Trio Ecm

Pianist Giovanni Guidi (born 1985), is one of the most outstanding musicians to have emerged from the ranks of Italian jazz in the last decade and has already made his presence felt on Enrico Rava’s “Tribe” and “On The Dancefloor” albums. Rava praises both Guidi’s “limitless curiosity” as an improviser and his “relentless refinement” of touch and musical taste, and the pianist continually proves that those qualities are not opposites. His first leader date for ECM is a glowing collection of self-penned tunes, simultaneously inner-directed and creatively daring, with many adroit exchanges between the musicians and plenty of space given also to bassist Thomas Morgan, whose role in the Guidi Trio is perhaps analogous to Scott LaFaro’s in the Evans Trio.

This release signals in the then 33-year old, Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen's debut outing for the ECM Records label. His fellow compatriots, bassist Harald Johnsen and drummer Jarle Vespestad, round out this jazz piano trio offering. Fundamentally speaking, the group seemingly works its palate into that classic "ECM Records" aesthetic, comprising echo-laden sonic characteristics and a chamber-esque vibe.

Keith Jarrett Trio - The Cure (1991) {ECM 1440}
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© 2000 ECM Records | ECM 1440 / 422 849 650-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Modern Creative / Piano

Recorded live at New York City's Town Hall in 1990, THE CURE features Keith Jarrett with his Standards Trio, which, as befitting its stellar reputation, offers a set comprised of assorted standards and covers, save the Jarrett-penned title track. One of the high points is the Oscar Levant gem, "Blame it on My Youth." These three players bring so much sympathetic invention to bear that even an often-heard tune like "Body and Soul" is given fresh life. Which is precisely as it should be: a standard deserves to live and breathe anew.
This trio has created most of its important work on the concert stage, and this set is captured with rich, warm resonance. Gary Peacock's bass tone is deeply regal throughout, while Jack DeJohnette's cymbal work, with its quiet propulsion, draws one ever closer to the experience.

Louis Sclavis’s band of the season is the Atlas Trio, an ensemble with a global reach of reference. Chamber-improvisation, polyrhythmic grooves, minimalistic pulse patterns, enveloping ambience, rhapsodic piano and funky Fender Rhodes, distorted guitar, clarinet soliloquies, contrapuntal themes, free group playing, a bit of everything. An open-form aesthetic applies in multi-facetted music simultaneously exploratory and involving. Recorded in the South of France last September, the album - Louis’s ninth for ECM – features a programme of new Sclavis compositions, and is issued in time for tour dates including a major showcase at the Europa Jazz Festival in Le Mans.

Wolfgang Muthspiel, Larry Grenadier & Brian Blade - Driftwood (2014) {ECM}
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© 2014 ECM Records | ECM 2349
Jazz / Post Bop / Guitar

Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel makes his ECM leader debut with Driftwood, a trio album of subtlety and depth featuring renowned US jazz players Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade. Muthspiel – who recently made his first ECM appearance on Travel Guide as a member of a cooperative trio with fellow guitarists Ralph Towner and Slava Grigoryan – has enjoyed long, productive musical friendships live and on record with both Grenadier and Blade, leading to a sense of telepathic interplay on Driftwood.

These three young Poles are known to ECM listeners worldwide for their sensitive playing in the Tomasz Stanko Quartet. In their homeland, however, they are also have a strong reputation as an autonomous group. Their first international release shows why. With a wide-open repertoire that intersperses original material with interpretations of pieces by Bjork, Wayne Shorter and Szymanowski, Wasilewski, Kurkiewicz and Miskiewicz bring something new to the piano trio tradition.

Tord Gustavsen Quartet - Extended Circle (2014) {ECM}
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© 2014 ECM Records | ECM 2358
Jazz / Modern Creative / Post Bop / Piano

The sixth ECM album from Tord Gustavsen, recorded in Oslo in June 2013, quietly but most assuredly takes the Norwegian pianist’s music to the next stage of its development. Gustvasen’s quartet with Tore Brunborg, Mats Eilertsen and long-term associate Jarle Vespestad has matured into a group whose interactions draw strength from restraint, patiently building the music toward its climaxes. Here are new gospel-tinged pieces and ballads from Tord’s pen, gentle and luminescent group improvisations, and an ecstatic interpretation of the Norwegian traditional “Eg Veit I Himmerik Ei Borg” (“I Know A Castle In Heaven”).

Recorded live at Boston's Nightstage club in 1988 this album found John Abercrombie both pushing sonic boundaries on guitar synthesizer and, on regular jazz guitar, deepening his relationship to the world of standards. In this trio he had exceptional improvisational support from bass and drums.

Break Stuff features Vijay Iyer’s long-running and widely-acclaimed trio with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore, a band in existence for eleven years now. “We keep learning from each other and from experiences and try to set challenges for ourselves so that growth is part of the equation.” It’s a group whose musical language is informed by more than the jazz piano trio tradition. While Iyer acknowledges the influence of, for instance, Ahmad Jamal, Andrew Hill and Duke Ellington’s Money Jungle album (with Charles Mingus and Max Roach) upon his own trio aesthetics, he points out that his group has also been inspired by “James Brown’s rhythm section, Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys, Miles Davis’s rhythm section, Charlie Parker’s rhythm section, soul music from the 1970s, electronic music and hip-hop from very recent times…” The list goes on.