Wolfgang Muthspiel

After a pair of quintet offerings with Brad Mehldau and Ambrose Akinmusire, Austrian guitarist and composer Wolfgang Muthspiel returns to the trio format he established on ECM with 2014's Driftwood. Whereas the previous outings all featured bassist Larry Grenadier, it is Scott Colley who claims the bass chair here. All three members have worked with one another sufficiently to make Angular Blues sound relaxed, natural, and locked in. Blade and Muthspiel have been working together on-stage and in the studio for quite a while; in addition to Muthspiel's bands, the pair work together in the duo Friendly Travelers. The guitarist and Colley played together often in the '90s, and the bassist and drummer have worked together in the Steel House trio with pianist Edward Simon. The group cut this date in a Tokyo studio after a three-night, six-set run at the city's Cotton Club…

Austrian guitarist and composer Wolfgang Muthspiel's history with ECM dates to 2013's Travel Guide with the MGT collective that featured himself, Slava Grigoryan, and Ralph Towner. Driftwood, his wonderful 2014 leader debut was also a trio, a proper guitar/bass/drums setting with Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade. Rising Grace expands that lineup to a quintet to include pianist Brad Mehldau and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. This larger group recorded all in one room and the proceedings reflect a relaxed, easy openness and communicative intimacy. Check the front line exchange on the title track. While the pianist and trumpeter share the melody for a time, they develop a three-way exchange with Muthspiel via solo spaces that erect expansive yet lyric sonorities…

On the cover of this album you can see a picture of New York taken in Hoboken, New Jersey where we recorded these tracks. To me it represents the beauty of a familiar place seen from a different perspective. I come from a small town in Austria called Judenburg. If my family when I moved to the next bigger city, Graz, it felt like the navel of the world. Graz is considered provincial for the Viennese.

Wolfgang Muthspiel and his trio with Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums reaches a new creative peak on Dance of the Elders – the group’s follow-up up to the much lauded Angular Blues, which The Times called a “quietly impressive album”. Here Wolfgang’s successful stride continues, with his unique compositional signature on the one hand and the particularly vibrant interchanges with his trio colleagues on the other. The guitarist’s writing and approach to jazz is heavily folk-induced but equally inspired by classical music – both aspects are presented clearly throughout the album. Brian’s floating percussive injections and Scott’s nimble counterpoint on bass complement Wolfgang’s acoustic and electric playing in fluid interplay over intricate polyrhythms and adventurous harmonic landscapes.

The first album on guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel's new label is something of a departure for him. Related only tangentially to jazz, it consists mostly of Muthspiel's musical settings of lyrics by Bernd Hagg, which are sung by Rebekka Bakken; Bakken is accompanied by Muthspiel, saxophonist Chris Cheek, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Brian Blade. How does it work? Quite nicely, really. Bakken is a fine and expressive singer with a voice somewhere between Marianne Faithfull and Syd Straw, and Muthspiel's arrangements are complex and yet accessible; on songs like "Sister" and "Angela" there are moments of pure pop bliss, but things are generally a bit more angular and abstract than that. Hagg's lyrics, which are written in English, sometimes distract; his grasp of English idiom is not entirely firm (a line like "Can I pay now for the chance that concocted us here?" is, sadly, not atypical).