Aphrodisiac Odor

Rolf Lislevand and friends embark on an elaboration of Baroque forms such as the passacaglia and toccata while incorporating more modern styles that seemed to grow naturally out of the nature of both music and instruments: Kapsberger gets a vocalise courtesy of Arianna Savall; Pellegrini gets a stylish Nuevo Flamenco treatment; Frescobaldi’s beautiful ‚Cosi mi disprezzate’ gets double-bass and guitar solos. The expansion and contraction of arranged and improvised elements allows the original Baroque material to breathe authentically in our own time, resulting in a phantasmagoria whose haunting effects are only accentuated by ECM’s beautifully spacious recording.
William Yeoman, The Gramophone

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Anders Jormin has been a vital contributor to music on ECM over the last fifteen years, a powerful presence on recordings by Charles Lloyd , Don Cherry, Bobo Stenson, Tomasz Stanko and Jon Balke. “In winds, in light” turns the spotlight on Jormin as composer-arranger. Written in response to a commission to compose new sacred music, and setting exceptional poetry for Lena Willemark to sing, the musical concept expanded as Anders' unique quintet toured it through Sweden. Subsequently, the album was recorded in the large and resonant Organ Hall of the Gothenburg Music Aademy.

Pt1+Pt2

诗歌朗诵 西班牙语 给懂西语和喜诗歌的朋友

Rayfile

This is an extraordinarily beautiful recording. Michelle Markarski … searches out connections between past and present, always taking the road less travelled. This unaccompanied program juxtaposes works by two very different composers: three Tartini Sonatas and two pieces by Makarski’s friend Donald Crockett. ...
Makarski has a formidable but unobtrusive technique… Her tone, though adaptable to every change of colour, nuance, and intensity, has an unfailingly flawless, pristine purity, an essential element of her distinctive noble, dignified, inwardly expressive style.
Edith Eisler, Strings

Rayfile

This is an interesting disk by the Trevor Watts-led Moire Drum Orchestra, consisting of the English saxophonist, a Scottish bassist, and five Ghanians who double on various percussion instruments and traditional wooden flutes. Most of the pieces are largely based on Ghanian folk melodies and on the folk-jazz continuum the playing is closer to "folk" than to "jazz." In contrast, the original compositions by Watts sound more like traditional jazz. An oddball rendition of "The Rocky Road to Dublin" rounds out the collection. (Review from Amazon)

Pt1+Pt2

A Life of Musical Integrity

By Trevor Watts

It's always been important for me to follow my muse, whatever that is. It seems to manifest itself in a subconcious need to do something, change something, explore something. Entwined with a feeling of staving off habit, boredom and self satisfaction. The need to explore new avenues for oneself. These new avenues may not be so for others. But I have always been a great believer in discovering for yourself. More fun that way, and who's to say it's wrong? Probably comes from a background in the industrial North of England in the '50s when there was very little "live" music around, and only a prospect of a job in a factory for the rest of your life. As someone who left school at 15 this was not for me. I wanted to play like the musicians on the 78s I heard that my Dad introduced me to from his sojourn in Canada and the USA in the late '20s and early '30s. Ellington, Tex Beneke, Artie Shaw, Nellie Lutcher, Nat King Cole, Tommy Dorsey, Mills Bros, Fats Waller, etc. I had no awareness of a career in music, just the spirit of what was being played.

This has stayed with me even today. And whatever anyone else feels about the various directions I've gone for, I personally feel that I've retained my integrity. Call it naive if you like. The need to play freely improvised music came at the right time in the early '60s. Before we came on the scene and helped change things through groups like the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Amalgam, it was very much a jazz history in the U.K. of second hand USA style jazz. Often played well, but not good enough for our generation, like a lot of other things weren't good enough in those days.

