and less distant, more human than before. Amid all of this emotional shading, “Arabian Tango” feels like a once-in-a-lifetime joy. The most delicate tenor notes from its composer mesh beautifully with Haltli’s solo of sorts, while the space of the room itself lends a voice to this dance of emergence and recession.

Taken as a whole, Our Time is a mountain compressed into breath and exhaled in words of snow.

Norma Winstone/Kit Downes: Outpost of Dreams (ECM 2811)

| Tyran Grillo

Norma Winstone
Kit Downes
Outpost

Norma Winstone voice
Kit Downes piano
Recorded April 2023 at Artesuono Recording Studio, Udine
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Mixed January 2024
by Manfred Eicher and Stefano Amerio
at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich
Cover photo: Fotini Potamia
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: July 5, 2024

The duo on this recording of vocalist Norma Winstone and pianist Kit Downes came about by chance when Winstone’s go-to accompanist, Nikki Iles, was unable to participate in a London gig, resulting in Downes sitting in as a last-minute replacement. And yet, one would never guess at such a backstory given the openness of heart and communication shared between these two luminaries in their own right. The resulting binary star of their collaboration makes for a tender yet powerful examination of emotional landscapes that feels like it has been around for aeons.

Especially revelatory is hearing Downes’ settings of Winstone’s characteristically astute words. The first of four, “El,” opens the set with the piano’s inner resonance, extended by a faint shimmer from a Hammond B3 organ. The lyrics, written for Downes’ daughter, turn the environment into a reflection of the inner self—and vice versa. Her voice is one of a kind, not only because it belongs to her, body and soul, but also because she gives it so freely to the bodies and souls of her listeners. It exposes its strengths and vulnerabilities in equal measure, knowing that each needs the other in mutual regard. Nowhere is this clearer than in “The Steppe,” where what she calls the “slow drip, drip of a fantasy” becomes the time signature of our existence. Downes expands on this in an instrumental passage, as if the only way out is the path leading back to itself. “Nocturne” peeks beyond the curtain of human folly to the core of truth it so often obscures, while the spoken word of “In Search Of Sleep” touches the darkness with its psychological acuity. Between them is “Black Is the Colour,” one of two traditionals on the album. Winstone digs deep into her vocal register, exploring that ashen beauty she carries inside. Downes makes it all the more poignant with his adventurous harmonizing. The Scandinavian folk tune, “Rowing Home” (in an arrangement by Bob Cornford) becomes a song of desire. Winstone carries its fire into the foreground, casting a shadow over the face of fate.

But just as these feel as fresh as yesterday, the application of her wordcraft turns modern themes into timeless constructions. The music of John Taylor takes center stage in “Fly The Wind,” showing that the late pianist’s spirit is still very much alive in Winstone’s heart. For Carla Bley’s “Jesus Maria,” she replaces the original lyrics with those of her own making, telling of a man whose presence defies the laws of physics by working through the narrowest emotional crevices toward solace from misguided worlds. Winstone’s ability to draw out scenes that feel so inevitable speaks to her connection to melody, not as an aesthetic necessity but as a narrative skeleton to which her words are seamless flesh. In “Beneath An Evening Sky” (Ralph Towner), two lovers find their hearts intertwined no matter the distance between them. Meanwhile, in “Out Of The Dancing Sea” (Aidan O’Rourke), the inner self becomes a map to unfold in the outside world. With that as our guide, the more we travel, the more we begin to know ourselves as we inhabit different places of residence along the way.

Colin Vallon: Samares (ECM 2809)

| Tyran Grillo

Colin Vallon
Samares

Colin Vallon piano
Patrice Moret double bass
Julian Sartorius drums
Recorded June/July 2023 at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Cover photo: Woong Chul An
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: November 15, 2024

With Samares, Colin Vallon completes a trilogy that began with 2014’s Le Vent and continued with 2017’s Danse, bringing its themes into the present. The Swiss pianist, reunited once again with bassist Patrice Moret and drummer Julian Sartorius, deepens his telepathic sense of touch across nine original compositions. The album’s title refers to what I grew up calling “helicopter seeds,” which often fall from maple trees in protracted flights. The image is an apt one, as each tune lends itself to plentiful regard as it makes its way toward the ground, so that by the end, we are left with a clearer view of the sky than ever.

“Racine” opens with brushed drums and prepared piano before morphing into piano proper with bowed cymbals and other gilding from Sartorius (who proves himself to be a phenomenal colorist here and in the later track, “Étincelle”). This exploration of morning light allows us to take in the scenery as it emerges, one frame at a time. Next to this awakening, “Mars” introduces the trio’s subtle feel for groove. Blending distance and proximity, the atmosphere is cushioned by the softness of its vision. There is a sense of privacy, of one looking out toward the mountains, of waiting for new constellations to shed the blanket of the horizon and reveal themselves. The underlying pulse is a comforting reminder that we are always moving forward, bound for life itself. Akin to tracks 4 (“Ronce”) and 8 (“Souche”), it emits a subtle yet locked-in pulse that always ensures Vallon has a light, no matter how dark the mood gets.

