ECM Press Releases for New Items

[GA Russell]

“This is a straight-ahead trio for the ages, fed by a tension between Mr. Jarrett’s resolute, lapidary touch and the collective’s shape-shifting, onward drive.” - Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times LISTEN / BUY “Returnings unwinds at a pace as leisurely as a daydream, soaking in the slow journey enough that any destination seems like an afterthought.”  – Geno Thakara, All About Jazz LISTEN / BUY “an austere and often abstract beauty with fiery passion…, a distinctive and compelling listen.” – Mike Collins, London Jazz News LISTEN / BUY “…a voice like liquid smoke…. Haunting.” – Arsenio Orteza, World Magazine LISTEN / BUY “ near-telepathic discipline and unique triangulation of chamber minimalism, jazz improvisation, and crown-chakra funk.” – Richard Gehr, Village Voice LISTEN / BUY “exquisite…the most elegant of his career.” – Chris Richards, Washington Post LISTEN / BUY “an unassuming masterpiece” – John Garratt, Pop Matters LISTEN / BUY “ spacious, occasionally knotty musical textures in their symbiotic emotional expressions. The result is a bountiful creative freedom.” – Filipe Freitas, Jazz Trail LISTEN / BUY

© 2018 ECM Records, a Division of Verve Group. | 1755 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, All rights reserved.

The New York Times has praised violinist Miranda Cuckson’s “undeniable musicality,” while Gramophone has declared her “an artist to be reckoned with.” Born in Australia and educated in America, she makes her ECM New Series debut – alongside pianist Blair McMillen – with three 20th-century milestones: the Hungarian Béla Bartók’s Violin Sonata No. 2 (1922), the Russian Alfred Schnittke’s Violin Sonata No. 2 “Quasi una Sonata” (1968) and the Pole Witold Lutoslawski’s Partita for Violin and Piano (1984). “Bringing these great Slavic composers together enables us to hear each dealing with the dichotomies of form and spontaneity, playfulness and seriousness, folk expression and abstraction,” Cuckson explains.

©2016 ECM | 1755 Broadway, Floor 3, New York, NY 10019

ECM RECEIVES SEVEN GRAMMY NOMINATIONS!

  

ECM and its artists are nominated for seven Grammy Awards as announce this morning by The Recording Academy. The nominations span the label’s unique work in recording both contemporary composition and jazz.

 

Nominations go to Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian, Hungarian composer György Kurtág, British composer Gavin Bryars, and producer Manfred Eicher in the classical categories, and to US jazz reedman/composer Chris Potter in jazz.

 

Chris Potter’s The Dreamer Is The Dream, introducing his fiery new quartet with David Virelles, Joe Martin and Marcus Gilmore, is nominated as Jazz Album of the Year. Potter also has a nomination for Best Improvised Jazz Solo for his tenor sax playing on “Ilimba” on the same album.

 

ECM has long-championed the work of Tigran Mansurian whose moving Requiem, dedicated to the memory of victims of the Armenian Genocide, and performed by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the RIAS Choir Berlin, receives two nominations as Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best Choral Performance.

 

The Academy acknowledges Gavin Bryars for the first time with a nomination for The Fifth Century, with his settings of Thomas Traherne for the choir The Crossing, in the category Best Choral Performance.

 

György Kurtág’s 3 CD set Complete Works for Ensemble and Choir, definitively performed by the Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble and the Netherlands Radio Choir under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw, is nominated as Best Classical Compendium.

 

And Manfred Eicher receives his 12th nomination as Classical Producer of the Year, winning the award in 2002.  This year’s citation references his productions of Tigran Mansurian’s Requiem, Valentin Silvestrov’s Hieroglyphen der Nacht (with Anja Lechner and Agnès Vesterman), Momo Kodama’s  Point and Line – Debussy and Hosokawa,  Meredith Monk’s  On Behalf of Nature, and Rímur by the Trio Mediaeval with Arve Henriksen.

 

Winners will be announced at the 60^th Grammy Awards ceremony in New York City on January 28, 2018.

[CJ Shearn]

The Sungjae Son fro what I've heard so far is VERY nice.  Very intriguing soundworld, I like what Sung Chung ECM productions bring to the table

[GA Russell]

 

Open Land - Meeting John Abercrombie

A film by Arno Oehri and Oliver Primus

Release date August 3^rd

 

An intimate portrait of a great guitarist, filmed near the end of his musical journey. Here we see John Abercrombie gigging with Gary Versace and Adam Nussbaum in Lichtenstein, jamming with Rob Sheps, Eliot Zigmund and David Kingsnorth in New York, teaching music students at Purchase College, talking guitars with NYC luthier Ric McCurdy, and hanging out at home with wife Lisa and Al the cat.  Along the way John reflects, with characteristic good humor, on a creative life lived outside the mainstream and traces his story from his first encounter with an electric guitar onwards. Subtly combining and contrasting images and sound, director Arno Oehri achieves a fine balance between music passages and interviews. The film’s soundtrack includes, in addition to the live performances, selections from many of John Abercrombie’s ECM recordings.

 

Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U3UQFY9_II

 

[GA Russell]

Tord Gustavsen piano Sigurd Hole double bass   Jarle Vespestad drums   When the Gustavsen Trio’s Being There was released in 2007, the Independent on Sunday wrote "this is the chill-out as a state of grace, and it can go as deep as you like. Sublime." Over the last decade Tord has experimented with other ensemble forms and formats, but on The Other Side - recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in January 2018 – he returns decisively to the piano trio, with faithful drummer Jarle Vespestad, and excellent new bassist Sigurd Hole. Hole’s approach to his instrument, drawing on folk influences as well as modern jazz, is ideally suited to Gustavsen’s slowly-developing, deeply melodic pieces.   TRIO TOUR   Sept 25 New York, NY (Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola) Sept 27 Santa Cruz, CA (Kuumbwa Jazz) Sept 28 Stanford, CA (Bing Concert Hall Studio) Sep 29 Vancouver, BC (BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts) Sept 30 Portland, OR (Classic Pianos) Oct 2 - Minneapolis, MN (Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church)

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

[GA Russell]

ECM

 

 

 

 

Shai Maestro

The Dream Thief

 

Shai Maestro: piano

Jorge Roeder: double-bass

Ofri Nehemya: drums

 

Release date: September 28, 2018

 

ECM 2616                         

B0029001-02           

UPC: 6025 677 1112 4

 

“Hearing the Shai Maestro Trio is like awakening to a new world – a world of wonders, excitement, beauty and uncertainty,” All About Jazz has suggested. The Dream Thief, the first ECM release by Maestro as a leader, presents the Israeli pianist fronting the latest incarnation of his uncommonly interactive, atmospherically expansive trio, featuring new drummer Ofri Nehemya, a fellow Israeli, and its bassist from the start, Jorge Roeder, a native of Peru. The album also includes several searching solo performances by Maestro. His solo interpretation of Israeli singer-songwriter Matti Caspi’s “My Second Childhood” raises the curtain on a program of characteristically vivid Maestro originals.

 

Maestro, who made his first ECM appearance on vocalist Theo Bleckmann’s 2017 album Elegy, made a name for himself playing in Israeli bassist Avishai Cohen’s popular band from 2006 to 2011. A resident of Brooklyn and a dual Israeli and American citizen, the pianist also played in star drummer Mark Guiliana’squartet and has recently worked in a duo with saxophonist Chris Potter. After four trio albums with Roeder and drummer Ziv Ravitz, Maestro drafted Nehemya into the group, which gathered to record The Dream Thief at the studio in Lugano. Maestro chose the darker-toned of two Steinway model D pianos on offer, apt for what he calls “the dreamy, cinematic quality” of the music he had written for the session. With Manfred Eicher producing, the atmosphere in the studio was one of being “open to the magic of the moment,” Maestro recalls. “I had a clear intention for the pieces, but I knew that Manfred likes to let the music breathe, to get to the essence of the music. For instance, my composition ‘Lifeline’ had been a double-time burner live, but Manfred suggested that we take it down about 50 bpm and concentrate on making the melody sing, in the way Charlie Haden might do. That really transformed the tune.”

 

Another spontaneous creation was Maestro’s solo performance of Caspi’s “My Second Childhood,” a song about experiencing life anew via the eyes of a child. The Israeli composer is one of the pianist’s “all-time favorites – I grew up listening to him, and even took lessons with Caspi when I was 12,” he says. “I had arrived at the studio early before Jorge and Ofri, just to commune with the piano. I hadn’t planned to include that tune, but it just came out, as it’s so deep in my system. I have a real appreciation for the DNA of a great song, where the melody and the harmony go perfectly together. It’s the same thing with ‘These Foolish Things,” which is also such a beautifully crafted song. I was just improvising, and it morphed into a kind of avant-garde treatment – yet with the melody still like a red thread wound through it.”

 

Maestro and Roeder have played together for about seven years, developing a synergistic partnership even though they come “from the opposite ends of music in a way,” the pianist explains. “Jorge has experience playing a lot of free music, while I studied both classical and jazz and have played a lot more arranged, rhythmically defined music. I’ve become freer playing with him. He can travel back and forth from off the grid to in the pocket, and he has such great ears. I can take the music where I want to go, and he’s right there with me, where we can almost improvise in unison.” Although Nehemya is new to the group, he and the pianist have an innate kinship. “Ofri and I share a lot of influences – we don’t even have to talk about things to come to the same emotional expressions,” Maestro says. “But he also has an advanced, new-generation rhythmic understanding, so he can really push and challenge Jorge and me.”

