Forthcoming ECM releases

[mjazzg]

one track sample available of the new Berne at http://player.ecmrecords.com/tim-berne-snakeoil

[relyles]

I read somewhere that the Billy Hart quartet with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and I think Ben Street recorded a new release that will be released in ECM sometime in early 2012. Looking forward to that!

[David Ayers]

I read somewhere that the Billy Hart quartet with Mark Turner, Ethan Iverson and I think Ben Street recorded a new release that will be released in ECM sometime in early 2012. Looking forward to that!

"All Our Reasons", due for release March 16, along with an Anders Jormin title.

[danasgoodstuff]

IIRC, Corea doing B Evans w/paul Motian whould be out soon, or is that some other label?

[Leeway]

one track sample available of the new Berne at http://player.ecmrec...-berne-snakeoil

Yeah, that sounds good, and no evidence of the dreaded ECM "ambience" either. I like the sound of Noriega's clarinet and bass clarinet in the mix. I'll be picking this one up.

[thedwork]

one track sample available of the new Berne at http://player.ecmrec...-berne-snakeoil

Yeah, that sounds good, and no evidence of the dreaded ECM "ambience" either. I like the sound of Noriega's clarinet and bass clarinet in the mix. I'll be picking this one up.

x2. wow that sounds good. thanks mjazzg. certainly will be buying that record...

Edited January 21, 2012 by thedwork

[David Ayers]

I see also upcoming a Masabumi Kikuchi trio title, Sunrise, with Thomas Morgan and Paul Motian.

[GA Russell]

I received these four press releases this evening:

Jon Balke

Batagraf

Say and Play

Jon Balke: piano, keyboards, electronics, tongoné, darbouka, percussion

Helge Andreas Norbakken: sabar, gorong, djembe, talking drum, shakers, percussion

Emilie Stoesen Christensen: vocals

Erland Dahlen: drums

Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen: poetry reading

ECM CD: B0016427-02

UPC: 6025 278 0490 3

Six years on from Statements, Batagraf’s ECM debut, the collective returns with transformed personnel but unchanged priorities. Drumming as language and language harnessed as music: both aspects remain important for this “percussion think-tank” of Norwegian origin, thoroughly international in its aspirations.

“Drumming is speaking and language is a miracle, in all its manifestations” notes co-founder Jon Balke of Batagraf’s mission. “In the Orisha culture of the Yoruba in Nigeria, manifested and surviving vividly in Cuba, the Bata drum patterns symbolize sacred texts. In Arabic music the metric patterns stem from lines of poetry. In Wolof culture Bakas are small personal poems that define a drummer’s identity and purpose in life; they are also played and used as breaks or signals to alter the flow of the music.” Inspired by these rich traditions, Say and Play draws upon the inner energy and creativity of the cultures, as Batagraf continues to explore the relation between language and rhythms, also offering language that celebrates the rhythms of nature, as in Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen’s poetry:

listen!

a cloud answers the call of rain

and plays hundred-handed on a fern

as summer answers

the call of autumn

as the sky pulls down rain

and drums with it

Pedersen, a well-known Norwegian poet and dramatist is a recent addition to Batagraf’s mutable ranks, and he reads texts from his books Samlede dikt (Collected Poems), Geitehjerte (A Goat’s Heart), and Erfaring og forsvinning (Experience and Disappearance). English translations of texts used on Say and Play can be read at www.ecmrecords.com.

Jon Balke also supplies his own stream of consciousness lyrics, ably sung by Emilie Stoesen Christensen. Emilie, daughter of veteran ECM drummer Jon Christensen, is lately gaining recognition for her work with a number of Norwegian bands, including the Oslo JazzNonett. She makes her label debut here.

Kit drummer Erland Dhalen is well known to followers of modern jazz of the north for his tenure in the groups of Nils Petter Molvaer and Eivind Aarset, including the latter’s Sonic Codex Quartet.

The core of the band, in its current incarnation, comprises Jon Balke and Helge Andreas Norbakken. Balke, author of most of the pieces here, stresses that “all the percussion layers and the final development of the music have been very much a collaboration.” Norbakken has been an important contributor to Balke projects including Siwan and the Magnetic North Orchestra, and has also been heard on ECM as a member of Jon Hassell’s group on Last night the moon came, dropping its clothes in the street and with Miki N’Doye on Tuki. Other affiliations have included extensive work with singers Mari Boine and Maria João.