“Lou” is one of two pieces named for his children (the other being the progressively whimsical and lively “Timo”). It features piano preparations with objects bouncing on the strings as if to convey the trepidations of parenthood. Finally, “Brin” evokes the rustling of leaves, a shifting light, and faces from the past—fading but not forgotten. It is a photograph in a darkroom developing in reverse, leading the eyes (and ears) into shadow.

What has always caught my attention with Vallon’s trio, and with particular maturity this time around, is the ability to disturb the surface tension of its melodic waters without ever breaking it. It cradles the spinning seeds of the title track in their delicate demise, knowing that fresh growth will always find a way to take root.

Giovanni Guidi: A New Day (ECM 2808)

| Tyran Grillo

Giovanni Guidi
A New Day

Giovanni Guidi piano
James Brandon Lewis tenor saxophone
Thomas Morgan double bass
João Lobo drums
Recorded August 2023 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Mastering: Nicolas Baillard
Cover painting: Emmanuel Barcilon
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: July 12, 2024

Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi expands on his trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer João Lobo by welcoming saxophonist James Brandon Lewis (here making his ECM debut). The result is A New Day in more ways than one, each breath a chance at discovery.

This deeply curated session begins with “Cantos Del Ocells,” a traditional Catalan Christmas song rendered with soft-spoken confidence. Lewis speaks only as needed, letting his tenor work its way only through those cracks wide enough to accommodate him. It’s one of two tunes not written by Guidi—the other being a rubato take on the Rogers and Hart standard “My Funny Valentine,” which feels like a well of possibility despite (if not because of) its familiarity. 

With so much space to wander in, the listener is free to explore each new environment as it unlocks itself. Whether your flavor of choice is the arco-inflected bassing of “To A Young Student” or the extended percussion of “Means For A Rescue,” organic elements get revealed by the mesh of every excavation. The group improvisational “Only Sometimes” casts a dim spotlight on Morgan and is remarkable for fitting seamlessly into its surroundings, as if it were an inevitability of the musicians gathered.

The inky call and response between Lewis and Guidi in “Luigi (The Boy Who Lost His Name)” is a highlight for its colorful turns, Lobo providing especially detailed commentary throughout. Between it and the glistening “Wonderland,” there is plenty of dreaminess to unpack in future listenings. Having the surest traction of any tune, Guidi, Morgan, and Lobo interlocking while Lewis carves through ebony and ivory, it is an invitation to run back home and start the journey again with fresh ears.

Those searching for groove in the standard sense will come up short. But if you want something exploratory that expresses itself with open-book honesty, then this one is for you.

John Surman: Words Unspoken (ECM 2789)

| Tyran Grillo

John Surman
Words Unspoken

John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet
Rob Luft guitar
Rob Waring vibraphone
Thomas Strønen drums
Recorded December 2022 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Martin Abrahamsen
Cover photo: Christian Vogt
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: February 16, 2024

Words Unspoken documents the unique convocation of saxophonist John Surman (in his 80th year as of this writing) with guitarist Rob Luft, vibraphonist Rob Waring, and drummer Thomas Strønen. The combination, both in terms of the instruments and the spirit of those handling them, evokes some of the groundbreaking collaborations that graced ECM in the 90s, If Mountains Could Sing not least among them. Though I wouldn’t place this in the same category, the session certainly has a charm all its own—one that is unmistakably Surman.

While the bandleader’s fluidity on soprano saxophone is as full-throated as ever, especially in the opening “Pebble Dance,” for which Waring and Luft create a flexible center while Strønen provides the undercurrent for their forward motion, there’s nothing quite like his handling of the lower reeds. The baritone of the title track dances with a characteristically light touch, while Luft’s electric overlay adds cosmic touches expanding on Surman’s experiments with arpeggiators back in the 80s. This, in combination with the vibraphone, adds a requisite touch. The baritone moves more snakily in “Around The Edges,” where romantic and platonic impulses comingle. Sticking with the gravelly end of things, Surman elicits some fantastic palindromes on the bass clarinet, culminating in “Hawksmoor,” which offers the most endearing development of the set, exhaling two parts gold for every inhalation of silver. Along the way, “Graviola” epitomizes the freedom of his playing over Waring’s precise infrastructures. Strønen, too, defers to a liberated touch.

Let us not neglect, though, the soprano’s philosophies, so beautifully expressed in such tracks as “Precipice,” in which it teeters at dizzying heights, and “Flower In Aspic,” where time and space bond over shared interests. The revelrous “Onich Ceilidh” (“ceilidh” referring to a party with dancing and music) encapsulates the joy still left in one of ECM’s most uncompromising yet humble stars, giving Luft carte blanche to reach some of the album’s finest points. And while much of the territory will seem familiar to longtime listeners at its core, to experience it under the navigation of such a fresh band makes it feel presciently true.

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.