 

Whether it’s “going with the melody or really burning and playing free, we always try to be attuned to the moment, trying to find that magic in it,” Maestro says. “With ‘Lifeline,’ ‘The Forgotten Village’ and ‘A Moon’s Tale,’ we were concentrating on melody, while rhythmic interplay was the focus of ‘The Dream Thief’ and ‘New River, New Water’.” As for the deeply moving end piece, “What Else Needs to Happen,” incorporating parts of speeches by Barack Obama, the pianist explains: “An acquaintance of mine, the saxophonist Jimmy Greene, lost his little daughter in the massacre at Sandy Hook, Connecticut. These school shootings in America have become so common, almost ‘normal’ – it’s surreal, insane. When I realized what happened for Jimmy and the rest of those parents, it felt so close – it was heartbreaking. I understand that in jazz a piece like this I could be ‘preaching to the choir,’ but ‘What Else Needs to Happen’ is about being open to the moment in another way. I think performing artists, because we have a stage, have a responsibility to speak about the world we live in today. Maybe the combination of Obama’s words and the music will help people hear and feel the emotional reality a bit more. It is, for me, at least some measure of resistance to that horrible new ‘normal’.”

 

Reflecting on his influences when it comes to jazz piano Maestro concludes: “The tremendous history of jazz is a great inspiration but also a great challenge. We each have our own individual gift, which is the choices we make – whether we turn to major or minor, whether we play pianissimo or fortissimo at a key moment. I always try to remember to embrace history while not trying to be anything or anyone else – to let the music come out of me.”

[GA Russell]

LISTEN / PRE ORDER Mark Turner tenor saxophone Ethan Iverson piano   The initial musical connection between saxophonist Mark Turner and pianist Ethan Iverson was made in 1990s jam sessions in New York City, with both going on to individual success – Iverson in hit trio The Bad Plus and Turner as a solo leader and in such groups as the trio Fly (recording in both capacities for ECM). A decade after their first meeting, the saxophonist and pianist began an association in the Billy Hart Quartet, the two players featuring sympathetically on two widely lauded ECM albums by that band. Now with Temporary Kings – their debut on record as a duo – Turner and Iverson explore aesthetic common ground that encompasses the cool-toned intricacies of the Lennie Tristano/Warne Marsh jazz school, as well as the heightened intimacy of modernist chamber music. The album presents six originals by Iverson (such as the nostalgic solo tune “Yesterday’s Bouquet) and two by Turner (including “Myron’s World,” which has acquired near-classic status among contemporary jazz players). There’s an off-kilter blues (“Unclaimed Freight”) and a strikingly melodic, almost Ravelian opening track dedicated to the Swiss town where the album was recorded (“Lugano”), plus an interpretation of Marsh’s playfully serpentine “Dixie’s Dilemma.” DUO ON TOUR September 13  Baltimore, MD (An Die Musik Live!) September 15 Chicago, IL (Constellation) September 16-17 Minneapolis, MN (Crooners) September 18 New York, NY (Jazz Standard) September 20 Cambridge, MA (Regattabar) October 10 Denver, CO (Dazzle) October 11 Santa Cruz, CA (Kuumbwa) October 12 Los Angeles, CA (Bluewhale) October 14 Portland, OR (Old Church) October 15 Seattle, WA (Earshot Jazz Festival)

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved. Y

[GA Russell]

An intimate portrait of a great guitarist, filmed near the end of his musical journey. Here we see John Abercrombie gigging with Gary Versace and Adam Nussbaum in Lichtenstein, jamming with Rob Sheps, Eliot Zigmund and David Kingsnorth in New York, teaching music students at Purchase College, talking guitars with NYC luthier Ric McCurdy, and hanging out at home with wife Lisa and Al the cat.  Along the way John reflects, with characteristic good humor, on a creative life lived outside the mainstream and traces his story from his first encounter with an electric guitar onwards. Subtly combining and contrasting images and sound, director Arno Oehri achieves a fine balance between music passages and interviews. The film’s soundtrack includes, in addition to the live performances, selections from many of John Abercrombie’s ECM recordings.

WATCH THE TRAILER

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved. You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

An intimate portrait of a great guitarist, filmed near the end of his musical journey. Here we see John Abercrombie gigging with Gary Versace and Adam Nussbaum in Lichtenstein, jamming with Rob Sheps, Eliot Zigmund and David Kingsnorth in New York, teaching music students at Purchase College, talking guitars with NYC luthier Ric McCurdy, and hanging out at home with wife Lisa and Al the cat.  Along the way John reflects, with characteristic good humor, on a creative life lived outside the mainstream and traces his story from his first encounter with an electric guitar onwards. Subtly combining and contrasting images and sound, director Arno Oehri achieves a fine balance between music passages and interviews. The film’s soundtrack includes, in addition to the live performances, selections from many of John Abercrombie’s ECM recordings.

ECM       Wolfgang Muthspiel Where The River Goes   Wolfgang Muthspiel: guitar Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet Brad Mehldau: piano Larry Grenadier: double bass Eric Harland: drums   Release date: October 5, 2018 ECM 2610 B0028857-02 UPC: 6025 675 1712 2   Where The River Goes carries the story forward from Rising Grace, Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel’s widely acclaimed 2016 recording, returning his cast of musicians to the same studio in southern France, for more of the intuitive magic and deep listening that characterised the earlier album. “The disc’s ambience,” said Downbeat of Rising Grace, “is meditative yet optimistic and joyful. Percolating grooves propel the flow; elemental melodies and classical harmonies provide signposts.”   On Where The River Goes, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Brad Mehldau, Ambrose Akinmusire and Larry Grenadier, now joined by drummer Eric Harland, again take a creative approach to the bandleader’s compositions, constantly stretching the forms, reharmonizing melodies, embellishing heads, delving into the texture of the pieces.  And, though the quintet has, inevitably, been praised as an ‘all-star ensemble’, its energies are very democratically pooled.   Solos in the conventional sense are rationed here – although the outgoing “Blueshead”, aMehldau composition, has energetic features for all five members of the band – but there is a great deal of inspired conversation among the participants, and a shared sense of freedom.   One early instance is the dialogue subtly developed by Muthspiel and Mehldau in the middle of “For Django”, circling each other as they make new music. The opening minutes of “One Day My Prince Was Gone” are similarly intriguing, with multiple lines interweaving in extended free counterpoint before coalescing in Muthspiel’s theme. On “Panorama”, Muthspiel’s arpeggios are beautifully embroidered by Harland’s purring snare drum. Throughout the album Ambrose Akinmusire, juxtaposing pure clear trumpet tone with his vocabulary of painterly smears of sound, continually finds new angles to the material. Muthspiel praises the trumpeter’s fearlessness and has hailed him as “a great new force in the music.”   The titular river of the album flows towards and away from the spontaneously created piece “Clearing”, situated at the center of the program and credited to all five players.  For Muthspiel and cohorts playing “free” means finding and capturing form in the moment.   On “Buenos Aires”, Muthspiel is heard alone, playing with an elegance that underlines the The New Yorker’s description of him as “a shining light” among contemporary jazz guitarists. * Born in 1965 in Judenberg, Austria Wolfgang Muthspiel studied classical violin before turning his attention to the guitar at age 15. Deep interest in jazz and improvisation led him to the US and studies with Mick Goodrick at the New England Conservatory. By the 1990s, Muthspiel was based in New York, playing with many of the city’s most creative players and establishing long-lasting musical friendships. He made his first ECM appearance on the 2012 recording Travel Guide as a member of a cooperative trio with fellow guitarists Ralph Towner and Slava Grigoryan (“Breathtakingly beautiful...a brilliant six-string summit meeting” – Downbeat). This was followed by Driftwood in 2013 with Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade.  The association between Muthspiel and Grenadier goes back three decades to the guitarist’s membership of Gary Burton’s group.   Larry Grenadier and Eric Harland have also played together in many contexts including, recently, a trio with Hungarian cimbalom master Miklós Lukács. Shared work at ECM includes Chris Potter’s The Sirens project.  Both have also recorded with Charles Lloyd, and Eric Harland continues to perform with Lloyd’s ensembles. Larry Grenadier has furthermore appeared on ECM with the Fly trio with Mark Turner and Jeff Ballard, and with Enrico Rava.  A solo album, The Gleaners, is in preparation for early 2019 release.     Brad Mehldau’s previous ECM appearances include, in addition to Rising Grace, two albums with Charles Lloyd, plus Live At Birdland with Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian.    Where The River Flows was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines in February 2018 and produced by Manfred Eicher.   * Wolfgang Muthspiel will be playing compositions from Rising Grace and Where The River Flows in the course of his autumn tour on which his quintet partners will be Mathieu Michel on trumpet,  Colin Vallon on piano, Larry Grenadier on double bass, and Jeff Ballard on drums.  The tour includes concerts in Estonia, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland.  For details: www.wolfgangmuthspiel.com and www.ecmrecords.com

ECM

 

 

 

Jakob Bro

Bay of Rainbows

 

Jakob Bro: guitar

Thomas Morgan: double-bass

Joey Baron: drums

 

Release date: October 5, 2018

ECM 2618              

B0029060-02

UPC: 6025 677 1120 9

 

Jakob Bro’s trio with two kindred-spirit Americans, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Joey Baron, follows its 2016 album Streams with an album recorded live in New York City over two nights at the Jazz Standard. Bay of Rainbows rolls on waves of contemplative emotion, with a gradually enveloping lyricism the lodestar. The three musicians explore five pieces from the guitarist’s catalog, including “Copenhagen” a favorite reprised from Gefion, Bro’s 2015 ECM album with Morgan and drummer Jon Christensen. Bookending the new recording are two versions of the richly melodic “Mild,” the abstracted second rendering illustrative of Bro and company’s ability to push and pull the music into mesmerizing new shapes, onstage and in the moment.

