Nordic Quartet

John Surman soprano saxophone, baritone saxophone, alto clarinet, bass clarinet
Karin Krog voice
Terje Rypdal guitar
Vigleik Storaas piano
Recorded August 1994 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Nordic Quartet bonds an unconventional roster of musicians and conceptual approaches. John Surman reaches into his usual toolkit, favoring the lower range, while vocalist Karin Krog sews her Sheila Jordan-like vibrato into Terje Rypdal’s electric swoons and pianist Vigleik Storaas’s intimate embraces. One can expect Surman to shine above any group he might be a part of, but in “Traces” it is Rypdal and Krog who slink like the wolves of our interest through abandoned factories, such that piano and reeds seem to drop from the ceiling, each a spider invisibly tethered. And indeed, the album is about nothing if not traces, smeared on the windowpanes of childhood homes, one-bedroom apartments, and coffee shops. We hear this most in Surman’s duets: “Unwritten Letter” (w/Krog), “The Illusion” (w/Storaas), and “Double Tripper” (w/Rypdal), the latter a battle-scarred stumble into post-traumatic memory. Rypdal steps up the mood in “Gone To The Dogs,” where his softly rocking chording anchors us in a hammock knotted by soprano (like floss through silver teeth) and lit by a kiss of pianistic sun. It is in these instrumental tracks that the album takes off in more exciting directions—surprising in light of the healthy pathos Krog wove into Such Winters Of Memory. Her most intuitive contributions to this session are wordless, as in the ghostly overtones of “Ved Svørevatn,” which blisters like an underwater volcano. Lost to its own philosophies, it is a voice guided only by (and into) itself. “Wild Bird” is the last breath, a quiet account of dark thoughts and darker thinkers. A heat rash of organ spreads across Krog’s lyrical skin, itself a half-remembered cry, windy and chopped beyond recognition. This is our solitude realized in sound, naked as the moment we are born.

<< Heiner Goebbels: Ou bien le débarquement désastreux (ECM 1552)
>> Terje Rypdal: If Mountains Could Sing (ECM 1554)

John Surman Quartet
Stranger Than Fiction

John Surman soprano and baritone saxophones, alto and bass clarinets
John Taylor piano
Chris Laurence double-bass
John Marshall drums
Recorded December 1993 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Reedist John Surman has laid much of his ECM path with the polished stones of his solo work. Whatever the setting, he is one who listens to his surroundings, be they atmospheric or human. In the latter vein comes “Canticle With Response,” which opens this wintry quartet date with pianist John Taylor, bassist Chris Laurence, and drummer John Marshall. Its sparse, porous mood is a leitmotif on Stranger Than Fiction. Yet rather than something to which the musicians return, it is something that returns to them, a ghost that finds movement where there is stillness. Like a sage’s hair in twilight, the group’s sound is gray yet aglow, worn to the bone by reflection in “A Distant Spring.” Surman sets his soprano to flight in the watercolors of “Tess,” for which Taylor splashes stories, each a step in river water. Those gray strands continue to bend and stretch, winding around the memorable theme of “Promising Horizons.” This haunting afterimage of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy bows to distillations of baritone and bass.

In this forest, dark with age, one can only travel “Across The Bridge,” guided by Surman’s prowess on the bass clarinet. His improvisations on said unwieldy instrument glisten despite the shadows of which they are composed. “Moonshine Dancer” welcomes us to a nocturnal circus, where performer and spectator number two in the night, their hands and laughter for each other alone, while “Running Sands” flows, like its namesake, at the touch of wind and water. A pliant solo from Laurence lifts us into the clouds, each topped like a sundae with delicious baritone caramel. Everything above funnels into the final “Triptych.” Like a fiber optic cable, it flows through the earth, hidden and dormant until the flick of a creative switch sets its veins thrumming with information—only here, you need nothing more than your ears to cup the light into oblivion.

<< Gavin Bryars: Vita Nova (ECM 1533 NS)
>> Giya Kancheli: Exil (ECM 1535 NS)

John Surman
A Biography Of The Rev. Absalom Dawe

John Surman alto and bass clarinets, soprano and baritone saxophones, keyboards
Recorded October 1994 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I would venture to say that anyone who has dug into the trove of ECM’s 1980s output has a soft spot for John Surman’s lone outings. The English reedman brings a signature sense of purpose to every musical line he touches, whether it’s by mouth through his favored baritone or by hand, laying down tasteful electronic contexts for looser improvisations. Now well into the 1990s, Surman outdid himself with A Biography Of The Rev. Absalom Dawe, treating listeners to his most deeply realized solo experience yet. Named for a cousin of Surman’s great-great grandmother, Biography employs the usual studio trickery for a sound that is wood-grained, born of earth and sky. “First Light” highlights another preferred tool in his kit—the bass clarinet—and grows from it feathers like no one else can. Following this dawn chorus for one, he plucks out yet another, drawing the needle of his soprano—honeyed but never saccharine—through the diaristic airs of “Countless Journeys.” Moods vary thereafter, cycling through the orthodox (“A Monastic Calling”), the pagan (“Druid’s Circle”), the questioning (“The Long Narrow Road”), and back into the unity of “Three Aspects,” which braids a trinity of sopranos, from which one breaks strays like a firefly to the far side of a darkening field. In addition to these evocative poems, “Wayfarer” and “The Far Corners” are among Surman’s best, the one somehow dancing bass clarinet on the head of a pin, the other paying homage to tone in a soprano solo for the ages. This leaves only “An Image,” refracting baritone lines through an echoing prism.

Surman brings out, especially through this album, a distinct sort of programmatic expression, which through its inflections evokes environments so internal they cannot be rendered, except through the gift of his interpretations.

<< Steve Tibbetts: The Fall Of Us All (ECM 1527)
>> Krakatau: Matinale (ECM 1529)