Jon Balke has been professionally active in music since the age of 18 when he joined Arild Andersen’s group to record Clouds In My Head for ECM. Since then, his musical life has moved through several stages. On ECM he has been featured as leader/composer/ arranger/keyboardist of Oslo 13, Magnetic North Orchestra and Siwan, and as solo pianist on Book of Velocities. His involvement with percussion, fore-grounded in Batagraf, has a long history, and dates back to his ten-year collaboration with West-African musicians in the band E’Olen, between 1978 and 1988.

Further ECM releases with Jon Balke are in preparation, including Magnetic Works, a double album anthology of the Magnetic North Orchestra, for release in 2012.

************************************************************************************************

Tim Berne

Snakeoil

Tim Berne: alto saxophone

Oscar Noriega: clarinet, bass clarinet

Matt Mitchell: piano

Ches Smith: drums, percussion

U.S. Release date: February 7, 2012

ECM CD: B0016437-02

UPC: 6025 2778654 4

Time Berne will tour with the band on Snakeoil:

Feb 16th Boston, MA Regattabar

Feb 17th New York, NY Rubin Museum

Feb 18th Baltimore, MD An die Musik live!

Feb 19th Washington DC Bohemian caverns

Feb 24th Austin, TX Cactus Cafe on the UT Campus

Feb 25th Los Angeles,CA Blue Whale

Feb 27th Santa Cruz, CA Kuumbwa

Feb 28th Oakland, CA Yoshi’s

Feb 29th Eugene,OR The Shedd

March 1st Seattle, WA Seattle Asian Art Museum

March 2nd Portland, OR Alberta Rose Theater

Saxophonist Tim Berne introduces a new quartet and a program of powerful new music on his first studio album in eight years. Snakeoil is Berne’s third ECM appearance – he previously contributed to David Torn’s Prezens and Michael Formanek’s The Rub and Spare Change - and his leader debut for the label. It is also an exemplary manifestation of his compositional directions. Berne’s exacting pieces propel the players down maze-like corridors, with new challenges looming around every corner: startling textural shifts, serpentine melodies, sudden rhythmic displacements, modular grooves that gradually attain an unstoppable momentum. Written and improvised sequences blur into each other, overlap, run parallel. Throughout, Berne’s tough alto tone, honed decades ago under the mentorship of Julius Hemphill, is set off against the earthy lyricism of Oscar Noriega’s clarinets, Matt Mitchell’s compendious piano and Ches Smith’s buoyant net of drums, gongs and cymbals. It’s an arresting collective sound, from a disciplined crew: two years of workshopping and woodshedding preceded the recording to reach what Berne calls “the necessary ‘looseness’ essential for a group identity”, and to realize “the dynamics that would enable the sonic details of this chamber-like band to emerge clearly.” He describes the processes of preparing the project as “similar to how one would approach a classical recording”, yet the outcome is as far outside the genres as any of his work. Obvious stylistic reference is avoided.

“When I started out, in the early 1970s, many of the players I listened to a lot – including the Chicago guys like (Henry) Threadgill, Roscoe (Mitchell), (Anthony) Braxton – they each had their own musical world,” Berne recalls. “Each of them had his own sound, and each of them put the music together in a different way, and none of them was making much use of head-solo-head formats, there was a lot of creating of suite-like things. I absorbed some of that approach naively, without really analyzing it, and very early on I decided that my tunes would not end, if I could help it, in the same way that they began. That became my thing. The music’s gotten more complex, or more sophisticated since then, but that simple, central idea remains at the core: I want to move the music to a different place. The point of writing music, for me, is to make something happen, to promote improvisation, to bring out musical events that would not develop without that push from the writing, and which could not emerge in a purely free playing situation.”

One aspect informs the other, perhaps. As Berne’s Hard Cell trio, with Craig Taborn and Tom Rainey reached the natural end of its lifespan, much of Berne’s time in the last decade was invested in improvising groups. Amongst them, Buffalo Collision with Ethan Iverson, Hank Roberts and Dave King, Paraphrase with Drew Gress and Tom Rainey, BB & C with Jim Black and Nels Cline. “I was avoiding decisive action for a few years, hoping some brilliant concept might suddenly appear in front of my eyes, and I finally came up with an idea for a new band. As always, I was looking for strong personalities who are not afraid to express their musical opinions in the heat of battle.”

