Jacob Young: Forever Young(http://ecmrecords.com/Catalogue/ECM/2300/2366.php)Forever Young features melodically inventive, harmonically sophisticated and rhythmically alert jazz, composed by Norwegian-American guitarist Jacob Young and played by a spirited team of contemporaries. Young and saxophonist Trygve Seim are friends since school days, and have been heard on the Norwegian jazz scene in numerous combinations and contexts over the years. They are joined on this album by the Polish pianist, bassist and drummer widely known as the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, a group with its own 20 years playing history. This recording marks Jacob Young’s first alliance with the Poles, although Trygve Seim has worked extensively with Wasilewski and bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz while all three were members of Manu Katché’s touring band. Drawing both on rich, shared histories and in-the-moment creativity, Forever Young was recorded in Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in August 2013, and produced by Manfred Eicher
Wolfgang Muthspiel / Larry Grenadier / Brian Blade: Driftwood 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. The trio creates a ravishing sound, captured with fidelity at Rainbow Studio in Oslo. Muthspiel has been praised by The Times of London for his “restless musical imagination”. Lyrical, grooving and atmospheric by turns, the guitarist’s compositions on Driftwood include tributes to his heroes Joe Zawinul and Michael Brecker.
Matinier / Ambrosini: InventioInventio is an inventive project at all levels, beginning with the instrumentation. Marco Ambrosini is one of very few musicians playing nyckelharpa outside the Swedish folk tradition, and Jean-Louis Matinier has similarly taken the accordion beyond any ‘folkloric’ frame of reference. On the present disc, the French-Italian duo plays a programme inspired by the baroque sonatas of Bach and Biber but also by the lyrical cadences of Pergolesi. They adapt and arrange works of each of these masters, and contribute compositions of their own. Following a path from ancient to modern music, they improvise together, finding new sound-colour combinations in the special blending of their instruments. Inventio is a recording that will delight listeners who have appreciated Matinier’s ECM recordings with Anouar Brahem, François Couturier’s Tarkovsky Quartet, and Louis Sclavis, as well as Ambrosini’s discs with Rolf Lislevand, Giovanna Pessi/Susanna Wallumrød and Helena Tulve. (And it has the potential to speak to a still broader audience: concerts with this music will follow in Autumn 2014.) Inventio was recorded at the Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera studio in in Lugano, and produced by Manfred Eicher.