Creative Tim

One of the UK’s finest saxophonists, and a member of Chick Corea’s legendary band, Tim Garland has taken the classic Stan Getz album with strings, Focus, from 1961 and created a reworking for our time. This is not a slavish recreation or an attempt at nostalgia, but the result of a creative mind working in the spirit of the album, and with the legacy of a great artist. It’s an exercise in expressing the past in the present and the future.

When Tim Berne recorded with Snakeoil for ECM in 2012, it marked the debut of a new working band and his first studio album in a decade. With Oscar Noriega on clarinets, pianist Matt Mitchell, and drummer Ches Smith, Berne was able to extend the horizons in his compositions. While conversational intrigue, fiery improvisation, knotty counterpoint, and wildly varying dynamics had long been part of his aesthetic, they found a fluid yet immediate language on 2013's Shadow Man.

This story begins with just one sound, originating in the place which Berlin jazz people think of as their living room, the A-Trane. Back in December 2019, the club was host to four leading figures in today’s improvised music scene, who turned this cozy space into their blank canvas, their research lab. In eight sets over four nights, piano phenomenon Michael Wollny, re-inventor of the soprano saxophone Emile Parisien, electric bass icon Tim Lefebvre, and that free spirit of the drum kit Christian Lillinger were given free rein.

Berne calls this band Caos Totale, and if it doesn't quite achieve that lofty goal, it comes close enough to provide a fine mix of rich, involved compositions and lusty, almost rockish, improvisations. One of Berne's songwriting trademarks has been lengthy pieces (often exceeding 30 minutes) with multiple themes that emerge and disappear in an organic but unpredictable way, and this is clearly on view here. Pieces begin in one place but invariably end in another area entirely, but the ride is quite scenic…

Guitarist-composer David Torn, a longstanding ECM artist, has enjoyed a particularly fruitful 21st-century with the label, releasing two albums under his own name – the solo only sky and quartet disc prezens – in addition to producing records by Tim Berne and Michael Formanek. With Sun of Goldfinger, Torn returns in a trio alongside the alto saxophonist Berne and percussionist Ches Smith (a member of Berne’s Snakeoil band who made his ECM leader debut in 2016 with The Bell). The Torn/Berne/Smith trio, also dubbed Sun of Goldfinger, features alone on two of this album’s three intense tracks of 20-plus minutes; the vast sonic tapestries of “Eye Muddle” and “Soften the Blow” – each spontaneous group compositions – belie the fact that only a trio is weaving them, with live electronics by Torn and Smith expanding the aural envelope.

This is the most ambitious project of Tim Garland's stellar career, with a celebration of Lighthouse Trio's 20th Anniversary (Gwilym Simcock and Asaf Sirkis), along with a stunning display of Tim's prowess as a composer and arranger with the Britten Sinfonia, featuring violinist Thomas Gould, along with trumpet ace Yazz Ahmed performing as a special guest on one track.

Life to Life documents the culmination of three decades worth of respectful colleagueship between with two of the UK’s most revered jazz musicians – keyboardist Jason Rebello and multi-reedist Tim Garland. Rebello and Garland are both lauded musicians who between with them have worked with luminaries such as Sting, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter and Jeff Beck.