First of the musicians to be approached was pianist Matt Mitchell, who had written to Berne 12 years ago, while still a music student, requesting scores of two of Tim’s more convoluted pieces, an early signal of earnest intent from a player who likes a challenge. In a recent New York Times interview, Mitchell mentioned Andrew Hill and Iannis Xenakis as inspirations. On Snakeoil, Mitchell is, Berne says, “the master at managing the transitions, balancing the structural elements and the free elements and cueing the events in the scores. On this record, Matt and Ches are really the concertmasters – they keep everything moving forward. I’ve been trying to wean myself of dictatorial tendencies. In the past, I wanted to control everything that happened and when it happened – especially in some of my earlier music, which was sometimes fanatically arranged. At some point I backed away from that, wanting instead to become part of the surprise. I like to give more responsibility to the players and involve them more in the shaping of the music: by now, in this band, they’re as concerned about it as I am.”

The blending of Berne’s alto and Oscar Noriega’s clarinet, their malleable approach to a line and their close understanding, can sometimes leave a listener wondering whether he’s hearing written arrangement or music invented in the moment. “I’d known Oscar for years. We live in the same neighborhood (in Brooklyn), but hadn’t played together before this band. I had a bunch of music by Julius Hemphill at home, including some pieces for alto and trumpet which Julius had written for a gig with Lester (Bowie). I ran into Oscar in the street one day and asked him if he’d like to come over to the house and read through it with me, clarinet being in the same register as the trumpet. And that felt good right away. In the quartet I’m also enjoying the sound of Oscar’s bass clarinet with the piano – I love that.”

Berne met drummer Ches Smith through guitarist Mary Halvorson, all three part of NYC’s shifting pool of improvisers. “I liked Ches’s whole vibe, including the seriousness with which he approaches rehearsal, whether or not there’s a gig in sight. That was a big point for me. When I had these three players who were both original improvisers and great readers, it was really a motivation to write a lot of new material…” Smith extends his drum kit on Snakeoil, adding tympani, congas and gongs. His frame of reference is unique, his own background tracing an arc from early experiences in metal and punk bands, to jazz and free improvisation, contemporary composition and Haitian vodou drumming. His CV includes gigs with everyone from rock band Mr Bungle to Terry Riley, via Wadada Leo Smith, Iggy Pop, John Tchicai, Fred Frith and Marc Robot’s Ceramic Dog. Smith’s own band These Arches currently includes Tim Berne, as well as Tony Malaby, Mary Halvorson and Andrea Parkins.

Matt Mitchell is a pianist and composer interested in the intersections of various strains of acoustic, electric, composed, and improvised new music. His sextet, Central Chain includes fellow Snakeoil members Tim Berne and Oscar Noriega, as well as Mary Halvorson, John Hebert, and Tomas Fujiwara. He also plays in trio with Berne and Ches Smith, and in duo with Smith. Other affiliations include groups with John Hollenbeck, Darius Jones, Rudresh Mahanthappa/Bunky Green and others. He is also active as an educator at the Brooklyn Center for Improvisational Music.

Oscar Noriega has previously worked with Lee Konitz, Anthony Braxton, Dewey Redman and Paul Motian, and been a member of the band Sideshow, who specialized in free approaches to the music of Charles Ives. Current activities include the ‘Mexico-inspired’ Banda De Los Muertos, which Noriega co-leads, and the group Endangered Blood with Chris Speed, Jim Black and Trevor Dunn. Since Fall 2010, he has curated The Palimpsestic Series, a weekly music event at Barbes, Brooklyn.

Tim Berne was recently ranked in the Top 10 of Time Out New York’s “Essential NYC Jazz Icons”, an honor he will likely take with a pinch of salt, but also a reminder of the persistence of his endeavors: “Based on the recorded evidence, it may very well have been Tim Berne who was the definitive genius of NYC’s downtown 1980s jazz scene,” Time Out opined. “In the intervening years, he has remained committed to exploring the small group jazz idiom with a series of gritty, head-turning bands that have helped propel younger players such as Jim Black, Craig Taborn and Ches Smith into alt-jazz stardom”.

Since 1996, the primary outlet for Berne’s recordings has been his own label Screwgun, which has presented his bands, mostly in concert recordings. For the new quartet, he sought a larger platform. Accordingly, Snakeoil was recorded for ECM at Avatar Studios in New York in January 2011, with Manfred Eicher producing.

