Anat Fort

For her third ECM album, Israeli pianist Anat Fort augments her long-established trio – with bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider – with a special guest: Italian reedman Gianluigi Trovesi. Fort and Trovesi have made a number of appearances together in recent years, to critical acclaim, and Birdwatching, with its lively, bright music, takes their rapport to the next level. There is an alertness and a joyful quality in the playing, both in the articulation of melodies and in the improvised passages. “I’d followed Gianluigi Trovesi on many records over the years,” says Anat, “and always loved his musical spirit.” Fort and Trovesi first played together in duo at Italy’s Novara Festival, after which Gianluigi came to Israel and participated for the first time in concerts with Anat’s trio at the Opera house in Tel-Aviv.

The beauty of long musical relationships can be the culmination of many things. The familial bond that is created from sharing and living together, the influence of bandmates on one another and welcome surprises can keep these bonds fresh and enervating. Pianist Anat Fort and her trio mates have been making music together for twenty years and continue to grow and share in new ways, as is evinced on their new recording, Colour.

A Long Story is Anat Fort's debut release on ECM, and is comprised entirely of her original compositions, with one joint effort between Fort and Perry Robinson. From the very first track, the standard-in-the-making "Just Now Var. I," Fort's attractively melodic and Eastern-flavored jazz writing is apparent and ECM's storied history of piano-led groups (think Keith Jarrett, Bobo Stenson, and Tord Gustavsen) continues with the addition of this fine quartet. The "sidemen" on A Long Story are three well-known jazz veterans, led by the great Paul Motian on drums. Perry Robinson makes his ECM debut here and Ed Schuller rounds out the group on double-bass.

“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.