Trio Ecm

Keith Jarrett Trio - Standards In Norway (1995) {ECM 1542 rec 1989}
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© 1989, 1995 ECM Records | ECM 1542 / 521 717-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Modern Creative / Piano

Keith Jarrett has recorded quite a few albums with his "Standards Trio," which also features bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette, and virtually all of their releases are enjoyable. The music that they create is in some ways an update of the type of interplay that took place between Bill Evans and his sidemen, where all three musicians often act as equals (although Jarrett, like Evans, has most of the solo space). An uptempo "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" is a surprising highpoint of this disc but also quite memorable are "All of You," "Old Folks" and "How About You?"; none of the eight performances from the concert appearance are throwaways. Jarrett's vocal sounds are more restrained than usual while his piano playing is in peak form.

The very first ECM release (which has been reissued on CD), this trio set features pianist Mal Waldron, bassist Isla Eckinger and drummer Clarence Becton improvising quite freely on five of Waldron's compositions plus "Willow Weep For Me." The music overall is not that memorable or unique but it does have its unpredictable moments and finds Waldron really stretching himself.

“Anat Fort has a charming way of dispensing pastoralism and an insightful way of lining that pastoralism with depth”, wrote Jim Macnie, in the Village Voice, adding that “her trio has the kind of poise that lets her move from terra firma to the stratosphere". In the Jewish Week, George Robinson observed that Fort “writes music that is a skillful mix of the romantic and the cerebral, like watching a flower open, an enthralling combination of geometry and color…” The Israeli pianist made a lot of friends with her widely-praised ECM debut “A Long Story” in 2007, and the new disc, with her regular working band, will make some more.

On their fifth ECM New Series album, Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Torunn Østrem Ossum present a reconstruction of a 13th century votive Mass to the Virgin Mary, based on manuscripts and fragments originating in an English Benedictine Abbey. As Nicky Losseff, the trio’s medieval music editor, explains in the liner notes, “complex polyphonic music was important to the monks who lived at the Abbey of St Mary's, Worcester. Polyphony gave life to the otherwise ‘plain’ song of the liturgy. At Worcester, an unusual number of single leaves and fragments have survived. Through them, we have been left more than 100 songs, in many different musical styles: polyphony to adorn the movements of the Mass; the freely-composed, intricately-interweaving voices of motets; the stricter, declamatory tones of the conductus. All in all, it testifies to a thriving musical community.“

Italian pianist Stefano Battaglia and his trio develop directions established on their acclaimed 2011 release “The River of Anyder” with a new selection of chants, hymns and dances, all written by Battaglia and inspired by descriptions of visionary places from art and literature – from Alfred Kubin, Jonathan Swift or Charles Fourier to Italo Calvino. “Songways” finds “a new harmonic balance between archaic modal pre-tonal chant and dances, pure tonal songs and hymns and abstract texture,” Battgalia says, “thus documenting the natural development of the Trio life, with a larger space for action from the drums”.

Trio Mediaeval: Anna Maria Friman, Torunn Østrem Ossum, and Linn Andrea Fuglseth is a group of three women from Scandanavia (two from Norway, one originally from Sweden) – Anna Maria Friman, Torunn Østrem Ossum, and founder Linn Andrea Fuglseth – who specialize in singing late medieval polyphony and modern compositions in imitation of that style.

Pianist Chick Corea had a reunion with bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Roy Haynes for this double LP, 13 years after they had recorded Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. The first half of this two-fer consists of duet and trio free improvisations and is sometimes a touch lightweight even with moments of interest; playing free was not as natural to Corea by this time as it had been in the '60s. However, the second album, seven Thelonious Monk compositions, comes across quite well as Corea does justice to the spirit of Monk without losing his own strong musical personality.

This six-CD set, with recordings from 1972 to 1984, includes the albums Conception Vessel, Tribute, Dance, Le Voyage, Psalm and It Should’ve Happened A Long Time Ago. Paul Motian’s innovative drumming with the great trios of Bill Evans and Paul Bley had already assured him of a place in jazz’s history books, but Motian had not considered life as a bandleader until ECM proposed a recording session under his own name. “Conception Vessel” opened floodgates of creativity. Through these recordings we hear not only the evolution of several outstanding Motian ensembles and the birth of the enduring Motian/Frisell/Lovano trio, but also the growth of confidence of a unique jazz composer. In Paul’s music, memories of Turkish and Armenian melodies he had heard as a child were filtered through a love of jazz.