“As this band progressed, about a year into the work, I felt it was time to start thinking about a studio album, and also one that could maybe be heard a little more widely. And I had a strong wish to work with a producer, to have some feedback in the working process. I wanted a collaboration. Manfred was helpful in the recording, not just in terms of sound, but in dynamic details and musical details, too, including ideas for duo and trio sections in the work, sculpting and tightening areas of the music that I’d been leaving open in performance. The first day of recording we were fine-tuning the material. On the second day, we ripped through it, and really got a flow going.”

For further tour details: www.ecmrecords.com

***********************************************************************************

Giovanna Pessi

Susanna Wallumrød

If Grief Could Wait

Giovanna Pessi: baroque harp

Susanna Wallumrød: voice

Jane Achtman: viola da gamba

Marco Ambrosini: nyckelharpa

U.S. Release date: February 7, 2012

ECM CD: B0016428-02

UPC: 6025 277 7197 7

If Grief Could Wait is an intimate album of very special character, the outcome of a collaboration between harpist Giovanna Pessi and singer Susanna Wallumrød. Given impetus also by the nyckelharpa of Marco Ambrosini and Jane Achtman’s viola da gamba, the project has Pessi’s arrangements of Henry Purcell songs at its core. It begins with “The Plaint” (from The Fairy Queen of 1692) and continues with “If Grief Has Any Pow’r To Kill”, and “O Solitude” (from The Theatre of Musick), as well as “Music For a While” (from Oedipus) and “An Evening Hymn” (from Harmonia Sacra)

But Purcell’s music has never been heard quite like this. Threaded between his songs and instrumental pieces here are works of singer-songwriters Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake, as well as songs by Susanna Wallumrød herself. If Grief Could Wait is neither a project that adheres rigorously to ideals of historical performance practice, nor one that strives self-consciously to “cross over”. Pessi and Wallumrød offer music that they love, and all of it is played with commitment by the participating musicians. Purcell and Cohen are respected on their own terms, and Susanna’s pure voice and Giovanna’s subtle and evocative arrangements bring continuity to the repertoire. And, as Pessi points out, Cohen and Drake songs from the last century are also, from a contemporary perspective, ‘old music’.

Recorded in three days in Lugano last November, this fresh-sounding album has some years of history behind it. Giovanna Pessi previously recorded for ECM with the Rolf Lislevand Ensemble (Lislevand’s Diminuito, recorded 2007/8, includes also Marco Ambrosini), and also with the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble, the hard-to-categorize group led by a ‘jazz’ pianist but inspired by contemporary composition and folk music. Wallumrød Ensemble albums with Pessi include The Zoo Is Far and Fabula Suite Lugano, recorded respectively in 2006 and 2009. It was while rehearsing in Oslo with Christian that Pessi first met the pianist’s younger sister, Susanna Wallumrød, then just beginning to shape her own musical career.

Susanna subsequently invited Giovanna to play harp on one of her albums (Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos, issued by Rune Grammofon in 2007), and when producer Manfred Eicher invited Giovanna to come up with a proposal for an ECM recording of her own, the idea of working further with Susanna’s voice had become a priority. “I have played with so many ‘early music’ singers with perfect, trained classical voices and I knew that I didn’t want that kind of sound, not this time. So I asked her if she would like to try.” Susanna Wallumrød had already recorded Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament” (“When I Am Laid In Earth”) from Dido and Aeneas on one of her own albums; the musical territory was not altogether unfamiliar, but finding the appropriate approach to it was the challenge.

Both singer and harpist recognised that the project needed time, if they were to grow together musically. Pessi: “We come from such different places – Susanna with her pop music background, me with my baroque background. I needed to get closer to her feeling for rhythmic playing and singing, and she needed to develop her sense of line and phrasing. We worked a long time on preparing the material. Every time I was in Oslo – which was often when I was playing a lot with Christian - we’d get together and play, and she visited me in Switzerland also.”

Susanna suggested attempting Leonard Cohen’s “Who By Fire” early in the process, and Pessi countered by proposing one of her favorite Cohen songs, “You Know Who I Am”. Once those had found their place in the repertoire, the way was open to add “Which Will” by the late Nick Drake, as well as “The Forester” and “Hangout” from Susanna’s pen. After a year of duo rehearsals, Marco Ambrosini was added at Manfred Eicher’s suggestion and Giovanna drafted in Jane Achtman, Swiss based viola da gamba player. “They both brought a lot to the music, in the depth and the movement of the lines, and underlining the baroque side of it. Marco I knew well from the Lislevand group, and I’ve always enjoyed working with him. Jane had previously played almost exclusively in early music contexts, but was very open to the spirit of this work.”

