ECM have released some superb albums in this their 25th anniversary year, but none as provocative in conception – or as beautifully packaged – as this melding of the worlds of post-modal European jazz and medieval chant (reaching back to its pre-literate forms), early polyphony and Renaissance motets. ‘What is this music?’ asks tenorist John Potter, in a sleevenote of unusual length for ECM. It is, he suggests, a music without name: ‘simply what happened when a saxophonist, a vocal quartet and a record producer met to make some music together’.
While the result may upset historical purists, the measured, dynamically sensitive intensity with which this unusual quintet hymn life should have a strong appeal to anyone who has responded to, say, the echoes of J S Bach’s choral preludes in Garbarek’s sublime 1977 Entering (Places, ECM 1118), or the blend of folk-like simplicity and post-Romantic chromaticism in his 1979 Aftenland release with church organist Kjell Johnsen (ECM 1169). Sample Regnantem Sempiterna and Ave Maris Stella for the sort of spacious descant modulations which bring Aftenland very much to mind, or the opening Parce Mihi Domine and Primo Tempore for the breadth and depth of tonal and poetic imagination brought to matters of what in this context can be properly called the regenerative aura of arrangements.
The concert which these musicians gave at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge this July was one of the finest musical experiences I expect ever to have. While this record does not offer quite the range of music that that concert did, it remains as inspiring an example as one could wish for of ECM music at its innovative best, one’s only complaint being: why weren’t the Latin texts of this music translated on the enclosed booklet, as such texts have been in all other New Series releases?
Discography
Parce Mihi Domine; Primo Tempore; Sanctus; Regnantem Sempiterna; O Salutaris Hostia; Procedentem Sponsum; Pulcherrima Rosa; (*) Parce Mihi Domine; Beata Viscera; De Spineto Nata Rosa; Credo; Ave Maris Stella; Virgo Flagellatur; (**) Oratio Ieremiae; Parce Mihi Domine (77.41)
Jan Garbarek (ss, ts); David James (v); Rogers Covey-Crump (v); John Potter (v); Gordon Jones (v); (*) Garbarek out; (**) Garbarek, James, Covey-Crump, Potter out. Propstei St Gerold, September 1993.
(ECM New Series 1525)