We stuck it out at the experimantal Little Theatre Club. My group Amalgam from around 1976 experimented with a rock drummer, noise guitar player, funky bassist and my saxes. Some people thought I'd sold out, but to me, that music would never be commercial in the real sense. If I'd tried for that I'd have done it better. It was always done with the feeling of what would it be like with this group of people. We were all experimenting from our different corners, and discovering aspects of each others playing that we wouldn't have otherwise. I then moved onto the original Drum Orchestra in 1980 which had Steeleye Span violinist Peter Knight. Pete was a friend of mine from the '60s and took an interest at the time of the group's formation in improvised music, which he'd never done. Liam Genockey the drummer stayed on from before and I added Ernest Mothle, a South African upright bassist, and Mamadi Kamara and Nana Tsiboe on African percussion. Again to see how this combination would apply itself to improvising. Some very wild nights, and very exciting. This eventually led to my Moire Music Drum Orchestra with five Ghanaian percussionists, which again began as an improvising situation, but with African rhythm obviously. The only two deliberately more compositionally based groups was the Moire Music 10 & 14 pieces, and my current Celebration Band that recently had a lot of success in America. I feel I've kept that thread of integrity the whole way through whether promoters or fans are into it or not, at least I assure them that that's what they'll hear when they come to listen to any group of mine. No point in letting that drop now. It's been done through a mix of getting other jobs in the first place, but not since 1968, social security benefits, a helpful partner, and looking for that position in life where I'd never overstretch my resources. Eating cheaper food, not getting too stretched with rent, etc.

I always looked for this, and whilst I know there are others less fortunate than myself, there's others who say they need X amount of money, that they'd like to be able to do what I do but can't. Well it hasn't been easy, but it can be done. I feel as though I understand and have retained the true spirit and integrity of jazz music, something I heard and was taken with so long ago. The music told me right from the start "Be yourself". So many musicians want to be someone else, and of course it's good to study others. But to try and find your own voice is THE KEY. So many colleges knock the stuffing out of people; they learn all the tools of the trade, and then what. Get a career in music I suppose. Well, good luck in that respect. I always wanted to win through by playing music exactly the way I wanted to, irrespective of fashion. I'm still trying to make that wider breakthrough, because I believe the fans and promoters anywhere will really enjoy the music of my current project Trevor Watts and the Celebration Band, as was recently proved on our recent USA/Canada tour. Who knows, we may even get a gig in New York one day. But no compromises here.

 It is hardly surprising that the musician who produced such unexpected colours and textures as a solo act and from a percussion quartet should find so many possibilities in the almost wilfully unconventional instrumentation employed for this edition of the Ensemble. BBC Music Magazin

Subtle, with lovely dynamics and beautifully balanced colours, ultimately it burns with more light than heat.Irish Times

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Personnel
Patrick Demenga cello
Thomas Demenga cello

The prodigiously gifted cellist brothers from Berne, Switzerland, in a rare duo programme - with première recordings of new music by Alexander Knaifel and Barry Guy, and compositions by Roland Moser, Thomas Demenga and Jean Barrière. As England's The Strad noted, "Few are prepared for the sensational panache, dazzling virtuosity and sheer musicianship that characterises the Demenga brothers' playing."

live recording(pLay Barriere Sonata No.10) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sQLdWBYgxQ

Rayfile Link

With this recording American lutenist Stephen Stubbs makes his ECM debut as leader of his own ensemble. His first ECM New Series appearance was on the album of troubadour songs “Proensa” with Paul Hillier. On the Dowland Project records “In Darkness Let Me Dwell” and “Care-Charming Sleep” he can be heard alongside John Potter, John Surman, Maya Homburger and Barry Guy.

Reviews:

Stephen Stubbs ... has put together a risky but irresistible project of a kind that has lately become standard operating procedure at ECM. Instead of a traditional early-music program Mr. Stubbs and his period-instrument chamber band, Teatro Lirico, offer an extended fantasy built on musical free association. … Though the program is essentially Italian, it ends with dances from a 17th-century Slovak manuscript and a guitar piece by Mr. Stubbs. … Amid all this, Mr. Stubbs and company offer two imaginative deftly played improvisations on “Folias d’Espagnas”, a chord progression on which many Baroque works are built… But the improvisatory spirit is not confined to these: the players take every opportunity to embellish the formal works as well. … The playing is tight and shapely. In the improvised pieces, the musicians work together with the unity of purpose a listener expects of a good jazz ensemble.
Allan Kozinn, The New York Times

Another method of forging new music from early sources is to improvise around them, as Stephen Stubbs’ Teatro Lirico ensemble does on the celebrated “Folia bass”, a hypnotic chord pattern that became popular at the close of the 16th century. Stubbs, a skilled baroque guitarist, encourages his players to perform with laudable ease of gesture both in improvisation and in attractive, low-key written works.
Rob Cowan, The Independent