 

The 40-year-old Bro – whose initial ECM appearances were on Paul Motian’s Garden of Eden and Tomasz Stanko’s Dark Eyes – just this past spring released his third studio album on the label as a leader: Returnings, which featured the guitarist in league with Morgan, Christensen and trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg. In its review of that disc, DownBeat praised Bro for creating “sound paintings of depth, warmth and beauty.” These words apply just as well to Bay of Rainbows, along with an added degree of spontaneous dynamism – as Bro’s partnership with Morgan and Baron has only deepened after five years of touring far and wide. The guitarist says: “This trio has played ‘Evening Song’ – an older tune of mine that I’ve done multiple ways already – hundreds of times, night after night, city after city, in different kinds of rooms in front of different sorts of audiences. So, the piece keeps evolving, and surprising me.”

 

A prime example of how Bro, Morgan and Baron can morph a song from night to night comes with the two disparate versions of “Mild” on Bay of Rainbows. “It may sound strange to people, but the three of us never talk about the music, not even discussion of intros or outros, or where solos should be,” the guitarist explains. “It all happens on the bandstand. We have this shared desire to really listen to each other, to let the music breathe as we see where we can go moment to moment. Thomas might start something off, and Joey will react – and then when I come in, I have to adapt the way I play the song in order to respond to what they’re doing. Sometimes, the nights feel like one long improvisation.”

 

The title of Bay of Rainbows refers to a humorous gift given to Bro’s baby daughter by his brother-in-law: a deed for a plot of land called Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows), which is on the moon. “It’s a poetic phrase and one I thought was evocative”, the guitarist explains. One track on the album, “Red Hook,” comes from Bro’s past life, as a young striver trying to learn the jazz ropes in New York City. “It was originally titled ‘Red Hook Railroad,’ because I was living in a ‘railroad’ apartment in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn at the time, sharing the place with bassist Ben Street and, sometimes, saxophonist Mark Turner. That was such an intense period for me, learning so much from these great New York musicians. To record a live album all these years later in the place where so many artists I admire live, a city with such a rich musical history, is very special for me.”

 

Thomas Morgan has become an increasingly frequent ECM name, appearing on albums led by Stanko, John Abercrombie, Masabumi Kikuchi, Craig Taborn, Giovanni Guidi, David Virelles and, mostly recently, Bill Frisell (the duo disc Small Town). Bro likes to call the bassist his “musical soulmate.” He adds: “I loved his playing the first time I heard it. Thomas has a gift for supporting the song while also adding tension to it. He’s such a searching player.” Baron has been a pivotal presence in ECM sessions since the late 1980s, including albums led by Frisell, Abercrombie, John Taylor, Gary Peacock, Steve Kuhn and Marc Johnson & Eliane Elias. “Joey’s ears are all over the bandstand,” Bro says. “He isn’t a drummer just keeping time and adding color – he has as many ideas about where the songs should go as Thomas and I do. He has so much imagination, along with this joyful approach to music-making that I love.”

 

As for his own playing, Bro says live performance enables him “get to the bottom of what I can really do on my instrument,” as he takes more room for himself than he might in the studio. The more kinetic side of Bro’s playing can be heard on Bay of Rainbows via the darkly atmospheric “Dug,” with its climactic guitar lines seeming to howl at the moon.

 

Beyond such keening passages, Bay of Rainbows has the strongly contemplative aura that Bro says he’s “always striving for in my music, consciously and unconsciously, I suppose. I’ve always wanted to make the kind of music that I would want to listen to myself, and I can be drawn toward a certain meditative quality. I love albums that sustain a mood, whether it’s Brian Eno or John Coltrane, and I realize now that it’s a real challenge to do that live, to establish a vibe and keep hold of it, especially as you explore – you don’t want to lose the essence of a song. And that essence always derives from an emotion for me, something that I hope reaches the listener.”

ECM

Shai Maestro - The Dream Thief

release date: September 28, 2018

 

Shai Maestro: piano; Jorge Roeder: double bass; Ofri Nehemya: drums

 

The first ECM leader date for Shai Maestro (following his label debut with Theo Bleckmann on Elegy) features the gifted pianist fronting his superlative trio with fellow Israeli Ofri Nehemya on drums and Peruvian bassist Jorge Roeder, and also playing alone. A solo interpretation of Matti Caspi's "My Second Childhood" opens the curtain on a program of characteristically thoughtful Maestro originals, each one with a story to tell. "Hearing the Shai Maestro Trio is like awakening to a new world", All About Jazz has suggested. "Expressions of joy, introspective thoughts and heightened intensity all come to the fore." Maestro's differentiated touch is special; he can convey a range of fleeting emotions in a single phrase. A deconstruction of "These Foolish Things", the album's sole standard, serves as a prelude to "What Else Needs To Happen", a somber meditation on inner city violence and its aftermath. The Dream Thief was recorded at Lugano's Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in April 2018, and produced by Manfred Eicher, and issued on the eve of a European tour with concerts in Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, France, and Switzerland.

ECM

ECM

Wolfgang Muthspiel - Where The River Goes

release date: October 5, 2018

 

Wolfgang Muthspiel: guitar; Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet;

Brad Mehldau: piano;

Larry Grenadier: double bass; Eric Harland: drums

 

Where The River Goes carries the story forward from Wolfgang Muthspiel's highly-acclaimed Rising Grace recording of 2016, reuniting the Austrian guitarist with Brad Mehldau, Ambrose Akinmusire and Larry Grenadier, heavy talents all, and bringing in the great Eric Harland on drums. Much more than an "all-star" gathering, the group plays as an ensemble with its own distinct identity, evident both in the interpretation of Muthspiel's pieces and in the collective playing.  The album, recorded at Studios La Buissonne in February 2018, and produced by Manfred Eicher, features six compositions by Wolfgang Muthspiel and one by Brad Mehldau, plus one group improvisation. It is issued in both CD and vinyl formats. 

ECM

Jakob Bro - Bay of Rainbows

release date: October 5, 2018

 

Jakob Bro: guitar; Thomas Morgan: double bass; Joey Baron: drums

 

Jakob Bro Trio on tour

October 14 Winnipeg, MB (The Good Will Social Club)

October 15 Minneapolis, MN (Icehouse)

October 17 Chicago, IL (Constellation)

October 18 Los Angeles, CA (Bluewhale)

October 22 Baltimore, MD (An Die Musik Live!)

October 23-24 New York, NY (Jazz Standard)

October 25 Denver, CO (Dazzle)

October 26 Tulsa, OK (Duet)

October 27 Seattle, WA (Seattle Art Museum)

October 28 Portland, OR (The Old Church)

 

 

"There is no hurry to this music, but there is great depth," observed London Jazz News about Danish guitarist Jakob Bro's trio with two kindred-spirit Americans: bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Joey Baron. This poetically attuned group follows its ECM studio album of 2016, Streams - which The New York Times lauded as "ravishing" - with what Bro calls "a dream come true," an album recorded live in New York City, over two nights at the Jazz Standard. Bay of Rainbows rolls on waves of contemplative emotion, with gradually enveloping lyricism the lodestar. The three musicians explore five pieces from the guitarist's catalog, with the gorgeous "Copenhagen" a favorite reprised from Gefion, Bro's 2015 ECM release with Morgan and drummer Jon Christensen. Others - "Evening Song," "Red Hook" and the volatile "Dug" - are recast intimately and elastically for trio after having been initially documented by larger ensembles. Bookending Bay of Rainbows are two versions of the richly melodic "Mild," the abstracted second rendering illustrative of Bro and company's ability to push and pull the music into mesmerizing new shapes, onstage and in the moment.

