Words Unspoken (ECM)
John Surman
Released February 16, 2024
Jazzwise 10 Best New Jazz Albums of 2024
All About Jazz Best Jazz Albums of 2024
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lA2QdbiixC8zWhjewg2nkjGW81VcS7EQQ
Spotify:
About:
“It has always fascinated me hearing from people the many different images and messages that any one piece of music can conjure up in their imaginations,” says the British reedman John Surman in the liner note for his new quartet album. “Quite often the impressions and stories can be widely varied, and yet somehow seem to make sense to the individuals concerned. This is one side of the title Words Unspoken – but the other refers to the way that I wanted us to approach the music as a group. I simply brought some ideas along to the musicians and, without discussing who would play which element and how the tunes would take shape, we would try and piece the elements together just by listening to each other and reacting accordingly.”
Surman’s open compositions here are frameworks encouraging musical debate as the players guide the collective sound to new destinations, and add striking statements of their own. The ensemble’s identity builds upon the understanding achieved by Surman and US vibraphonist Rob Waring who, like the bandleader, has long been a resident of Oslo. Surman and Waring previously collaborated on John’s 2017 trio recording Invisible Threads with Brazilian pianist Nelson Ayres. They are joined here by two musicians familiar to ECM listeners, British guitarist Rob Luft (lately heard on albums with singer Elina Duni), and Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen, whose projects have included the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide, Food (with Iain Ballamy), the trio Bayou (with Ayumi Tanaka and Marthe Lea), Parish (with Bobo Stenson) and more. Strønen’s most recent ECM appearance was as a member of Sinikka Langeland’s band on 2023 release Wind And Sun.
The Words Unspoken quartet is a resourceful and often exciting band, as the opening “Pebble Dance” immediately makes plain. It flies from the starting block with a flurry of notes from the vibraphone that establish a climate for swirling and energetic soprano saxophone, and an atmosphere of intensity stoked by taut drums and shimmering guitar.
Through the changing moods of the album each of Surman’s instruments comes to the fore. On “Hawksmoor”, the music begins as a lithe dance for bass clarinet and Strønen’s brushed drums, joined at the halfway mark by guitar and vibes. On title track “Unspoken Words”, the beautiful baritone sax has a tenderness and eloquence that John alone seems able to wrest from the big horn, his soulful soliloquy developed against a wash of complementary sound-colour from Luft and Waring. So it goes.
Surman, who turns 80 in 2024, has been a vital force in European jazz and adjacent genres for more than half a century, already establishing himself as a unique soloist in the 1960s in groups led by Mike Westbrook and Chris McGregor. The band called just The Trio, with Surman and Americans Barre Phillips and Stu Martin, was one of the defining improvising groups of its era, and it was with this line-up that Surman first appeared on ECM, on Barre Phillips’s Mountainscapes in 1976. This was followed, in 1978, by Surman’s Upon Reflection.
Since then, he has appeared on ECM in the broadest range of contexts. These range from solo recordings (including the acclaimed Private City and Road To St Ives) to large ensembles – among them the John Surman/John Warren Brass Project, the Proverbs and Songs project with the Salisbury Festival Chorus, and Free and Equal with London Brass. And from duos (with Jack DeJohnette, Howard Moody) to transcultural projects (Anouar Brahem’s Thimar trio with Dave Holland, and John Potter’s early music-aligned Dowland Project). Surman has collaborated with the string quartet Trans4mation (on The Spaces In Between and Corruscating), and fronted his own groups on the albums Nordic Quartet (with Karin Krog, Terje Rypdal and Vigleik Storaas), Stranger Than Fiction (with John Taylor, Chris Laurence and John Marshall) and Brewster’s Rooster (with John Abercrombie, Drew Gress and Jack DeJohnette.) He has also been an important contributor to projects led by Paul Bley, Miroslav Vitous, Tomasz Stanko, Misha Alperin and Mick Goodrick. In all, a richly creative discography.
Track Listing:
1. Pebble Dance 6:18
2. Words Unspoken 6:34
3. Graviola 6:07
4. Flower In Aspic 5:22
5. Precipice 5:28
6. Around The Edges 4:19
7. Onich Ceilidh 8:06
8. Belay That 7:22
9. Bitter Aloe 5:11
10. Hawksmoor 6:52
Personnel:
John Surman: soprano saxophone, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet
Rob Luft: guitar
Rob Waring: vibraphone
Thomas Strønen: drums
Recorded December 2022, at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Martin Abrahamsen
Executive-Producer: Manfred Eicher
Cover Photo: Christian Vogt
Design: Sascha Kleis
Review:
Words Unspoken is a natural heir to Surman’s Invisible Threads. As the titles suggest, this is music about the spaces between, of the unseen and unmeasured. The voicings are of course different across the recordings. Waring’s shimmer and suggestion remains from the trio and if Nelson Ayres’ warm keys are gone, we are compensated by Luft’s deep lyricism and his orchestra of effects. The biggest difference is the patterning of Strønen’s percussion which is the glue that binds the others’ wanderings.
As Surman clocks up his 80th circulation of the sun, his sonorities remain consistent (the less charitable may suggest predictable?), his soprano entry into ‘Pebble Dance’ bird song clear after a lustrous intro from his colleagues. His baritone likewise retains its authority on the title track. It would be easy to argue that there’s a lack of tonal or indeed tempo variation across the 10 tracks. But that is precisely Surman’s sound world: the palette is not limited but contained, and we are left to discover our own resolutions.
We may have wished for more of Luft the soloist rather than colourist, though he finds some definition on the standout ‘Onich Ceilidh’. But why wish for that we don’t have when Surman’s gift to us yet remains a thing of beauty.
Andy Robson (Jazzwise)
