Pat Metheny: Bright Size Life (ECM 5523892)
Among his many activities on behalf of ECM, New Note and Proper Music’s much admired – and missed – David Fraser (1951-2022) produced a regular news letter for the label. For the August 2003 edition he had me select my top 10 favourite ECM releases.
Bright Size Life was a shoo-in. It is reissued here in gatefold format in ECM’s Luminessence series of high-grade vinyl pressings, with three new black and white photographs of the participants to enhance Gary Burton’s original glowing endorsement of the 37-minute programme of seven finely crafted, open and flowing Metheny titles and the concluding Ornette Coleman medley Round Trip/Broadway Blues: “The first of the ten or so recordings which Metheny made for ECM, and for me the best, just ahead of Watercolours and Pat Metheny Group from 1976-77. It features exemplary ‘breathing’ or ‘open’ trio interplay, with Jaco Pastorius (elb) and Bob Moses (d) as crisp and driving (or dreamy and legato, as in the rapt suspensions of Midwestern Nights Dream) as one could wish. […] The clear, ringing resonance of the session makes for a freshing contrast to the overly padded production values of some of Metheny’s post-ECM work.”
In his appreciative (and archived) 02/85 review of the guitarist’s compilation Works album from the mid-1980s, our editor suggested that “Metheny has tended to the impressionistic rather than the guitaristic while he has been with ECM.” One might also venture that, like his great hero Wes Montgomery, the Metheny of Bright Size Life was able to exploit a rare blend of the imperatives of performance and poetry, the scintillating and the storytelling. An indispensable release.
Trilok Gurtu with Arké String Quartet: Mirror (Jazzline 31456)
Long a fêted regular in the Jan Garbarek Group, Indian drummer, percussion master and vocalist Gurtu has worked and recorded several times with the excellent Italian quartet of Carlo Cantini (vn, melodica), Valentine Corvio (vn), Sandro Di Paolo (vla) and Stefano Dall’ Ora (b, elb). Recorded in Mantua, this 56-minute programme from 2024 is this world-ranging quintet’s finest achievement to date.
The release is most satisfying: whether, e.g., in terms of the overall fluidity of the interaction that bodies forth space-conscious yet driving and finger-clicking music underpinned by intelligently deployed funk figures as much as traditional Indian accents, or the emotional and spiritual range of “affect” or soul conjured by a programme which ranges from the shuffling and bubbling drive of Peace Is Not Peacefull (sic) and Five Illusions to the spare, folkish melodies of The Cathedral and the tender, legato ruminations of I Am Your Mirror, Tornavento and the gravely poised and beautiful After The Storm.
Throughout, the standard of composition and musicianship is superb. Nobody overplays and the wonderfully sprung string quartet is completely attuned to the shape-shifting demands of Gurtu’s multi-dimensional world – a world as keenly intelligent and questing as it is sensuous and celebratory. An organic masterpiece, this, of East-West fusion.
Arve Henriksen, Trygve Seim, Anders Jormin, Markku Ounaskari: Arcanum (ECM 751 0477)
The Norwegians Henriksen (t, elecs) and Seim (ts, ss) join the equally estimable Swede Jormin (b) and the Finn Ounaskari (d, pc) in a 16-track, 55-minute release of lyrical rumination and exquisite group interplay.
While there are passages of firm rhythmic impetus, exemplified by Folkesong, the overall mood is one of spacious ad libitum musing, with mostly understated poetic emphasis on cross-rhythms, space and textural nuance, sometimes courtesy of electronics. All the musicians are in splendid form, with Jormin impressing in distilled pizzicato and arco modes, Ounaskari as sensitive as one might wish and Henriksen and Seim at the top of their now plaintive, now more assertive game.
Three tracks – Nokitpyrt, Old Dreams and La Fontaine – brought back fond memories of the 1964 Vibrations by Albert Ayler (ts), Don Cherry (t), Gary Peacock (b) and Sonny Murray (d) – cut, like Arcanum, in Copenhagen. The refined overtones of Arcanum (the title signifying a world of mysteries, or secret knowledge) are not those of the much wilder Vibrations: but they are not unrelated, and, certainly, potent enough in their own most particular register.
Cecilie Strange: Beech (April Records APR 146 CD)
My 16/08/23 review of Strange’s previous April Records release Beyond made plain how much I am drawn to the music of this most personal Danish tenor saxophonist. So too was my late JJ colleague Derek Ansell, a hard-bop specialist with ears open enough to welcome the patient poetry of Strange’s earlier April Records releases Blue and Blikkan, and who contributed an illuminating sleeve note to Beyond.
As I said in that Beyond review, my love of Strange’s work has to do with her melodic sensibility; with her wonderful, rounded yet “open” tone and congruent, harmonically uncluttered patience in the key matters of “breathing” phrasing and unhurried rhythmic momentum, her laid-back assurance, dynamically adroit, floating yet resonant lines and seemingly Taoist-like sensitivity to space.
All such factors are in further evidence in this compelling six-piece programme where Strange features her exceptionally attuned and subtly imaginative regular partners Peter Rosendahl (p), Thommy Andersson (b) and Jakob Høyer (d). Swedish vocalist Josefine Cronholm also contributes intermittently (as she did on Beyond) to diversely energising, sometimes folk-sprung effect. Here are 37 or so minutes of deeply conceived and beautifully measured music: pure Nordic balm for the soul.
Mwendo Dawa Trio: Melodic Hope (LJ Records LJCD 5264)
Following the excellent Signs And Symbols from her electro-acoustic quintet Natural Artefacts (reviewed last month) the chromatically and rhythmically astute Swedish pianist Susanna Lindeborg has come up with another release as challenging as it is rewarding, this time in trio format with fellow Swedes Jimmi Roger Pedersen (b) and David Sunby (d).
The music is both acoustic and marked by many a touch of electronics or what sounds like prepared piano: hear the ghostly opening figures of Steep Slope and Space Run, the cross-rhythmic ostinato flurries of Growl and the affecting reprise of Melodic Hope from Signs And Symbols, where Pedersen’s deep and strong pizzicato lines impress as much as Lindeborg’s questing lyricism.
There is energy aplenty here – witness the Cecil Taylor-like Open Path or the mix of grooved and offset accents in Bass Stroll and Detroit – allied to a firm grasp of evolving yet lucid structure, with Sunby’s dynamic alertness a constant delight. The principle of independent yet integrated improvising has come a long way since the key innovations of the Evans, LaFaro and Motian trio all those years ago, as the 10 characterful and dynamically arresting pieces of Melodic Hope attest to invigorating effect.