[GA Russell]

Barre Phillips double bass   Barre Phillips was the first musician to record an album of solo double bass, back in 1968, and he has always been an absolute master of the solo idiom.  In March 2017, Barre recorded what he says will be his last solo album, the final chapter of this journey: it is a beautiful and moving musical statement.  All the qualities we associate with his playing are here in abundance – questing adventurousness, melodic invention, textural richness, developmental logic, and deep soulfulness.  LISTEN / BUY Mark Turner tenor saxophone; Ethan Iverson piano   This album marks the recording debut of Turner and Iverson in duo. Years after their first meeting at NYC jam sessions, and following much individual success (Turner as a leader and in demand sideman, and Iverson in hit trio The Bad Plus) they re-connected as part of the exhilarating and widely-lauded Billy Hart Quartet. On Temporary Kings, they explore aesthetic common ground that embodies the heightened intimacy of modernist chamber music in a program of predominantly original compositions. LISTEN / BUY Tord Gustavsen piano; Sigurd Hole double bass; Jarle Vespestad drums   “This is the chill-out as a state of grace, and it can go as deep as you like. Sublime,” wrote the Independent on Sunday of the Gustavsen Trio’s Being There (2007).  Over the last decade Tord has experimented with other ensemble forms and formats, but on The Other Side he returns decisively to the piano trio, with faithful drummer Jarle Vespestad, and excellent new bassist Sigurd Hole whose approaches are ideally suited to the slowly-developing, deeply melodic pieces. LISTEN / BUY AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER:

© 2018 ECM Records. All rights reserved.

[paul secor]

I'm very interested in the Barre Phillips album.

[mjazzg]

Me too. Just saved it on my Spotify account. 

I very much like his earlier solo album on ECM, 'Call Me When You Get There'.

[GA Russell]

Shai Maestro piano; Jorge Roeder double bass; Ofri Nehemya drums The first ECM leader date for Shai Maestro features the gifted pianist fronting his superlative trio in a program predominantly of characteristically thoughtful Maestro originals. Maestro’s differentiated touch is special; he can convey a range of fleeting emotions in a single phrase.

In Concert November 6  New York, NY (Jazz Standard)

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

[GA Russell]

ECM

Andrew Cyrille - Lebroba

 release date; November 2, 2018

 

Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet; Bill Frisell: guitar; Andrew Cyrille: drums

 

Andrew Cyrille's title Lebroba is a contraction of Leland, Brooklyn and Baltimore, birthplaces of the protagonists of an album bringing together three of creative music's independent thinkers.  Each of them made his first ECM appearance long ago: drummer Andrew Cyrille on Marion Brown's Afternoon of a Georgia Faun (1970), trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith on his own classic Divine Love (1978), and guitarist Bill Frisell on Eberhard Weber's Fluid Rustle(1979); these are, of course, players of enduring influence.  Frisell contributed to Cyrille's previous ECM disc The Declaration of Musical Independence, but Lebroba marks a first-time meeting for the guitarist and Wadada Leo Smith.  A generous leader, Cyrille gives plenty of room to his cohorts, and all three musicians bring in compositions, with "Turiya", Wadada's elegant dedication to Alice Coltrane, unfurling slowly over its 17-minute duration.  In his own pieces, including the title track and the closing "Pretty Beauty", Cyrille rarely puts the focus on the drums, preferring to play melodically and interactively, sensitive to pitch and to space.  There are references to West African music and the blues as well as the history of jazz drumming, but Cyrille's priority today is an elliptical style in which meter is implied rather than stated.

ECM

Florian Weber - Lucent Waters

release date; November 2, 2018

 

Ralph Alessi: trumpet; Florian Weber: piano

Linda May Han Oh: double bass; Nasheet Waits: drums

 

In his second ECM appearance (following a critically-acclaimed duo recording with Markus Stockhausen) pianist Florian Weber leads a strong cast through a program of his compositions and sketches.  Whether paying tribute to mentor Lee Konitz on "Honestlee", impressionistically conveying the glittering "Melody of a Waterfall" or generating impactful drama out of fragments of sound on "Butterfly Effect", Weber continually draws fresh responses from his players.  "I wanted this project to be as open as possible", he says. "It's the idea of exploration that is important here, and the differences between the players." The strong, grounded bass of Linda May Han Oh contrasts strikingly with Nasheet Waits's fleet, fluid drumming, setting up new contexts for Ralph Alessi's elegantly inventive trumpet and the leader's highly creative piano playing.  Lucent Waters was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in September 2017, and produced by Manfred Eicher.   

[GA Russell]

Jakob Bro guitar; Thomas Morgan double bass; Joey Baron drums    This poetically attuned group follows its ECM studio album Streams (2016) – which The New York Times lauded as “ravishing”-  with an album recorded live over two nights in New York City.  Bay of Rainbows rolls on waves of contemplative emotion, with gradually enveloping lyricism the lodestar. Recast intimately and elastically for trio, the pieces are illustrative of Bro and company’s ability to push and pull the music into mesmerizing new shapes, onstage and in the moment.         TRIO TOUR October 14 Winnipeg, Man (The Good Will Social Club) October 15 Minneapolis, MN (Icehouse) October 17 Chicago, IL (Constellation) October 18 Los Angeles, CA (Bluewhale) October 22 Baltimore, MD (An Die Musik Live!) October 23-24 New York, NY (Jazz Standard) October 25 Denver, CO (Dazzle) October 26 Tulsa, OK (Duet) October 27 Seattle, WA (Seattle Art Museum (Earshot Festival)) October 28 Portland, OR (The Old Church (Portland Jazz Festival))

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved

ECM

 

 

Keith Jarrett - La Fenice

release date: October 19, 2018

 

Keith Jarrett: piano

 

This double album, long anticipated, presents Keith Jarrett's concert at the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice, from July 2006. The setting - one of Italy's most famous classical venues - may evoke some parallels with La Scala, the pianist's much-loved 1995 recording, but each of Jarrett's solo performances is its own world, his protean creativity continually bringing new forms to light. La Fenice (the phoenix) finds him channelling the flow of inspiration into a suite of eight spontaneously created pieces referencing everything from the blues to atonality. From the first flurry of notes, it is a consistently captivating journey. Between Part VI and Part VII, Jarrett surprisingly but very touchingly segues into "The Sun Whose Rays", from Gilbert and Sullivan's opera The Mikado.

 

Encores are the traditional tune "My Wild Irish Rose" (previously recorded by Jarrett on The Melody At Night With You), the timeless standard "Stella By Starlight", which the trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette often played (see for instance the albums Standards Live and Yesterdays). The concert ends with a tender version of Keith's tune "Blossom", first heard on the Belonging album with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen back in 1974.

 

La Fenice could be considered the culmination point of a series of solo concerts that began the previous September with the The Carnegie Hall Concert. Reviewing that performance, Fred Kaplan of The Absolute Sound wrote: "His concert pieces, all pure improvisations, are models of economy, themes stated, explored, varied on, departed from, returned to, done - and gripping from start to finish. The encores were similarly taut - and lyrical and gorgeous."

 

Release of the Venice concert is timely. The 62nd International Festival of Contemporary Music of the Biennale di Venezia has honored Keith Jarrett with its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. It's the first time that a "jazz" musician has received this award, which has previously been given to contemporary composers including, in recent decades, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Sofia Gubaidulina and Steve Reich. Of course, there is more than one way to be a contemporary composer, as Keith Jarrett eloquently illustrates on La Fenice, shaping his musical structures in real time.

ECM     Keith Jarrett La Fenice   Keith Jarrett: piano   Release date: October 19, 2018   ECM 2-CD: 2601/02                    B0028949-02 UPC:  6025 676 5853 5                 This double album, long anticipated, presents Keith Jarrett’s concert at the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice, from July 2006. The setting – one of Italy’s most famous classical venues – may evoke some parallels with La Scala, the pianist’s much-loved 1995 recording, but each of Jarrett’s solo performances is its own world, his protean creativity continually bringing new forms to light. La Fenice (the phoenix) finds him channelling the flow of inspiration into a suite of eight spontaneously created pieces referencing everything from the blues to atonality. From the first flurry of notes, it is a consistently captivating journey. Between Part VI and Part VII, Jarrett surprisingly but very touchingly segues into “The Sun Whose Rays”, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera The Mikado.   Encores are the traditional tune “My Wild Irish Rose” (previously recorded by Jarrett on The Melody At Night With You), the timeless standard “Stella By Starlight”, which the trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette often played (see for instance the albums Standards Live and Yesterdays). The concert ends with a tender version of Keith’s tune “Blossom”, first heard on the Belonging album with Jan Garbarek, Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen back in 1974.   La Fenice could be considered the culmination point of a series of solo concerts that began the previous September with the The Carnegie Hall Concert. Reviewing that performance, Fred Kaplan of The Absolute Sound wrote: “His concert pieces, all pure improvisations, are models of economy, themes stated, explored, varied on, departed from, returned to, done – and gripping from start to finish. The encores were similarly taut – and lyrical and gorgeous.”   Release of the Venice concert is timely. The 62nd International Festival of Contemporary Music of the Biennale di Venezia has honored Keith Jarrett with its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. It’s the first time that a “jazz” musician has received this award, which has previously been given to contemporary composers including, in recent decades, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Sofia Gubaidulina and Steve Reich. Of course, there is more than one way to be a contemporary composer, as Keith Jarrett eloquently illustrates on La Fenice, shaping his musical structures in real time.

