Ecm

Once you hear the plangent cry that swoons us into “Darkness Falls,” you know you’re in Rypdal territory.

Charlie Haden & Keith Jarrett - Jasmine
24B/44,1kHz Stereo FLAC: 510 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: ECM # ECM 2165 | Country/Year: Germany 2010
Genre: Jazz | Style: Contemporary Jazz

…Jasmine is, ultimately, jazz distilled to its most essential; it not only expresses emotion and beauty, but discovers them in every moment of its performance.

The fourth ECM album for the Wasilewski Trio adds a special guest, the lyrical Swedish saxophonist Joakim Milder, whom the Poles came to know through performances with Tomasz Stanko’s Litania project. Amongst other affinities, the players share a love of Krzyzstof Komeda’s music, and Komeda’s “Sleep Safe and Warm” theme, written for Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby makes a reappearance here. As ever, the Wasilewski group balances original material – intensely melodic new tunes by Marcin (including two variations of the beautiful title track) – with a daring range of covers, embracing Herbie Hancock, the Police’s “Message In A Bottle” and Slawomir Kurkiewicz’s arrangement of a composition by Grazyna Bacewicz, and reinforces its status as one of the most resourceful groups around.

“Quasi Parlando” is an important addition to ECM’s documentation of the work of Tigran Mansurian, an often breathtaking account of highly original contemporary chamber orchestra music. Issued in the wake of his 75th birthday, the album opens with the Armenian composer’s fiercely-concentrated Double Concerto, and proceeds to new music performed by its dedicatees: the lyrical Romance, dedicated to Moldavian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and the intensely expressive Quasi Parlando, dedicated to German cellist Anja Lechner. Both are world premiere recordings, as is the Concerto No 2, subtitled Four Serious Songs, which concludes the programme. Throughout, the soloists deliver committed performances, as does the Amsterdam Sinfonietta under the direction of Candida Thompson.