George Russell - Listen To The Silence (rec. 1971, orig. rel. 1973)

Back to George Russell with another commissioned work, this time for the 1971 Kongsberg Jazz Festival, and recorded at its live premiere performance (with some studio effects added later) on 21st June 1971, Kongsberg Church, Norway.  Taking some lines from Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Nicoll, Dee Brown and snippets from Newsweek and the New York Times for its libretto, Listen To The Silence is a choral work calling for two choirs as well as jazz ensemble.  

 

The chanting voices get things underway before Russell, Garbarek & co enter to drive the music forward, and the work continues in this manner with the church acoustics giving the stentorian vocal delivery a definite atmospheric boost.  The instrumental sections are frequently more minimal and stripped-down compared to Russell's other work of the era, but this works in favour of the overall stark mood, and makes the Garbarek-Rypdal section at the start of Event IV all the more outstanding.  Subtitled "A Mass For Our Time", Listen To The Silence might be a bit 'of its time' in subject matter, but it remains a captivating listening experience to this day.

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pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature

Trip To Prillarguri

Othello Ballet Suite

Vertical Event VI

Garbarek, Rypdal, Stenson, Andersen, Christensen - Sart (1971)

Some more Terje Rypdal today, alongside an all-star cast of ECM legends on one of the label's most memorable releases from its formative years.  Sart is often regarded as a Jan Garbarek album overall, and indeed this is Disc 1 of the Garbarek box set that also covers Witchi Tai To and Dansere (links below), but really everyone in this quintet deserves their equal billing as per the album cover.

Most of side one is taken up by the title track, with Rypdal wah-ing it into gear as a post-Bitches Brew fusion exploration.  Garbarek is in full-on overblown free jazz mode, but Bobo Stenson's calmer piano keeps the track partly rooted in earlier post-bop traditions.  Fountain Of Tears finds Rypdal in even more avant-garde mode, sliding right up the guitar bridge as Garbarek and Stenson get in more fractured soloing.  A mellow ending sees Garbarek switching to flute.

Side two is introduced with a piano solo, and Stenson continues to sound sublime as Rypdal and Garbarek kick Sound Of Space into gear, both turning in great solo spots.  For the remainder of the album, short composing/playing spotlights for Andersen and Rypdal bookend another great group performance.  Essential early ECM at its finest.

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pw: sgtg

Jan Garbarek at SGTG:
Afric Pepperbird (with Rypdal, Andersen & Christensen)
Triptykon (with Andersen)
Popofoni (with Stenson, Rypdal, Andersen & Christensen)

Witchi-Tai-To (with Stenson & Christensen)

Dansere (with Stenson & Christensen)
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows (with Christensen)
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints (with Christensen)
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

Jan Garbarek-Bobo Stenson Quartet - Dansere (1975)

More Garbarek-Stenson loveliness to go nicely with the turning of the seasons.  This follow-up to Witchi-Tai-To was notably different in composition - other than one arrangement of a Nordic folk tune, everything was written by Garbarek.  He regarded the 15 minute title track as "a breakthrough point for me, in trying to find the material I feel most at home with", and the album as a whole has the feeling of carving out his comfortable niche in European jazz, right down to all the track titles being in Norwegian.

After that opening trek across the rural open space evoked on the album cover, the rest of Dansere (in English, dancers) progresses in similar atmospheric form.  Svevende aptly conjures up its titular feeling over hovering above great fjords via Christensen's nimble drumming, as the winds blown by Garbarek turn to a full-on icy blast.  Bris (breeze) features the most energetic playing on the record, propelled by Stenson, then a short interlude Skirk & Hyl (cries and howls) is an aptly-described spotlight for Garbarek and Danielsson.  The record settles down again with a traditional shepherding ballad in Lokk, then Christensen heats up the groove just enough for Til Vennene (to friends) to end the album on a bit of indoor warmth.

 

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pw: sgtg

Jan Garbarek at SGTG:
Afric Pepperbird
Triptykon
Popofoni (also includes Stenson & Christensen)

Witchi-Tai-To
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

Jan Garbarek - Bobo Stenson Quartet - Witchi-Tai-To (1974)

Dug out this ECM classic for the first time in a long while following that post of Escalator Over The Hill a few weeks back.  Starting off with a lengthy exploration of A.I.R. from EOTH, this album saw Jan Garbarek's windswept, keening mature style begin to solidify in a half-Norwegian half-Swedish quartet.  Bobo Stenson on piano fully deserves his name's co-prominence in this group, with an early highlight being his spotlight performance on Kukka, the only tune written by a member of the quartet (Danielsson).

A firey take on Carlos Puebla's Hasta Siempre spices up the album with a propulsive performance by the late Jon Christensen, closing out the original first side in style.  Over on side two, both Garbarek and Stenson shine on the title track by Jim Pepper, then a full twenty minutes are given over to a group exploration of Don Cherry's Desireless.  A lengthy Stenson solo gives way to a full force gale of Garbarek, and so on.  One of the very best ECM releases from its mid-70s imperial heights.

link

pw: sgtg

Jan Garbarek at SGTG:
Afric Pepperbird
Triptykon
Popofoni (also includes Stenson & Christensen)
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

Tomasz Stańko Quartet - Matka Joanna (1995)

After three fleeting appearances on ECM in the two decades prior, only one of them as leader, Tomasz Stańko stepped into Oslo's Rainbow Studio in the spring of 1994 to make the label his primary home for the rest of his life.  One wonders if Manfred Eicher listened to Bosonossa and heard a career renaissance in the making that he simply had to have on his roster - not least because the trumpeter's sense of space was just crying out for the sympathetic ear of Jan-Erik Kongshaug.