Keith Jarrett: piano This recording of Keith Jarrett’s extraordinary 2006 solo performance at Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice finds Jarrett entering one of Italy’s most famous classical venues and channeling the flow of inspiration to shape something new. In this case, a suite of eight spontaneously created pieces referencing everything from the blues to atonality to heart-rending ballads. From the first flurry of notes, it is a consistently captivating journey. Release of La Fenice is timely: The 62nd International Festival of Contemporary Music of the ‘Biennale di Venezia’ has honored Keith Jarrett with its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. It’s the first time that a “jazz” musician has received this award. LISTEN / PRE-ORDER

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

[Guy Berger]

I don’t dislike Bill Frisell, but he wouldn’t be my first choice for an trio featuring Leo Wadada Smith and Andrew Cyrille.  That said... if his presence helps finance such encounters, more power to ECM.

[GA Russell]

Keith Jarrett: piano This recording of Keith Jarrett’s extraordinary 2006 solo performance at Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice finds Jarrett entering one of Italy’s most famous classical venues and channeling the flow of inspiration to shape something new. In this case, a suite of eight spontaneously created pieces referencing everything from the blues to atonality to heart-rending ballads. From the first flurry of notes, it is a consistently captivating journey. Release of La Fenice is timely: The 62nd International Festival of Contemporary Music of the ‘Biennale di Venezia’ has honored Keith Jarrett with its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. It’s the first time that a “jazz” musician has received this award. LISTEN / PRE-ORDER

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

LISTEN / PRE-ORDER For its third ECM release, the prize-winning Danish String Quartet – hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the best quartets before the public today” and as simply “terrific” by The Guardian – inaugurates a series of five albums with the overarching title of Prism, in which the group will present one of Beethoven’s late string quartets in the context of a related fugue by J.S. Bach as well as a linked masterwork from the modern quartet literature. With Prism 1, it’s the first of Beethoven’s late quartets, his grandly life-affirming Op. 127 in E-flat Major, alongside Bach’s luminous fugue in the same key (arranged by Mozart) and Dmitri Shostakovich’s final string quartet, the No. 15 in E-flat minor, a haunted and haunting sequence of six adagios. “A beam of music is split through Beethoven’s prism,” explains DSQ violist Asbjørn Nørgaard in the ensemble’s prefatory note to the Prism series. “Inevitably, we base our work on what we know, as individuals and as a group, but the important thing to us as musicians is that these connections be experienced widely on an intuitive level. We hope the listener will join us in the wonder of these beams of music that travel all the way from Bach through Beethoven as far as to our own times.” In Concert November 3 Kingston, ON (Queen's University)   November 4 Toronto, ON (Royal Conservatory of Music)    November 5 Quebec City, QC (Club Musical de Quebec)   November 8 Richmond, VA (University of Richmond)   November 9 Winston-Salem, NC (Wake Forest University)   November 10 Durham, NC (Duke University)   November 12 Washington, DC (Washington Performing Arts)   November 13 Houston, TX (Da Camera Houston)   November 14 Indianapolis, IN (Ensemble Music Society)   November 15 Ann Arbor, MI (University Musical Society)   November 17 New York, NY (92Y)   November 18 Rockport, MA (Rockport Chamber Music Festival)

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

[GA Russell]

ECM       Florian Weber Lucent Waters   Ralph Alessi: trumpet Florian Weber: piano Linda May Han Oh: double bass Nasheet Waits: drums Release date: November 2, 2018 ECM 2593              B0029236-02 UPC: 6025 675 1588 3                            Florian Weber’s second ECM appearance, following a critically-acclaimed duo recording (Alba, 2016) with Markus Stockhausen, finds the gifted German pianist leading a newly formed quartet through a program of his compositions. Openness is key here: whether paying tribute to mentor Lee Konitz on “Honestlee”, impressionistically conveying the glittering “Melody of a Waterfall”, or generating impactful outcomes from fragments of material on a conceptual piece like “Butterfly Effect”, the intention is to encourage fresh responses from the participants.   “I see this album as a meeting of very independently-minded musicians,” says Weber. “It’s the first time I’ve had a band where what particularly interests me is the difference between the players and their approaches to improvising.” He cites the contrast between the soulful, grounded quality of Linda May Han Oh’s bass playing and Nasheet Waits’s fleet, free-flowing drums. “Linda and Nasheet are very different characters, but they balance each other in their exchanging of energies.” The Lucent Waters line-up marks a first collaboration between Weber and Waits, the drummer being recommended by producer Manfred Eicher for the project. “I liked very much Nasheet’s playing on Ralph Alessi’s ECM albums [Baida and Quiver], those are great recordings, so the idea resonated with me.”   Linda May Han Oh and Florian Weber first worked together in trio with Lee Konitz a decade ago. “That was the beginning of a vivid exchange of ideas that has continued in other contexts. For myself, working with Lee night after night taught me what it really means to be spontaneous in the music.” There’s a difference, Weber suggests, between the contemporary emphasis on “self-expression” and “exploring what is actually there, implied in the material and in the interaction of the players.”   Weber and Ralph Alessi have been in and out of each other’s groups for more than 15 years. Latterly, Weber’s been playing in Alessi’s trio with Dan White. “If I look at my career to date, I’ve mostly tried to play with people that I feel close to, that I understand where they’re coming from, emotionally.” Friends, of course, can still challenge each other: “Ralph always says that my writing and playing pushes him to play differently.” This is strikingly evident on “Fragile Coccoon”, where an initially gentle piece bursts open to feature the trumpet in a blazing admixture of lyricism and intensity, framed by Waits’ dramatically powerful drums.   There are, says Weber, several factors influencing the pieces gathered here. “Pieces emerge, a lot of times, as a feeling or a perspective on some aspect of my life – in this case the twilight atmosphere of the touring musician’s world, and all the ups and downs of that. Then there’s the compositional aspect: I’m always trying to create or shape something which hasn’t, to my knowledge, been there before.”   The degree of freedom given to the players differs from piece to piece. “On ‘Brilliant Waters’, for instance, I didn’t give them much more than the title: that’s a free, open piece, although we end organically on one note, which does sound composed. I did tell the group that I wanted the album to have a sense of narrative, with interconnecting links, of some kind. A motif that appears in one piece might recur in another piece, perhaps reversed. Atmospheric ideas return, two pieces may have a similar instrumental emphasis at certain points, or a soundscape may be similar. As a bandleader I think there’s a fine line between giving musicians too much information and not giving them enough: I wanted the musicians to make their own thing, too.”   Nasheet Waits has the freest role in “Melody of a Waterfall”, which takes its inspiration partly from traditional Japanese drum ensembles: “I like the clarity and focus of that music, its stillness as well as its passion and energy. I find Japanese culture and its ideas fascinating and have tried to understand it – insofar as one can, as a westerner.”   “From Cousteau’s Point Of View” references some recent diving experiences: “The changed three- dimensional perspectives and transparency are central to this tune. Musically it’s 3 against 7, both times going on at the same time, and you’re not sure which one you should follow. I like transparency, but too much of it can make the mystery disappear. And I also like the mystery, just as I like the things that are not said, and the notes not played.”   “Honestlee”, dedicated to Lee Konitz (“every time I meet Lee I learn something new” says Florian), incorporates “some Lennie Tristano School ideas, but not Tristano-style playing. It explores some ideas he had about lines and counterpoint.” The piece also takes impetus from drawings which Karlheinz Stockhausen made at Darmstadt. “The drawings illustrate some polyphonic concepts. I looked at them and immediately wanted to write a tune. Wanting to dedicate something to Lee, the ideas converged. So we start with lines and then go into open mode.” Weber’s playing, exemplary throughout, is particularly affecting here. (Konitz, on hearing this recording, has said “Florian is one of the most creative piano players I have ever played with. His music is totally free. He has got the texture, the feeling, just beautiful. I am very touched by this music. It feels divine to me.”)   *   Born into a musical family in Detmold, Germany, in 1977, Florian Weber began playing piano at the age of four, and by the time he graduated high school was appearing with both jazz and classical ensembles. In Cologne he studied with Hans Ludemann and John Taylor, before heading to the USA and further studies with teachers including Paul Bley, JoAnne Brackeen, Danilo Pérez and Richie Beirach. In 2002 Weber founded Trio Mensarah with bassist Jeff Denson and drummer Ziv Ravitz. By 2006, Lee Konitz was playing with the group which subsequently formed the basis of his New Quartet, touring widely and recording a prizewinning album at New York’s Village Vanguard. In 2011 Weber founded the group Biosphere with guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Dan Weiss. Florian Weber also continues to play with trumpeter Markus Stockhausen. The intuitive music of their ECM album Alba was praised for its “natural warmth and character” by The Times of London. For further details, including upcoming dates, visit www.florianweber.net and www.ecmrecords.com   *   Lucent Waters was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in September 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

