Landscape Trio: Sailing Through
I don’t get to hear all that much contemporary jazz from Italy, but what I have heard recently has given much satisfaction: see my July review of bassist and composer Ferdinando Romano’s The Legends Of Otranto, released on the excellent GleAM Records.
Beautifully packaged by Italy’s Da Vinci Jazz label, and complete with informative liner notes (including apposite, never overdone musical detail) the Landscape Trio’s Sailing Through is a most accomplished and enjoyable release. Here is a splendid Italian ensemble who combine three-way improvisational verve with a strong storytelling or poetic quality, the whole underpinned by considerable jazz literacy.
If, as acknowledged in the liner notes, the ringing clarity of the opening, 5/4 and upbeat Raindrop Story cannot help but recall the Pat Metheny of the mid-1970s ECM classic Bright Size Life, the concluding La Via Del Mare sounds like the kind of rock-touched, deep and melancholy melody that Jeff Beck might have dug into late in life. And in between these extremes lie all manner of delights, including the tough and muscular swing of Shibuya and the gentle yet purposeful measures of a fine rendition of Kenny Wheeler’s Kind Folks.
Tenor saxophonist Lorenzo Cucco appears to good effect on both those last pieces. Elsewhere, the trio draws transfigured inspiration from sources as diverse as Charlie Haden (Esa), Richie Beirach (Cloud Atlas, another ECM-tinged track) and Allan Holdsworth (the aforementioned Shibuya). It all adds up to 40 minutes of beautifully programmed and recorded contemporary jazz pleasure. Bravo!
Discography
(1) A Raindrop Story; Hokusai; Esa; Scirocco 12/11/19; Cloud Atlas; (2) Shibuya; Kind Folk; (1) La Via Del Mare (40.35)
(1) Emiliano Bez (elg); Christian Guidolin (b); Andrea Pellarin (d). (2) as (1) plus Lorenzo Cucco (ts). ArtMusic Studio, Bassano Del Grappa November 2025.
Da Vinci Jazz CD 1159
Ayumi Tanaka, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Strønen: Windflower
Simon Adams’s 2022 review of Tanaka’s previous (and debut) ECM release Subaqueous Silence offered a summary of the Oslo-domiciled Japanese pianist’s work which today remains as suggestive as it is incisive: “Hers is a sparse music, of pauses and silence, of considered statements and deep contemplation.” The pianist herself has said that “I want to compose music which sounds like an improvisation and to improvise music that sounds like it has been composed.”
Here, composer credits are shared by the trio, with the exception of The Source which is credited to Tanaka alone. Christian Meaas Svendsen (b) and Per Oddvar Johansen (d) from Subaqueous Silence are replaced by the equally attentive Morgan and Strønen. To my ears, their astutely employed cross-rhythmic capacities bring a subtly different quality of now implicit, now building energy to the music: sample the title track and The Sea Is Still.
While applauding the music, Simon wondered if ECM had ever produced a more minimalist album than Subaqueous Silence. It’s not just the fact that the present Windflower offers some six or so more minutes of limpidly projected poetics than its predecessor which leads me to rate the album as one of the most enjoyable and stimulating piano trio albums from ECM that I’ve heard in quite some time. Don’t miss it!
Discography
Windflower; La Source; From Us, To You; Tree Of Stars; Weaving; The Sea Is Still; Spring; Driftwood; The Dissolving Sun (40.00)
Tanaka (p); Morgan (b); Strønen (d). Studio La Buissonne, France, May 2025.
ECM 574 4313