Giovanna Pessi was born in Basel, Switzerland, and began playing the harp at age 7. At 13, she began to play on an instrument by Erard, built in 1800. The experience with this historical harp, its light touch, and unique sound, motivated her to focus her studies towards early music. In 1998, she won the Basler Hans Huber Stiftung prize and, in 2000, received the diploma for historical harp of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. As a soloist and accompanist Giovanna Pessi has performed with groups and conductors such as Ricercar Consort, Christian Wallumrød Ensemble, Ensemble Kapsberger, Concentus Musicus, Les Flamboyants, La Fenice, Konrad Junghänel, Philippe Pierlot, Rolf Lislevand, Harry Bicket, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and Marc Minkowski.

Norwegian singer and songwriter Susanna Wallumrød started the duo Susanna and the Magical Orchestra with keyboardist Morten Qvenild in 2000, and has released five albums to date with the duo and also issued recordings as simply Susanna. Besides playing with Qvenild, Pål Hausken, and Helge Sten on a regular basis she has also collaborated with The White Birch, Jenny Hval, Bonnie 'Prince Billy, The Cairo Gang, Ensemble Neon and others.

A great contemporary exponent of the nyckelharpa, the Swedish keyed fiddle, Marco Ambrosini was born in Italy and studied violin and composition in the Pergolesi Musical Institute in Ancona and the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro. He has played with the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana and numerous chamber orchestras, ensembles of early, baroque and contemporary music. In 1982 he co-founded the international ensemble Oni Wytars and since 1990 performs as soloist with the Clemencic Consort in Vienna. He debuted as a soloist and nyckelharpa player at La Scala in Milan. Ambrosini has appeared on more than 100 CD productions, spanning all options from early music to collaborations with jazz musicians.

Jane Achtman began playing medieval fiddle at age nine and picked up the viol shortly thereafter. After receiving her degree in early music at the Akademie für Alte Musik in Bremen, Germany (viola with Sarah Cunningham) and further studies with Mary Springfels in Chicago, she was awarded a DAAD stipend to continue her studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. In 1997 she founded the ensemble Musicke&Mirth together with Irene Klein. Since its formation the ensemble has developed various programs in different constellations. It has been successful at competitions, winning prizes at the Dorian/EMA Recording Competition, the Premio Bonporti and the Van Wassenaer Concours. Two CDs have been published by Raumklang: Musicke&Mirth – Music for two Lyra Viols (2001) and Die Spinne im Netz (2004) Jane is a member of the ensembles The Harp Consort, Accentus and Unicorn. She has worked with Kees Boeke, Pedro Memelsdorff, René Jacobs and Michael Hofstetter and performed in opera productions and as a soloist with the L’Orchestre de Chambre Genéve.

24 page CD booklet includes words to the songs by Purcell, Cohen, Drake and Wallumrød, and artist photos

****************************************************************************************************************************************************

Tord Gustavsen Quartet

The Well

Tore Brunborg: tenor saxophone

Tord Gustavsen: piano

Mats Eilertsen: double-bass

Jarle Vespestad: drums

U.S. Release date: February 7, 2012

ECM CD: B0016444-02

UPC: 6025 278 5896 8

“Variation in Continuity” – an interview with Tord Gustavsen

On “Restored Returned“, your first album after the trilogy of trio albums, you had experimented with a variety of line-up formats, from duo to quintet. What made you settle with a quartet this time?

First and foremost it was a very natural process for me. After the release of Restored, Returned we did some touring with the full quintet line-up and some touring as a quartet, but the quartet was the formation that kept developing the best as an ensemble. So it felt logical to keep that momentum and to write and build a repertoire for the quartet. Also it is a group of musicians that I really like to travel with and really like to play with, so it has over the past two or three years definitely developed into my main formation for touring.

You have indeed performed in a variety of different settings, from solo to works with the Arctic Chamber Orchestra. So do you view the quartet as your base working group now?