ECM       Andrew Cyrille Lebroba   Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet Bill Frisell: guitar Andrew Cyrille: drums   Release date: November 2, 2018   ECM 2589    B0029217-02 CD: 6025 677 5528 9                                      LP: 6025 770 5563 8   Andrew Cyrille’s 2016 release The Declaration of Musical Independence gave notice that one of the drumming innovators of new jazz had taken his conception of group playing to another level of development, and the space-conscious Lebroba, with Wadada Leo Smith and Bill Frisell, applies further fine-tuning. The album’s title is a contraction of Leland, Brooklyn and Baltimore, birthplaces of the protagonists of a recording which brings together three of creative music’s independent thinkers.    Each of them made his first ECM appearance long ago. Drummer Andrew Cyrille appeared on Marion Brown’s Afternoon of a Georgia Faun in 1970, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith on his own Divine Love in 1978, and guitarist Bill Frisell in 1979 on Eberhard Weber’s Fluid Rustle, with his leader debut In Line following in 1982; these are, of course, players of enduring influence.  In recent seasons, Cyrille has been heard on Ben Monder’s Amorphae, Wadada has recorded with Vijay Iyer on A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke and Frisell has introduced a duo with Thomas Morgan on Small Town.    Andrew Cyrille and Wadada Leo Smith first played together in the early 1970s in a period when some of the trailblazers of Chicago’s AACM were relocating to the New York region.  In the late 1990s they came together again in the quartet of bassist John Lindberg. Their reunion in the Lebroba trio with this recording - made at New York’s Reservoir Studio - was suggested by the album’s producer, Sun Chung.   Always a generous leader, Cyrille gives plenty of room to his cohorts, who also bring in compositions, with Wadada’s elegant four-part suite dedicated to Alice Coltrane unfurling slowly over its 17-minute duration.  Written and open sections are interlaced, with a free role for the drums in the closing moments.  “I didn’t want to play all the time,” Andrew explains. “I wanted to play rhythms with spaces between them, and to play melodically, in relation to what Wadada and Bill were doing…” Creative energies are pooled also on the spontaneously created “TGD”, credited to all three players,   Reviews of Cyrille have often emphasised the elemental strength of his playing (“his energy is unflagging, his power absolute”, the All Music Guide notes). Yet even in contexts calling for unconditional drive – such as Cecil Taylor’s celebrated trio with Jimmy Lyons (of which Andrew was a member for more than a decade) – there always was a differentiated methodology at work in the drumming.  Still, as Kevin Whitehead writes in the CD booklet, the release of The Declaration of Musical Independence in 2016 “took some listeners by surprise. There Andrew’s new elliptical style unfolded – a style, he says ‘where the meter is implied but not inferred’.”   Bill Frisell contributed to the Declaration album, but Lebroba marks a first-time meeting for the guitarist and Wadada Leo Smith.  “If there is a continuity of concept between the Declaration quartet and this trio,” says Cyrille in the liner notes, “the linchpin is Frisell. The music is different, but the concept is about the same.  And then Wadada brings in his voice and his philosophy.”   With no bass and no keyboards this time, the ensemble texture is more transparent than on Declaration and with Cyrille sometimes reducing his sound to a discontinuous groundswell, there are plenty of the charged silences and open spaces that Wadada Leo Smith loves to play into.  Bill Frisell’s history includes extensive work with another bassless trio, Paul Motian’s trio with Joe Lovano. “Andrew does remind me of Paul in a way,” says Frisell. “People describe their playing as free or abstract and overlook the feel: the deep, deep beat coming from a deep, deep place.”   Even unstated, its presence is felt on Lebroba, not least on Andrew’s tunes, the bluesy title piece, and the graceful ballad “Pretty Beauty”.

[GA Russell]

Barre Phillips: double bass Barre Phillips was the first musician to record an album of solo double bass, back in 1968, and he has always been an absolute master of the solo idiom.  In March 2017, Barre recorded what he says will be his last solo album, the final chapter of his “Journal Violone”: it is a beautiful and moving musical statement.  All the qualities we associate with Barre’s playing are here in abundance – questing adventurousness, melodic invention, textural richness, developmental logic, and deep soulfulness.  LISTEN / BUY In the slipstream of Barre Phillips’s great new album End To End we have returned three of his previously out-of-print titles to the digital domain:  For All It Is (recorded 1971), charted new paths for bass ensemble, as Barre collaborated with fellow innovators Barry Guy, J.F. Jenny-Clark and Palle Danielsson, plus whirlwind drummer Stu Martin.  Music By (recorded 1980) introduced Barre’s spirited songs band with Claudia Phillips and Aina Kemanis on vocals, John Surman  and Hervé Bourde on reeds, and Pierre Favre on drums.  And Call Me When You Get There (recorded 1983) is another of Barre’s splendid solo bass recordings, in this instance with a central focus on music created for the films of Robert Kramer.  These recordings, highlighting very different aspects of Barre’s creativity, can now be heard again via the streaming and download platforms.

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

[jlhoots]

On 9/29/2018 at 9:10 AM, Guy Berger said:

I don’t dislike Bill Frisell, but he wouldn’t be my first choice for an trio featuring Leo Wadada Smith and Andrew Cyrille.  That said... if his presence helps finance such encounters, more power to ECM.

I don't disagree, but I'm going to get that one anyway.

[GA Russell]

An extraordinary 2006 solo performance recorded at the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice. From the first flurry of notes, it is a consistently captivating journey. OUT NOW.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THE DIGITAL ALBUM AND RECEIVE A LIMITED EDITION PRINT OF THE ALBUM ARTWORK. $11.99

Copyright © 2018 ECM Records, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: ECM Records 1755 Broadway 3rd Fl ECM Records New York, NY 10019-3743

Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet; Bill Frisell: guitar; Andrew Cyrille: drums Lebroba featuring Andrew Cyrille, Bill Frisell and Wadada Leo Smith brings together three of creative music’s independent thinkers, players of enduring influence.  A generous leader, Cyrille gives plenty of room to his cohorts, and all three musicians bring in compositions.  In his own pieces Cyrille rarely puts the focus on the drums, preferring to play melodically and interactively, sensitive to pitch and to space - his priority today is an elliptical style in which meter is implied rather than stated. FOR A CD WITH AUTOGRAPHED BOOKLET CLICK HERE Ralph Alessi: trumpet; Florian Weber: piano; Linda May Han Oh: double bass; Nasheet Waits: drums Weber leads a strong cast through a program of compositions and sketches.  Whether paying tribute to mentor Lee Konitz on “Honestlee”, impressionistically conveying the glittering “Melody of a Waterfall” or generating impactful drama out of fragments of sound on “Butterfly Effect”, Weber continually draws fresh responses from his players. The strong, grounded bass contrasts strikingly with fleet, fluid drumming, setting up new contexts for elegantly inventive trumpet and creative piano playing.

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

….The mood of her interpretation is searching, earthbound, human—she doesn’t treat solo Bach like divine math out of reach of mortal understanding. Her tone is sumptuous, moaning, throaty, with a catch of ache snagged in the instrument’s midrange. Her phrasing in the Préludes always seems to be worrying away at a nagging question—you can feel urgency in the way she presses up against her own tempo slightly in the Prelude to the D Minor suite. Her Bach is furrowed-brow Bach, crisis-of-faith Bach, toiling Bach. Her instrument has never sounded lovelier or humbler than it does here.” - Jayson Greene, Pitchfork   The poetry and radiance of Bach’s cello suites are transfigured in these remarkable interpretations by Kim Kashkashian on viola, offering “a different kind of somberness, a different kind of dazzlement” as annotator Paul Griffiths observes. One of the most compelling performers of classical and new music, Grammy-winning Kashkashian is hailed as "an artist who combines a probing, restless musical intellect with enormous beauty of tone”, and she brings to Bach revelatory commitment and intensity. LISTEN / BUY

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

Jörg Widmann Arche Marlis Petersen: soprano; Thomas E. Bauer: baritone; Gabriel Böer: boy soprano; Jonna Plathe, Baris Özden: narrators; Iveta Apkalna: organ Chor der Hamburgischen Staatsoper / Audi Jugendchorakademie / Hamburger Alsterspatzen / Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg / Kent Nagano conductor    Arche, an Oratorio for soloists, choirs, organ and orchestra, is a compendious work embracing the course of history in the west with a collaged libretto drawing upon a range of writers. Widmann looks at the tradition of the oratorio and transforms it, and Kent Nagano directs the massed musical forces with aplomb in this concert recording from the premiere performance. As the liner notes say, “Everything happens at once, everything interlocks. Every moment transports us into another world.” LISTEN / BUY Stefano Scodanibbio Alisei   Daniele Roccato: double bass; Ludus Gravis Ensemble; Tonino Battista: conductor    Stefano Scodanibbio (1956-2012) created extraordinary music for double bass. Alisei (Trade Winds) features his compositions for solo bass, for two basses, and for bass ensemble, two of which are world premiere recordings, including Otetto which can be seen as Scodannibbio’s great spiritual legacy. The pieces are an often breathtaking compendium of extended techniques that he invented or developed throughout his life and which challenge the musicians to push virtuosity to its limits.  LISTEN / BUY Dénes Várjon De la nuit Schumann, Ravel, Bartók    Dénes Várjon: piano   “Negotiating dynamic shifts of emphasis,” The Independent has noted,”Dénes Várjon displays that most valuable of gifts: the ability to play in a way which makes you listen anew to the familiar.” This capacity is to the fore here in the Hungarian pianist’s sensitive exploration of Schumann, Ravel, Bartók, a journey through three worlds of poetic imagination which, as Jürg Stenzl writes in the liner notes, “ require pianists for whom transcendent virtuosity is second nature. ” LISTEN / BUY

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

[GA Russell]

ECM Preview for early 2019 titles

 

 

 

Joe Lovano - Trio Tapestry   - January 25th  

Joe Lovano: tenor saxophone, tarogato, gongs; Marilyn Crispell: piano

Carmen Castaldi: drums, percussion 

 

The great saxophonist Joe Lovano makes his leader debut here, introducing a wonderful new group and music of flowing lyricism, delicate texture, and inspired interplay. 