Much of this disc is devoted to improvisations on La Follia; it begins with an elaboration of a slow section of Corelli’s op 5/12, and subsequent returns to take up the theme the same manner, which is sonorous and laid back, beautiful but self-indulgent.... The performers are subtle, and play with the listener’s expectations.
Clifford Bartlett, Early Music Review

U won't miss this one,trust me.值得一听。

CD1+CD2

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Ketil Bjørnstad: keyboards
Arild Andersen: bass
Jon Eberson: guitar
Jon Christensen: drums

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Nine sacred pieces by Arvo Pärt including of his newest compositions, alongside works from earlier in his career. Pärt's longtime collaborator and biographer Paul Hillier leads the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and organist Christopher Browers-Broadbent in a third recording devoted to the Estonian composer.
　　
　　"Hillier's interpretations are about as definitive as you can get." - Gramophone

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"This recording is the fruit of many years' enjoyable collaboration between composer, conductor, and organist, beginning with performances of the St. John Passion back in the mid-1980s and continuing right down to the present day." (PAUL HILLIER)

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Elsbeth Moser bayan
Boris Pergamentschikow cello
Münchener Kammerorchester
Christoph Poppen conductor

The composer from the Tartar Republic of the former Soviet Union is a unique figure in contemporary music, and the first ECM album of her compositions underlines many of the strengths of her work, foremost among them a deep feeling for sound and texture. As a colourist, too, Gubaidulina has few equals, and the way in which she mixes "folk" and "concert" instruments - in this case the bayan (the Russian button accordion), the violoncello and strings - is exceptional. Tremendous performances by Elsbeth Moser, Boris Pergamenschikow and the Münchener Kammerorchester under Christoph Poppen.
　　
　　Review：
　　If you haven't yet been lured into the compelling world of Sofia Gubaidulina's music, this might be just the disc to do it. Her "Seven Words" is built as a sort of double concerto for bayan (Russian button accordion) and cello. High and low, God and man are interwoven over a mysterious, velvety texture of strings. Pärt meets Penderecki - in the best possible way. Gorgeous, and unforgettable.
　　Andrew McGregor, BBC Music Magazine
　　
　　From the day she was born (in 1931) in the Tatar Soviet Republic of the Central Volga region, Sofia Gubaidulina was influenced by the polarised natures of Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity. Her 1982 work "Seven Words" can be seen as the culmination of her output. Juxtaposing immense lyricism with sharp, fragmentary gestures, it is a stunning example of her musical ethos. The crisp and delicate strings from the Münchener Kammerorchester provide a lucid backdrop for the two soloists. The cello, representing "high art", and the bayan "low art" are played with dazzling precision by Moser and Pergamenschikow.
　　Tarik O'Regan, The Observer

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“Raccolto” marks the ECM debut of Stefano Battaglia. An important addition to the label’s expanding roster of Italian artists, Battaglia has made his mark as player of great capacity, heard in many contexts since the 1980s. This double album features two separate trios: the group with bassist Giovanni Maier and Michele Rabbia, which has toured as ‘Triosonic’; and the trio known as ‘Atem’, with Rabbia and French violinist Dominique Pifarély. Both groups were formed in 2001, both have roots going back much further, and each has an entirely different character. ‘Raccolto’ means ‘harvest’ and Battaglia’s recording suggests a cornucopia of inspirations: the two trios overflow with ideas. Battaglia/Maier/Rabbia offers music of a reverent lyricism, which nonetheless has its roots quite clearly in a jazz piano trio tradition, that goes back at least to Paul Bley’s ‘Footloose’. The trio with Pifarély, on the other hand, focuses on collective playing, timbral exploration, and free dissolved rhythms – all part of the language of free music, but as Battaglia points out, he and the French violinist share an interest in “creating form through improvisation, which is uncommon amongst the free players. We’re trying to make music that is very close to composition, but there are also emanations from the languages of folk music.” Drummer Rabbia plays jazz drum kit in the trio with Maier, and a percussion set “with more of the sonorities of contemporary classical music” in the trio with Pifarély, further emphasizing the distinction between CDs 1 & 2. Together they give a powerful indication of the scope of Stefano Battaglia’s musical convictions. “I find it symbolically important, “Battaglia says, “that my first ECM album is an improvisations album, free and rigorous at the same time.”