The Bosonossa quartet was imported intact, with Tony Oxley's eerie percussion introducing Monastery In The Dark like echoing footsteps on ancient stone floors.  The inspiration for this album was Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1961 film Matka Joanna od Aniołów (Mother Joan of the angels), for which much of this unsettling, spacious music could've made a good soundtrack.  Stańko, Stenson and Jormin all work together brilliantly, but the star turn in the quartet definitely belongs to Oxley here, right through to the closing percussion solo where the nunnery's malevolent spirits are finally exorcised.

link
pw: sgtg

Various Artists (incl. Jan Garbarek Quartet) - Popofoni (1973)

Anyone watching the Åpen Post show on Norwegian TV on 6th March 1969 (which I doubt will include any readers here, but you never know -YouTube link, sorry no subtitles) would've caught a fascinating, bizarre debate about pop music/popular culture vs. classical music/high art.  The programme caught the attention of Arne Nordheim, previously featured on these pages here, and of the Ny Musikk organisation and the Henie-Onstad arts centre.

The plan was hatched (in an uncanny precedent for Ode To Marilyn) to get hold of some prime Nordic musicians - step forward Jan Garbarek, Bobo Stenson, Arild Andersen, Jon Christensen and Terje Rypdal - and have them collaborate with some of Norway's foremost modern composers to produce music that would represent a meeting point between popular music and the avant-garde.  Arne Nordheim, Alfred Janson, Gunnar Sønstevold, Kåre Kolberg and the soon-to-be ECM-ers, plus additional musicians, duly obliged, and a concert of the results was held in April 1970.  Three years later, this limited-edition double album emerged as a document of the project, which had been titled Popofoni.

The six tracks here are certainly fascinating, essential listening, especially if you're familiar with early ECM classics like Afric Pepperbird / Sart / Rypdal's debut.  Imagine these records with a whole extra layer of avant-garde composition/production over the top, and that's pretty much what Popofoni sounds like.

The 20-minute opener Arnold, composed by Gunnar Sønstevold, is a free jazz groove with echo-laden vocals wafting over the top, and occasional organ and tape effects.  Nordheim's two tracks that follow are even better works in the same vein, with the eerie collage of Solar Plexus (his first response to the TV debate) ending in a scratchy, sampled dance orchestra, a hail of gunfire then an emptying sink (or toilet?).  The second disc is dominated by Alfred Janson's 25-minute Valse Triste, where the jazz musicians veer between free playing and lounge pastiche, feeling their way towards the eventual schlager payoff, whilst spoken samples of the TV debate pepper the sonic landscape.  Kåre Kolberg's Blow Up Your Dreams is a more succinct attempt at stretching a conventional song (sung by Karin Krog) to fit an avant-garde frame, and as a closer we get a brief Rypdal composition in which he plays flute rather than guitar.  An utterly essential collection.

Original double-LP cover

Disc 1
Disc 2
pw: sgtg

Tomasz Stańko - Bosonossa And Other Ballads (1993)

YEEESSSS finally got hold of a copy of this!  Majorly out of print (seeming to have disappeared from the GOWI label's catalogue on their own website), Bosonossa is well worth chasing down.  Stańko's quartet with which he'd return to ECM the following year (on Matka Joanna - will post sometime) appear here fully-formed, and sound fantastic on this masterpiece of an album.

Six tracks in just shy of an hour means that everyone gets a chance to stretch out and showcase their considerable talents alongside Stańko.  Drummer Tony Oxley is particularly adept at sketching the atmospherics - I remember one reviewer of Matka Joanna likening him to 'a ghost dragging its chains around', and the same is true in places here.  ECM familiars Bobo Stenson and Anders Jormin contribute some stunning pianism and thick, meaty bass respectively, brilliantly rendered in a production job by Stańko himself.

As for the (sadly now late) trumpeter, he's on top form throughout, spitting out firecrackers of sound one moment then languidly breathing out the residual smoke trails the next.  His chosen material for Bosonossa is inspired as always - his 80s staple Sunia gets its most respectful and drawn-out treatment on record, and three of the other tracks he was rightly proud enough of to recast them in the initial phase of his ECM homecoming.  Fans of Matka Joanna and Leosia will therefore enjoy both a bit of familiarity, and also the sheer brilliance of these tracks in their original outings.  But to be honest, anyone who likes Stańko, or just great quartet jazz, is in for a treat here of the highest order.

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previously posted at SGTG:
Jazzmessage From Poland (1972)
Purple Sun (1973)
Freelectronic in Montreux (1987)
Bluish (1991)
Dark Eyes (2009)
Wisława (2013) 
Polin (2014)