Lovano and pianist Marilyn Crispell are in accord at an advanced level inside its structures. 

Lovano: “We play together like an orchestra, creating an amazing tapestry. I brought in the material, but there’s an equal weight of contribution, creating music within the music, and harmonizing it in a really special way.”   

 

Save the date: Trio Tapestry to play January 27^th at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo NY subsequent touring will be announced soon.

 

 

 

Ralph Alessi - Imaginary Friends - February 1^st

 Ralph Alessi:  trumpet; Ravi Coltrane: tenor and sopranino saxophones

Andy Milne: piano; Drew Gress: double bass; Mark Ferber: drums

 

Trumpeter Ralph Alessi’s first two ECM albums as a leader justly earned him the highest praise of his career thus far.

Here the trumpeter fronts a longtime working quintet in its first recording since 2010 featuring kindred spirits Ravi Coltrane and Andy Milne and a stellar rhythm section.

The nine Alessi compositions include a career highlight in “Iram Issela,” with its rich seam of bittersweet melody and exceptional soloing by Coltrane setting the scene for an album of quicksilver beauty.

 

Save the date : Ralph Alessi will bring this music to the ECM Winter Jazzfest stage at le poisson rouge on January 11^th.

 

 

 

Yonathan Avishai – Joys and Solitudes - January 25th  

Yonathan Avishai: piano; Yoni Zelnik: double bass Donald Kontomanou: drums

 

Over the last few years pianist Yonathan Avishai has played on the ECM recordings of trumpeter Avishai Cohen while developing his own project with the trio heard here.

Opening with Duke Ellington, the album continues with a series of original pieces that reference a broad range of musics and experiences.

Diverse influences are filtered through Yonathan’s tradition-conscious piano playing, alert to old values of blues feeling and swing yet also strikingly original in its decisiveness and concision.  

 

 

 

 

 

Mats Eilertsen Trio - And Then Comes The Night – February 1^st

  

Harmen Fraanje: piano; Mats Eilertsen: double bass Thomas Strønen: drums

 

Bassist Mats Eilertsen has been a distinctive presence on many ECM recordings and has long maintained several projects of his own, including this trio, now in its 10^th year of existence.

For this session “We came in with a number of compositional sketches and the intention to see what could be shaped from them”, says Mats.

The result is an album of subtle group music, sidestepping many of the conventions of trio playing, in a recording that demands and rewards concentrated listening.   

 

 

[GA Russell]

Art Ensemble of Chicago: Nice Guys (1978), Full Force, (1980), Urban Bushmen (2 CD, 1980), The Third Decade (1984) Leo Smith: Divine Love (1978)  Lester Bowie: The Great Pretender (1981), All The Magic (2 CD, 1982), I Only Have Eyes for You (1985), Avant Pop (1986), Tribute to Lester (2001), Roscoe Mitchell & The Note Factory: Nine To Get Ready (1997), Transatlantic Art Ensemble/Mitchell: Composition/Improvisation 1, 2 and 3 (2004), Transatlantic Art Ensemble/Parker: Boustrophedon (2004), Roscoe Mitchell & The Note Factory: Far Side (2007), Roscoe Mitchell: Bells for the South Side (2 CD, 2015) Jack DeJohnette’s New Directions (w Lester Bowie) (1978), Jack DeJohnette’s New Directions: In Europe (w Lester Bowie) (1979), Jack DeJohnette: Made In Chicago (w Mitchell, Abrams, Threadgill) (2013)   LISTEN / BUY

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

[GA Russell]

ECM

Joe Lovano - Trio Tapestry

release date: January 25, 2018

 

Joe Lovano: tenor saxophone, tarogato, gongs; Marilyn Crispell: piano; 

Carmen Castaldi: drums, percussion

 

The great saxophonist Joe Lovano has appeared on a number of ECM recordings over the last four decades, including much-loved albums with Paul Motian, Steve Kuhn and John Abercrombie. Trio Tapestry is his first as a leader for the label, introducing a wonderful new group and music of flowing lyricism, delicate texture, and inspired interplay. Lovano and pianist Marilyn Crispell are in accord at an advanced level inside its structures. "Marilyn has such a beautiful sound and touch and vocabulary," Joe enthuses. Drummer Carmen Castaldi, a Lovano associate of long-standing, also responds to the trio environment with sensitivity, subtly embellishing and detailing the pieces. Lovano: "We play together like an orchestra, creating an amazing tapestry. I brought in the material, but there's an equal weight of contribution, creating music within the music, and harmonizing it in a really special way."  Trio Tapestry was recorded at New York's Sear Sound studio in March 2018 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

[GA Russell]

Joe Lovano

Trio Tapestry

 

Joe Lovano: tenor saxophone, tarogato, gongs

Marilyn Crispell: piano

Carmen Castaldi: drums, percussion

 

Release date: January 25, 2019

 

ECM 2615

B0029590-02 

CD UPC: 6025 6796426 1                            

LP UPC: 6025 7736190 6

 

Joe Lovano on tour 2019

Jan. 27^th                      Buffalo, NY                             **Albright-Knox Gallery

Feb. 16^th                      St. Catharines, ON                 Oscar Peterson Jazz Festival

Feb. 19^th – 23^rd            New York, NY                         Birdland (saxophone summit)

Mar. 1^st                        Tucson, AZ                             Crowder Hall, U of Arizona

Mar. 8^th                        Aliso Viejo, CA                        Soka University

Mar. 10^th                      Albuquerque, NM                   ** Outpost Performance Space

Mar. 11^th                      Santa Cruz, CA                       Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Mar. 12^th – 13^th            Seattle, WA                             ** Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley

Mar. 14th – 17^th           San Francisco, CA                 ** SFJAZZ Miner Auditorium

Apr. 13^th                      Austin, TX                               Bates Recital Hall                              

** indicate Trio Tapestry performances

 

Joe Lovano, widely acknowledged as one of the great tenor saxophonists of our time, has been a presence on ECM since 1981, appearing on key recordings with Paul Motian, Steve Kuhn, John Abercrombie and Marc Johnson.  Trio Tapestry, introducing a new group with pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi is his first as a leader for the label.   An album of focused intensity and expressive beauty, it features a program of eleven new compositions that Joe calls “some of the most intimate and personal music I’ve recorded so far.”

 

The album, produced by Manfred Eicher at New York’s Sear Sound studio, draws upon Lovano’s history and development as a player who has addressed both jazz tradition and exploratory improvisation.  “For me this recording is a statement of where I am, where I’ve been and where I may be headed.” In a performer’s note in the CD booklet he says of the recording, “The divine timing of interplay and interaction is magical.  Trio Tapestry is a melodic, harmonic, rhythmic musical tapestry throughout, sustaining moods and atmospheres.”

 

Each of the pieces here flowers from a melodic core informed by twelve-tone processes, a methodology Lovano came to appreciate through his long association with composer Gunter Schuller.  “And working with Marilyn Crispell who also had lived in that world, having played a lot of contemporary composition and played extensively with Anthony Braxton and so on, we had a beautiful communication in that sound.”  If the colors and textures of the music invoke a chamber music ambience, the players themselves “are deeply rooted in jazz, sounding out each other’s feelings in the improvising, and making music within the music. I brought in the material and had an idea of what I wanted to happen, but in terms of how we play together, there is a very equal weight of contribution. We harmonise in this music in a really special way.”

 

Crispell and Lovano first crossed paths in the mid-1980s when the pianist was a member of Anthony Braxton’s quartet, with Gerry Hemingway and John Lindberg. “They happened to be recording in a studio next door to my loft in New York. We met then and stayed in touch.”   Around 2006 Joe sat in with Marilyn’s trio with Mark Helias and Paul Motian for a night at the Village Vanguard, which led to a concert as a quartet at New York’s Miller Theater, playing compositions by all four musicians.  “That was the first time I’d played a full concert with Marilyn.” The potential for further musical exploration was evident, fulfilled now by Trio Tapestry.

 

Carmen Castaldi and Joe Lovano have played together since their teenage years in Cleveland, and moved to Boston together to attend Berklee in 1971. In the mid-70s when Joe relocated to New York, Carmen headed to the West Coast where he was based for the next couple of decades. Since his return to Ohio, cooperation between the two friends has intensified.   Castaldi played on Joe’s Viva Caruso album on Blue Note and toured widely with Lovano’s Street Band, “playing a more ‘folk’ kind of music, with a different energy”, in a line-up including Judy Silvano, Gil Goldstein, Ed Schuller and Erik Friedlander. “Carmen is a wonderful free spirit on the drums, a total improviser, inspired by Paul Motian his whole life.  I was really happy to have him on this recording, which is more than ‘a session’ for me. It incorporates a way of playing and interacting that Carmen and I have developed together over very many years.”