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After three very-well received recordings - “Words of the Angel,” “Soir, dit-elle” and “Stella Maris” – combining medieval sacred music and contemporary composition, a strikingly different project from the Trio Mediaeval. Here the singers, “precise and on fire”, in Paul Griffiths’s description, investigate their Scandinavian roots, with a powerful and compelling account of Norwegian folk songs. On several selections they are joined by percussionist Birger Mistereggen, specialist in the rare Norwegian folk-drum tradition. This is a disc that will communicate across categories, to a broad listenership. For the sources that Trio Mediaeval explore here are the same sources that have inspired many Nordic jazz improvisers...

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So...I'm back.

不再更新

Reviews:

This is ocean music for the opening heart. David Darling is one of the great souls and so astonishingly creative it takes your breath. There is such tenderness here, and majesty, and strength. Reserve and passion. Mickey Houlihan, that genius of natural sound, and David have been working on this music for years, and it is simply a magnificent gift to civilization, one that will outlast us all.

— Coleman Barks

I rarely get to hear a work with such depth. That's such an overused word, I hesitate to use it here, but it truly touches me on some pretty profound levels. Other words come to mind as well-it displays an artistic maturity in David that, from a performer's point of view, we all strive for. I've read the liner notes, but I sense a deeper, more profound purpose at work here, that creative imperative that is so difficult to attain. I'm guessing that upon completion, all involved just looked at each other and said "Yes, that's it."

Transcendent-it's an elusive descriptor that I save for a special few disks, when the music transcends the instrument's vocabulary, the performer's chops, the composer's craft, the producer's skill, finding a place that can only be called pure music. It's a special thing when music can be called transcendent — Prayer for Compassion is indeed in that category. You have much to be proud of.

— Michael DeLalla - Falling Mountain Music

Release date: January 20, 2009

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David Darling acoustic and electric cello, voice, percussion
 
Slow Return
Bells And Gongs
Far Away Lights
Solo Cello
Minor Blue
Clouds
Solo Cello
Solo Cello And Voice
Journal October, Stuttgart

Recorded October 1979
ECM 1161

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The Hilliard Ensemble: Codex Speciálník

Anonymous: Exordium quadruplate, Nate dei, Concrepet, Verbum caro
Anonymous: Tria sunt munera, Videntes stellam, Reges Tharsis
Anonymous: In natali domini
Anonymous: Sophia nascitur, O quam pulchra, Magi videntes
Anonymous: Congaudemus pariter, En lux immensa
Anonymous: Magnum miraculum
Anonymous: Nobis est natus
Anonymous: Salve mater gracie
Anonymous: Christus iam surrexit, Terra tremuit, Angelus domini, Surrexit Christus
Petrus de Grudencz: Presulem ephebeatum
Petrus de Grudencz: Paraneuma eructemus
Petrus de Grudencz: Presidiorum erogatrix
Petrus de Grudencz: Pneuma eucaristiarum, Veni vere illustrator, Dator eya, Paraclito tripudia
Anonymous: Terrigenarum plasmator
Anonymous: Pulcherrima rosa
Johannes Touront: Chorus iste
Gontrásek: Bud' buohu chvála cest
Alexander Agricola: O virens virginum
Anonymous: Kyrie Petite Camusette
Anonymous: Gloria Petite Camusette
John Plummer: Tota pulchra es
Anonymous: Credo Petite Camusette
Anonymous: Ave pura tu puella
Anonymous: Sanctus Petite Camusette
Josquin Desprez: Ave Maria

Rec. 1993

Download: Pt1 Pt2

Fly Trio:

Mark Turner tenor and soprano saxophones
Larry Grenadier double-bass
Jeff Ballard drums

ECM debut for Fly, leaderless collective comprised of three influential American jazz musicians. The group was called into existence by drummer Jeff Ballard in the mid-1990s, but draws on a longer history of shared projects. All three players write music for the group. Mark Turner: “Sometimes it’s the saxophone carrying the melody. Other times it’s the bass or drums. We spread out the frontline duties among us.” “Sky & Country” is issued on the eve of a tour that takes in dates on both East and West coasts of the US as well concerts in France, Austria and Belgium.