Yes, it indeed is – but in a slightly different way than the trio was in its days. Because playing in duo, trio or even in extended formats of the ensemble feels like the natural complement to the basic quartet work. It is a really fruitful situation, because we get the combination of stability from having a steady working group, and also stimulation from working with the material from different angles.

When did the ideas for “The Well” begin to take shape?

It began right after the release of Returned, Restored because I had started writing material that already pointed in this direction. It developed very gradually, the repertoire kept adding new aspects slowly – that is how I prefer to develop things actually. In the course of these years I also had two commissions to work on, which turned out to fit very naturally in the material for the album. So even though I feel that The Well has become a very unified and coherent album, it still is a mixture of songs written individually and of pieces written as a commission for the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in England 2011 and pieces for the Oslo International Church Music Festival 2011.

Are you able to compose while you are on the road or do you have to go into seclusion somewhere to write?

Both models work for me – to a certain extent. Sometimes I get the best ideas on the road – on sound checks or in hotels or on airplanes. But to see musical totality or to shape a commissioned work in its entirety I need to be at home and be by myself. Not necessarily in isolation for several days, though. I work better when I spend a few hours in total concentration and then move out of it for a while.

Do you have a kind of master plan, when you approach a new album? Do you have very definite concepts or ideas of what you want to artistically achieve with an album?

Yes and no. There usually is a vision or a plan (and of course collecting the pieces that we want to record is also a way of making a plan). But it is very important to combine this vision with a kind of radical openness there and then, because nothing ever turns out exactly as planned – and music is greater than plans anyway. The situation in the studio with the musicians has its effects, how they feel on a given date, and how the energy flows and evolves between us. If you get in there with no concept at all it is dangerous because you risk getting a result that lacks a clear profile. But it is equally dangerous to get in there with a plan that is too stiff.

My vision for the recording of The Well is in many respects clearly present in the result but also many things turned out different in a positive way! I had originally thought that we would do maybe a bit more of the internal duo or trio playing inside the quartet, but it happened that the overall quartet energy was so good that we just kept playing. Now apart from two trio tunes the rest of the album is in full quartet and that became very natural.

Also before the recording session I may have some idea as to what pieces are essential or central to the musical message of the album – but that may very well change and another tune may end up as the first tune on the album. And a tune that you always play well in concert might turn out as something that you don’t get really right in the studio, so you have to skip it. These things are always very fascinating.

Which tunes do you now see as cornerstones of “The Well”?

The title track, “The Well“, has a bit more elaborate harmonics than we had on our previous albums. It is a bit denser, more things happen and darker as well but still a very melodic tune. And even though we play a bit more, it is still about breath and the space between the notes. So it sums up some things that are different on this album compared to the earlier albums, while still staying very much in the flow of what I have been doing before. The tune “Circling” has in a weird way become a central piece to me, because we totally changed the way we played it in the studio – it got a very fresh, minimalist gospel type energy – almost simplistic, but with some weird little twists in it. There is this combination of groundedness and openness at the same time, which has been my basic musical ideology since the first album.

Two years ago, when you spoke in interviews about “Restored, Returned”, you mentioned that you had composed the tune “Child Within” with Tore Brunborg in mind. Does it happen regularly that you write with a certain player in mind? Was it also the case with some tracks on “The Well”?

Well, in a way more than before. My writing nowadays is done often with this particular quartet in mind. Because I know a lot about the strengths of the individual musicians and I know what kind of landscapes we usually develop together in concerts. So writing this material has consciously or subconsciously definitely been defined by my knowledge of the quartet.

In earlier stages of your career you have gathered a lot of experience accompanying singers. Is your role in the quartet right now, having Tore Brunborg at the front, similar to that of an accompanist of singers?

There are definitely strong parallels between playing with Tore and playing with a singer in that Tore is really a strong melodic thinker. He never plays too much. He is extremely into the lyrical side of the themes and his phrasing is really singing. The way I interact with Tore is very much the same combination of supporting and challenging as you use with singers. But in the relationship between saxophone and piano it is natural to enter even more flexibly in and out of foreground and background roles, whereas the singer’s role almost by definition is in the foreground. Kristin Asbjørnsen did some very beautiful ensemble singing without words on our previous album – and when she does that it is just the same democratic interchange of musical flow as it is with an instrumentalist – but still a singer with words will always be more to the front. So with a sax player it is easier to be flexible in terms of changing roles or changing places within the ensemble.