 

Castaldi’s subtle drumming engages with the dialogues between saxophone and piano, detailing and adding commentary. A further textural element, augmenting the music’s sense of mystery, comes from Lovano’s use of gongs. “I started to develop that concept back in the 1980s, playing tenor saxophone and accompanying myself on gongs, having a mallet in my right hand to create different tonalities and different key centers from which to improvise.”

 

Over the last fifteen years, the soulful cry of the Hungarian tarogato has also found a place in Lovano’s music. It seems to lend itself to solemn or yearning meditations. Joe played tarogato on “The Spiritual” on Steve Kuhn’s Mostly Coltrane, for example. On Trio Tapestry it is featured on “Mystic”, declaiming over rumbling percussion.

 

Cecil Taylor once praised Marilyn Crispell for “spearheading a new lyricism” in creative music, and Lovano who hails the pianist for her “amazing sound, touch and vocabulary” is pleased to provide a context for her expressive voice here. Crispell, of course, has recorded for ECM  for more than twenty years to date, with a discography that includes trio albums with Paul Motian and Gary Peacock (Nothing Ever Was, Anyway and Amaryllis), a duo album with Peacock (Azure), the solo piano album Vignettes, and more.

 

Lovano’s  ECM leader debut with Trio Tapestry follows more than two decades as a Blue Note recording artist, with numerous releases in formats from duo (with Hank Jones, for instance) to large ensemble (the Grammy-winning 52^nd Street Themes).

 

Franz Schubert Die Nacht   Anja Lechner: violoncello Pablo Márquez: guitar   Since 2003 this duo has been exploring the most diverse repertoire and modes of expression in their concerts. For their first album, a conceptual context is provided by the music of Franz Schubert, many of whose songs were published in alternative versions with guitar during the composer’s lifetime. Interspersed on the recording, as an echo and commentary to his spirit and language, are the graceful Trois Nocturnes originally written for cello and guitar by Friedrich Burgmüller (1806-1874).

Till Fellner In Concert Beethoven and Liszt   Till Fellner: piano   Speaking to the New York Times in 2007, Alfred Brendel said of fellow pianist Till Fellner: “It has impressed me how ambitiously he has developed his repertory, being equally at home in solo and concerto repertoire, chamber music and lieder… “ Fellner’s insightful playing of Liszt is paired here with a concert recording of Beethoven’s Sonata No 32, recorded in 2010, the year in which ECM released  Fellner’s  interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos 4 and 5 to a chorus of critical acclaim.

Kim Kashkashian J.S. Bach Six Suites for Viola Solo BWV 1007-1012   Kim Kashkashian: viola   The poetry and radiance of Bach’s cello suites are transfigured in these remarkable interpretations by Kim Kashkashian on viola, offering “a different kind of somberness, a different kind of dazzlement” as annotator Paul Griffiths observes. One of the most compelling performers of classical and new music, Grammy-winning Kashkashian is hailed as "an artist who combines a probing, restless musical intellect with enormous beauty of tone”, and she brings to Bach revelatory commitment and intensity.

Danish String Quartet Prism 1: Beethoven, Shostakovich, Bach   Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen: violin; Frederik Øland: violin; Asbjørn Nørgaard: viola; Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin: violoncello   The prize-winning quartet – “one of the best quartets before the public today” (Washington Post) – inaugurates a series of five albums with the overarching title of Prism, in which the group will present one of Beethoven’s late string quartets in the context of a related fugue by J.S. Bach as well as a linked masterwork from the modern quartet literature.  “We hope the listener will join us in the wonder of these beams of music that travel all the way from Bach through Beethoven to our own times.”

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

[JSngry]

On 12/4/2018 at 5:43 PM, GA Russell said:

Danish String Quartet Prism 1: Beethoven, Shostakovich, Bach   Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen: violin; Frederik Øland: violin; Asbjørn Nørgaard: viola; Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin: violoncello   The prize-winning quartet – “one of the best quartets before the public today” (Washington Post) – inaugurates a series of five albums with the overarching title of Prism, in which the group will present one of Beethoven’s late string quartets in the context of a related fugue by J.S. Bach as well as a linked masterwork from the modern quartet literature.  “We hope the listener will join us in the wonder of these beams of music that travel all the way from Bach through Beethoven to our own times.”

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

Ok, that sounds like fun, the one has been clicked. Thanks for posting these infos.

[GA Russell]

Wadada Leo Smith trumpet; Bill Frisell guitar; Andrew Cyrille drums   Lebroba featuring Andrew Cyrille, Bill Frisell and Wadada Leo Smith brings together three of creative music’s independent thinkers, players of enduring influence.  A generous leader, Cyrille gives plenty of room to his cohorts, and all three musicians bring in compositions.  In his own pieces Cyrille rarely puts the focus on the drums, preferring to play melodically and interactively, sensitive to pitch and to space - his priority today is an elliptical style in which meter is implied rather than stated.

LISTEN / BUY

Wolfgang Muthspiel guitar; Ambrose Akinmusire trumpet; Brad Mehldau piano; Larry Grenadier double bass; Eric Harland drums  Muthspiel’s “lyrical and painterly style” has won him many admirers. Where The River Goes carries the story forward from  the highly-acclaimed 2016 recording Rising Grace. Featuring a cast of heavyweight talent (Mehldau, Akinmusire, Grenadier, Harland), this is much more than an “all-star” gathering. The group plays as an ensemble with its own distinct identity, evident both in the interpretation of Muthspiel’s pieces and in the collective playing.

LISTEN / BUY

Shai Maestro piano; Jorge Roeder double bass; Ofri Nehemya drums  The first ECM leader date for Shai Maestro features the gifted pianist fronting his superlative trio in a program predominantly of characteristically thoughtful Maestro originals. “Hearing the Shai Maestro Trio is like awakening to a new world”, All About Jazz has suggested. “Expressions of joy, introspective thoughts and heightened intensity all come to the fore.” Maestro’s differentiated touch is special; he can convey a range of fleeting emotions in a single phrase.

LISTEN / BUY

Mark Turner tenor saxophone; Ethan Iverson piano This album marks the recording debut of Turner and Iverson in duo. Years after their first meeting at NYC jam sessions, and following much individual success (Turner as a leader and in demand sideman, and Iverson in hit trio The Bad Plus) they re-connected as part of the exhilarating and widely-lauded Billy Hart Quartet. On Temporary Kings, they explore aesthetic common ground that embodies the heightened intimacy of modernist chamber music in a program of predominantly original compositions.

LISTEN / BUY

Barre Phillips double bass  Barre Phillips was the first musician to record an album of solo double bass, back in 1968, and he has always been an absolute master of the solo idiom.  In March 2017, Barre recorded what he says will be his last solo album, the final chapter of this journey: it is a beautiful and moving musical statement.  All the qualities we associate with his playing are here in abundance – questing adventurousness, melodic invention, textural richness, developmental logic, and deep soulfulness.

LISTEN / BUY

Marcin Wasilewski piano; Slawomir Kurkiewicz double bass; Michal Miskiewicz drums This live recording captures the trio in energetic, extroverted mode, fanning the flames of their previously recorded repertoire and drawing on the decades-long deep understanding the musicians have established over a quarter century of shared musical endeavor. As UK magazine Jazz Journal has noted, “Wasilewski’s music celebrates a vast dynamic range, from the most deftly struck pianistic delicacies to gloriously intense emotional exuberance, all within a marvelously melodic concept.”

LISTEN / BUY

Jakob Bro guitar; Thomas Morgan double bass; Joey Baron drums                                                                                           This poetically attuned group follows its ECM studio album of Streams (2016) – which The New York Times lauded as “ravishing”-  with an album recorded live over two nights in New York City.  Bay of Rainbows  rolls on waves of contemplative emotion, with gradually enveloping lyricism the lodestar. Recast intimately and elastically for trio, the pieces are illustrative of Bro and company’s ability to push and pull the music into mesmerizing new shapes, onstage and in the moment.

LISTEN / BUY

© *2018 ECM Records US, A Division of Verve Music Group. All rights reserved.

  

Mats Eilertsen Trio - And Then Comes The Night 

release date February 1, 2019

 

Harmen Fraanje: piano; Mats Eilertsen: double bass; Thomas Strønen: drums 

   

Norwegian bassist Mats Eilertsen has been a distinctive presence on ECM recordings by, amongst others, Tord Gustavsen, Trygve Seim, Mathias Eick, Nils Økland, Wolfert Brederode and Jakob Young and has long maintained several projects of his own, including this trio, now in its 10th year of existence. And Then Comes The Night (named after the novel by Icelandic writer Jón Kalman Stefánsson) was recorded at the Audiotorio Stelio Molo in Lugano and Eilertsen,  drummer Thomas Strønen, and Dutch pianist  Harmen Fraanje make full use of what Mats calls the studio's "special character and atmosphere" and the acutely-focused interplay the room encourages.  "We came in with a number of compositional sketches and the intention of seeing what could be shaped from them, with Manfred Eicher's help, in that specific space." The result is an album of subtle group music, sidestepping many of the conventions of trio playing, in a recording that demands and rewards concentrated listening.