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Three keyfigures from ECM’s contemporary music roster – Heinz Holliger, Thomas Zehetmair, and Thomas Demenga – team up for an exceptional recording of three works by German post-war composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann. Zimmermann, almost half a generation older than the serialists such as Boulez and Stockhausen, integrated state-of-the-art compositional methods in his writing while constantly following his own independent, highly expressive musical language. The rhythmically energetic violin concerto (1950) which is partially based on twelve-tone models and cast in three movements, was soon hailed as a model for a post-war solo concerto, while “Canto di Speranza” (1953/57), a one-movement cello concerto, acccording to Zimmermann, emphasizes monologue and introvert meditation. “Ich wandte mich…” on the other hand is Zimmermann’s last work, finished only a few days before his suicide in 1970. Labelled by the composer as an “ecclesiastical action”, the 35-minute oratorio on biblical verse and the famous parable "The Grand Inquisitor" from Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” is a deeply pessimistic “performance art” work - of the kind that flourished in Germany’s ‘Fluxus’ scene around 1970 - involving recitation, singing, and both gestural and acrobatic action.

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Download: Pt1 Pt2

For more than four years, fans have been waiting for a new Bach recording from the extraordinary Austrian pianist Till Fellner. His interpretation of the first book of the Well-tempered piano for ECM was released in 2004 to great critical acclaim. “The articulation and the shaping of line are always clean, with meticulous but subtle attention given to the underlining of fugue subjects. There is just the right amount of flexibility in his shaping of phrase, and the sheer beauty of his sound helps lend the cerebral an enticing touch of the sensual”, wrote Stephen Pettitt in the Evening Standard. With the two-part Inventions and three-part Sinfonias Fellner now illuminates the magic of Bach’s allegedly just didactic piano pieces from 1722/23, in which he offered a method of polyphonic playing and composing. Interspersed is a vividly swinging account of Bach’s fifth French Suite in G-major.

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First ECM solo album from the Norwegian violinist who has gained many friends for his work with the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble. Økland’s solo music is strongly inspired by the rich Norwegian fiddle tradition and its freedom, variation and individuality, yet what he plays is not purely ‘folk music’ rather a reinvention of folk forms, with free improvisation and contemporary composition also powerful influences. The ‘personality’ of the instruments themselves is also an inspiration: on “Monograph” Økland makes the most of the ‘drone’ qualities of the viola d’amore and the Hardanger fiddle (he plays both old and modern models) as well as an old violin from 1700, in a recital of subtle and melodic invention.

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The versatile Greek pianist has already outlined a broad arc of musical possibility in his recordings for ECM – from post-Bill Evans jazz with Arild Andersen to explorations of Gurdjieff’s nomadic sound-world with Anja Lechner. “The Promise” picks up the implications of his earlier solo recital “Akroasis” (“Hypnotic and mysterious, shimmering like ancient mosaics” – The Independent), but is more rigorously composed, carefully casting arpeggios into deep pools of silence. All pieces are Tsabropoulos originals, with the exception of “Djivaeri”, a Greek traditional tune. The album was recorded in 2008 in the resonant space of Athens’ Megaron Concert Hall, with Manfred Eicher producing.

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"His music makes the basic human need for a link between aesthetics, ethics and spirituality clear and perceivable – a need so often subordinated to politics and economics in our society." Thus the words with which Arvo Pärt was awarded the International Bridge Prize of the twin cities Görlitz and Zgorzelec in 2007. His new CD, ‘In Principio’, demonstrates the extent to which his more recent music manifests this very link. Twenty-five years ago ECM launched its New Series with Pärt’s Tabula Rasa. Now its twelfth Pärt album, again produced by Manfred Eicher, presents six compositions of various lengths spanning a period of almost ten years. Four of the pieces appear here for the first time on disc. The meticulous performances were recorded by Estonian ensembles under the baton of Tōnu Kaljuste, a conductor well-versed in Pärt’s music for many years, and accompanied by the composer every step of the way.

The range is wide: Pärt creates masterly syntheses of the expressive resources he has pursued ever since his personal style emerged in the mid-1970s. The intimate and the monumental co-exist; streams of chords flow towards dramatic eruptions. The inflection of his pieces is always based on their underlying emotive significance. In Principio is a five-movement setting of the opening verses of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word". The elegiac orchestral piece "La Sindone" conjures up the image of Christ on the Shroud of Turin. "Cecilia, vergine romana", written to celebrate the sacred year 2000 in Rome, is devoted to the martyrdom of the patron saint of music. A serene plea for peace, memories of a deceased friend and contemplation of the ‘peaks and troughs’ of life: these are the emotional way-stations of the three relatively short pieces here, encapsulating the magic of Pärt’s music.

