If you were to ask me which is my favourite Kenny Wheeler release on ECM, I’d have a hard time. For there have been many superb sessions to enjoy. However, I’m pretty sure that were I permitted to select two items, they would be Gnu High from 1975 – featuring Keith Jarrett (p), Dave Holland (b) and Jack DeJohnette (d) – and the present Angel Song, recorded in 1996 and released on CD in 1997. Here, Wheeler is with Lee Konitz (as), Dave Holland (b) and Bill Frisell (elg) – to list the personnel in the order in which it appears on both the original CD and this double LP.
In my June 2023 review of Gnu High – reissued, like Angel Song, in sturdy gatefold packaging as part of ECM’s audiophile Luminessence series – I quoted Ian Carr’s incisive characterisation of Wheeler’s art as “a kind of buoyant, romantic melancholy”. If Gnu High evinces especially the initial aspect of that characterisation, Angel Song reveals the sort of romantic (albeit rigorously disciplined) inwardness that can intimate liminal realms.
As Carr has said, Angel Song is “one of the most exquisite examples of jazz chamber music”. He continued “It has the unity of a suite, and softly glowing sonorities.” The absence of drums places firm focus on the tellingly economic Holland and the texturally astute Frisell, as they conjure and play off the unforced range of mostly gentle, spacious and ostensibly simple ostinato figures which underpin the melodic utterance and pellucid interplay of Wheeler and Konitz.
Things heat up a touch at times, especially on Onmo. However, like the original stunning cover image by photographer Daniela Nowitzki which graces this release, overall the music is an affecting testament to the modernist idea that less can be more.
As you would expect from ECM, the recording quality is simply wondrous, with the sound of all captured with such intimacy and clarity that you feel they might be playing just a few feet from you. Like Beethoven’s op. 130 string quartet, Miles Davis’s Kind Of Blue and Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa – or, indeed, Wheeler’s Gnu High – here is music for the ages: one of the absolute gems of one of the most stimulating music catalogues in the world.
Discography
LP1: (1) Nicolette; Present Past (20.43) – Kind Folk; Unti (18.28)
LP2: Angel Song; Onmo (13.25) – Nonetheless; Past Present; (2) Kind Of Gentle (17.13)
Wheeler (t, flh); Lee Konitz (as); Dave Holland (b); Bill Frisell (elg); (2) as (1) but Wheeler out. New York, February 1996.
ECM 081 4303