You once mentioned that “Restored Returned” had a secret topic or subtext as its themes had all been conceived as a kind of lullabies. Does “The Well” also have such a secret undercurrent thematically?

Not in that way, but this whole notion of abstract lullabies still describes what I do quite well – also on this album, because the tunes, even though they are all different regarding their grooves, their textures or their level of energy, can all be hummed like a lullaby. So in my composing a good hummable melody is still the starting point of things. But with this album it was mostly a matter of arriving at a good selection from all the material we had available, including the commissioned pieces, and creating a good balance between continuity and subtle variation.

The running order of the tracks is interesting. There is a prelude, a suite, and a “Glasgow Intro” in between. Also the piece “Communion” later comes back as a kind of reprise – what is the idea behind all that?

The link to church music is important to me. I think that a kind of gravity from hymns and spirituals is fundamental in my musical orientation. Also, seeing a concert or an album as a kind of liturgical journey makes a lot of sense to me. Furthermore, the tunes “Prelude” and “Communion” are taken from the commission written to the Oslo Church Music Festival, so it was natural to use these titles. “Prelude” is a little tune in itself of course, but primarily it opens up the soundscape for the musical journey on The Well. When it comes to “Communion” – it is a beautiful word, and it carries this double meaning: the liturgical sense of the sacrament of Communion is one side of it, but it also signifies the companionship, the being together, the kind of intimate closeness of playing in a band.

Interview: Christian Stolberg

[David Ayers]

GA - I'm grateful for your posts but I wonder if you could maybe just quote excerpts or provide links? The material is all on the ECM website, and it clutters up the thread. Just a request.

[GA Russell]

David, I post these press releases so that "the man on the street" can see the same thing "the pros" see when a new release comes out.

[king ubu]

Y'all know I complained before, so I hand you these . °.¨ : . variably sized grains of salt first

Seriously: the man on the street doesn't always want to read all that street-team crap that often says very little about the music but very much about the mind-set of the propaganda folks in charge of selling it... so yes, having some meaningful excerpts would indeed be a fine idea!

[gnhrtg]

I agree that it is annoying. Not that I expect you to stop or not offer us your well-meaning rationale.

[Chuck Nessa]

Cut the CRAP.

[Guy Berger]

Maybe a better idea would be to post a link to the ECM website, or alternatively to start a different thread titled "ECM press releases".

[IanFenton]

Sometimes the man on the street wants the pros to do a bit of filtering on his behalf.

[GA Russell]

Maybe a better idea would be...to start a different thread titled "ECM press releases".

Great idea, Guy! That's what I'll do.

[JSngry]

Sounds legit to me. Call it what it is and proceed accordingly.

[king ubu]

Yes, good idea indeed!

[Face of the Bass]

My comments in the ECM Parker/Mitchell thread notwithstanding, I am looking forward to hearing the Gustavsen disc.

[Face of the Bass]

Does anybody know if the new Tord Gustavsen disc has been delayed? I ordered it through Barnes & Noble but got an email today saying there's been a delay.

[JETman]

Does anybody know if the new Tord Gustavsen disc has been delayed? I ordered it through Barnes & Noble but got an email today saying there's been a delay.

It hasn't --- I suspect that ordering from B&N has its share of downsides.

[Face of the Bass]

Does anybody know if the new Tord Gustavsen disc has been delayed? I ordered it through Barnes & Noble but got an email today saying there's been a delay.

It hasn't --- I suspect that ordering from B&N has its share of downsides.

Yeah, I canceled the order and went through Amazon.

[David Ayers]

Details of these two on the ECM website now - nothing about the Kikuchi/Morgan/Motian yet which seems to be in a release-world of its own. The Jormin is songs in Latin. Yeah yeah I know.

Anders Jormin

Ad Lucem

Mariam Wallentin voice

Erika Angell voice

Fredrik Ljungkvist clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone

Anders Jormin double-bass

Jon Fält drums

Billy Hart

All Our Reasons

Mark Turner tenor saxophone

Ben Street double bass

Ethan Iverson piano

Billy Hart drums

[A Lark Ascending]

The Jormin is songs in Latin.

Anyone know the Latin for 'Play that thing!' Or 'Yeah!' even.

[Clunky]

The Jormin is songs in Latin.

Anyone know the Latin for 'Play that thing!' Or 'Yeah!' even.

fabrefacta quod res