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Personnel:

Christian Wallumrød piano, harmonium, toy piano
Nils Økland violin, Hardanger fiddle, viola d'amore
Arve Henriksen trumpet
Per Oddvar Johansen drums

The title of this album is an affectionate, if peripheral, salute to John Cage, whose music and philosophy Norwegian pianist Christian Wallumrød appreciates. In 1968, Cage wrote in his book “A Year From Monday” that “we no longer have to lull ourselves expecting the advent of some one artist who will satisfy all our aesthetic needs. There will rather be an increase in the amount and kinds of art which will be both bewildering and productive of joy”. Wallumrød’s Ensemble, embodying this prophecy, occupies a special niche, with music both attractive and hard to pin down. Although three of its members have had complex, interwoven playing histories over the last decade, the ways in which they interact in the Wallumrød group are unprecedented. To note that the quartet features three players from the world of ‘jazz’ and one from the world of ‘folk’ provides little real insight into the group character, focused so well through the medium of Wallumrød’s compositions. They have found a sound of their own outside the idioms. In recognition of the group’s marked originality, and a shared feeling that they are prising open a new space here, the participants have been making this unit a priority, despite a welter of other commitments.

This is the third ECM album from pianist Wallumrød, following the 1996 recording “No Birch” (which already included Henriksen in the line-up) and the 2003 release “Sofienberg Variations” which introduced the present quartet. Press reaction to the “Variations” was exceptionally positive. “The elements of composition and improvisation are tightly woven”, wrote Stuart Nicholson in Jazzwise, “as Wallumrød’s piano subtly mediates the creative impulses of his ensemble who have succeeded in creating a statement that is quite unique.” In the Birmingham Post, Peter Bacon spoke of “immense emotional depth, a magical sound.”

Wallumrød belongs to the new generation of northern players who grew up listening to ECM recordings. “The whole ECM field of European and American jazz – and Jarrett and Garbarek in particular – was a point of departure for my improvising.” Also important were the classic pre-ECM trio recordings of Paul Bley, including “Closer”, “Mr Joy” and “Rambling”. Bley indicated a route away from “clever lines” and conventional jazz harmony, and Wallumrød liked his dry wit, the aphoristic nature of his improvisations. Later as contemporary composition became an equally important inspirational source, Wallumrød heard points of contact between Bley’s world and the mordant humour of György Kurtág’s “Jatekok” and Bent Sørensen’s “Bird and Bells”. These, then, are some of the sources informing Wallumrød’s own compositional thinking.

“Sofienberg Variations” was the sound of his ensemble testing the water with pre-existent material. “A Year From Easter” is the first disc to feature music written specifically for the quartet. Three quarters of the material is new (although the ensemble also casts new light on a handful of pieces written for earlier Wallumrød bands). At the centre of the sound is the very special combining of the styles of Nils Økland and Arve Henriksen.

Christian Wallumrød: “I’m still constantly surprised about how well Arve and Nils manage to play together. I really don’t know what they are actually doing to get so close to each other in the sound.” Their backgrounds provide few clues.

Økland was added to the band at the suggestion of producer Manfred Eicher. Known in Norway as a radical renewer of the folk tradition, he has built bridges between the folk genre and contemporary composition and improvised musics. He is also expert in early music, and has made extensive studies of Biber, the 17th century composer whose experiments with unorthodox tunings, as well as his radiant music, still inspire modern players.

“As an improviser, Nils is both strong and open-minded. If he’s improvising on the basis of what he’s learned playing folk music and pre-baroque music, those elements are in his playing now anyway, integrated in his phrasing. He’s very concerned about playing in the context of the compositions. We talk about that often at rehearsals. But he is also a producer of pure sound and texture, he goes after colours and feeling and is capable of being very intuitive.” Read more.

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Iro Haarla
Northbound

Iro Haarla piano, harp
Trygve Seim saxophones
Mathias Eick trumpet
Uffe Krokfors double-bass
Jon Christensen drums
Down: Pt1+Pt2+Pt3=140MB

 “This is a concert recording I was holding onto until the right moment presented itself. It shows the trio at its most buoyant, swinging, melodic and dynamic. (...) If jazz is about swinging, energy, and personal ecstasy for the player and the listener, I can think of no other single concert by the trio that expresses these qualities so completely and comprehensively. “
– Keith Jarrett in the liner notes.

“My Foolish Heart” documents the music made by Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette at Montreux’s Stravinsky Auditorium in July 2001. It is an unusually encyclopedic performance, even by the trio’s criteria, and one that fairly romps through the history of jazz in celebratory spirit. There are tunes from some of the music’s masters – “Four” by Miles Davis, “Straight, No Chaser” by Thelonious Monk, “Oleo” by Sonny Rollins, “Five Brothers” by Gerry Mulligan. There is a characteristic scattering of standard tunes, too, including “What’s New”, “The Song Is You”, “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry”, “Only The Lonely” and “On Green Dolphin Street”, in each instance the musicians prise open fresh perspectives on familiar, and timeless, material.

Unique to this concert is the inclusion of three pieces in stride and ragtime styles, played with verve enough to conjure up the ghost of Fats Waller on “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, and “Honeysuckle Rose” (both Waller tunes) and on “You Took Advantage Of Me”, a Rodgers and Hart piece from the 1928 musical “Present Arms”: in total more than twenty minutes in the ragtime zone before the trio exits by way of Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser”, a further expression of the balance between joy, creativity and idiosyncratic humor that is specific to jazz.

Already in the sixties Jarrett sometimes incorporated ragtime elements in his freer pieces and compositions (his 1968 album “Somewhere Before” contains such instances), and he once told an interviewer that Scott Joplin would be his first choice of music for a desert island. But classic early jazz and the Harlem stride tradition are aspects of the music that the bebop-aligned ‘Standards’ trio with Peacock and DeJohnette had never addressed on disc - until now. Bassist and drummer, improvisers ready for any development when playing with Jarrett, swing resolutely behind the pianist on “Ain’t Misbehavin’”. Peacock even takes a stoic solo in this (for him) uncommon terrain, and in the closing section Jarrett and DeJohnette trade fours, to the evident delight of the crowd.

Jarrett: “It is a perfect demonstration of our commitment to jazz that these [ragtime pieces] do not come off as mimicry. They were as real and alive for us at the time as anything that came before or after. This, indeed, was a concert containing so much of the breadth of what we have been doing with ‘Standards’ these almost 25 years, that now is the time to hear it.”

“My Foolish Heart” is the 18th ECM release from the unit widely viewed as the world’s leading piano trio, now rapidly approaching its 25th anniversary: It was in January 1983 that Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette came together - with producer Manfred Eicher – a day before the now-legendary Power Station sessions which were to signal a re-immersion in the world of standards, and a reaffirmation of faith in the jazz tradition. Their first recording session brought forth three albums: “Standards Vol. 1", “Standards Vol. 2” and “Changes”. These first three discs will be reissued in January 2008 as a 3-CD box set, with the title “Setting Standards: New York Sessions”.

Down: CD1+CD2+Booklet

The melody and texture of the Persian language exerts a subtle hold on the composing and improvising of the Berlin-based Cyminology quartet, heard here on its ECM debut Bandleader Cymin Samawatie, charismatic German-Iranian vocalist, sings her own Farsi lyrics as well as poetry of Sufi masters Rumi and Hafez, and 20th century verse of Forough Farrokhzäd. “As Ney”, an album titled after Rumi’s “Song of the Reed-Flute”, is quietly compelling, proposing a chamber jazz from new and fresh perspectives. An unusual and highly attractive ‘intercultural’ recording whose sensitive musicianship draws the listener in.

Cyminology.

Background.

Download: Pt1+Pt2.

K.Jarrett.Trio

2001 was a vintage year for the Jarrett trio, as three outstanding live albums - “The Out-of-Towners”, “Always Let Me Go” and “My Foolish Heart”- have already shown. “Yesterdays”, registered at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Festival Hall, is a fourth 2001 concert recording, with an all-standards programme and a strong emphasis on bebop, including Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple from the Apple”, “Shaw’nuff” by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and Horace Silver’s “Strollin’”. There is also an exhilarating splash of ragtime in the shape of “You Took Advantage Of Me”, and beautiful ballads including the title track and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (both from Jerome Kern’s pen). As a bonus: the album concludes with a radiant “Stella by Starlight” captured at a soundcheck: Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette playing just for the joy of it...
Details. DL: Pt1+Pt2.

春节好！