By 
Surrounded By Sea (ECM)
Andy Sheppard Quartet
Released April 17, 2015
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
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Surrounded by Sea, Andy Sheppard’s third ECM album, is a strongly atmospheric recording, and one whose associative title seems especially apt. As the saxophonist observes, the sea in question is mostly calm, but storms and squalls can arise in a moment. British Islanders are fine-tuned to such sudden fluctuations: “Coming from England, I’ve grown up with the physical awareness of being surrounded by sea.”
The album adds Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset to the line-up of Sheppard’s widely acclaimed Trio Libero (refer to the 2011 recording of the same name, ECM 2252), making a new quartet with a different emphasis. “I see the quartet as the next step on from Trio Libero. Libero started out as an improvising trio. A lot of the material was drawn from our improvisation and turned into tunes. With this new album I wanted to retain the same musicality but move things in a new direction with the addition of harmony and subtle grooves.” With Sheppard’s compositions and direction to the fore, and Aarset’s ambient drones and washes of sound integrated as quasi-orchestral elements, priorities have shifted. The addition of a fourth player has, paradoxically, opened up more space in the music. Eivind’s textural soundscapes, his subtly layered guitar and electronics, seem to give Sheppard more room to move as well as a harmonic foundation to play off.
Threaded in between Sheppard’s strong new pieces is an extended and compelling meditation upon a Gaelic traditional song, “Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir” (Aiodh, Don’t Sleep At All). It’s a piece associated in recent years with Hebridean folk singer Julie Fowlis, from whom Sheppard learned it.
“I was in the process of developing a project with Julie which never came to fruition. To illustrate how I wanted to ‘dress’ her music I took her a cappella version of ‘Aoidh’ and Michel, Eivind and I recorded separately our parts around her beautiful voice. This in fact gave me the initial idea of forming a band with this line-up. When we recorded the tune as a quartet the music seemed to just come into the room – [producer] Manfred [Eicher] waved his arms to make us continue playing and the result was an extended version – he then suggested we could divide the tune up and weave it through the record. It seems only fitting that the song that brought this line-up together is now a recurrent theme through the album. Also I remember, from talking with Julie, that in the Gaelic tradition when someone teaches you a song it’s your responsibility to pass it on …”
The other non-original in the programme is Elvis Costello’s “I Want To Vanish”. “Michel Benita introduced me to this song and I fell in love with it. I also recorded and toured with Elvis some years ago in John Harle’s Terror and Magnificence project.”
Throughout the album Sheppard plays some of his most lyrical saxophone, both on his own pieces and on the tunes contributed by Michel Benita and Seb Rochford. The rapport between bassist and drummer, demonstrated on Trio Libero, is evident throughout Surrounded by Sea.
The album concludes with a dedication to Ornette Coleman whose free spirit and expressive originality are a permanent reference. “When I composed and whenever I play ‘Looking for Ornette’ it’s exactly what I’m trying to do…”
Surrounded by Sea was recorded in August and September 2014 in the responsive natural acoustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI.
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Andy Sheppard’s first leader date for ECM was the 2008 recording Movements In Colour (where Eivind Aarset was one of the featured guitarists). In addition to the aforementioned Trio Libero album Sheppard can also be heard with Carla Bley and Steve Swallow on Trios (ECM 2287, recorded 2012), and on ten of Carla Bley’s albums on the ECM distributed WATT label, beginning with Fleur Carnivore in 1988. Sheppard has previously recorded as a leader for Island/Antilles, Blue Note, Verve, Label Bleu and Provocateur, written music for ensembles of every size including his Saxophone Massive project with up to 200 players, and been featured as soloist with great jazz composers and arrangers including George Russell and Gil Evans.
Andy Sheppard and Michel Benita have been crossing paths since the 1980s. In 2008 Sheppard, Benita and Sebastian Rochford came together in a project at the Coutances Jazz Festival in northern France. It was here that Sheppard first glimpsed the potential of this particular musical combination.
Seb Rochford, whose interest in jazz was first sparked by witnessing an Andy Sheppard concert in Aberdeen, has meanwhile made his own distinctive contributions to it, with his bands including Polar Bear. Rochford’s resumé has embraced work with everyone from Babyshambles to Herbie Hancock, from Brian Eno to Patti Smith. He has said in interviews that the recording of Trio Libero opened up his perceptions about choosing when not to play: this awareness of the musical and dynamic power of restraint also belongs to Surrounded by Sea.
Each quartet member is also a bandleader in his own right, and Michel Benita, French bassist born in Algiers, will shortly be recording with his Ethics quintet (with Eivind Aarset, Mathieu Michel, and Philippe Garcia, and Mieko Miyazaki on koto) for ECM. Benita has played with numerous jazz musicians including Dewey Redman, Archie Shepp, Lee Konitz, Kenny Wheeler, Joe Lovano, Steve Kuhn, Michel Portal and many more.
Eivind Aarset’s ECM album Dream Logic was released in 2012. Aarset recently recorded again for ECM in an improvising quartet with Tigran Hamasyan, Arve Henriksen and Jan Bang. Other ECM appearances include Nils Petter Molvӕr’s influential Khmer and Solid Ether, Small Labyrinths with Marilyn Mazur’s Future Song, Arild Andersen’s Electra, John Hassell’s Last Night The Moon Came…, Ketil Bjørnstad’s La Notte, and Food’s Mercurial Balm.
Track Listing:
1. Tipping Point (Andy Sheppard) 06:16
2. I Want To Vanish (Elvis Costello) 05:15
3. Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 1 (Traditional) 04:18
4. Origin Of Species (Andy Sheppard) 05:06
5. They Aren’t Perfect And Neither Am I (Sebastian Rochford) 05:09
6. Medication (Andy Sheppard) 05:03
7. Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 2 (Traditional) 01:14
8. The Impossibility Of Silence (Andy Sheppard) 06:18
9. I See Your Eyes Before Me (Andy Sheppard) 03:49
10. A Letter (Michel Benita) 04:18
11. Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Part 3 (Traditional) 03:29
12. Looking For Ornette (Andy Sheppard) 03:10
Personnel:
Andy Sheppard Quartet
Andy Sheppard: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone
Eivind Aarset: guitar
Michel Benita: double bass
Sebastian Rochford: drums
Recorded August 2014, at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano, by Stefano Amerio
Cover Photo: Jan Kricke
Design: Sascha Kleis
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Review:
One track leads into the next in what feels like a soundtrack to getting lost in the stars. Surrounded By Sea is saxophonist Andy Sheppard’s third album for ECM, and the Englishman’s roots are on display here. Often modally based, much of the music carries a serenity that can express both the personal and the universal. “Tipping Point” hangs on one note before venturing forth ever so gently, while the Gaelic folk music of “Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir (Part 1)” similarly lingers. Longtime collaborator Michel Benita offers soft contrapuntal punctuations on bass, his voice moving in short steps against Sheppard’s soaring lines on “Origin Of Species.” Parts 2 and 3 of “Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir” serve as brief continuations of Part 1, beautiful yet eerie revisitation.
Benita’s frolicsome ways are most evident on the playful “They Aren’t Perfect And Neither Am I.” Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset is the group’s newest addition, and his reverb-laden, surfer-like electric guitar adds to the song’s mild fury. Sebastian Rochford, drummer and leader of the British experimental jazz band Polar Bear, cuts through the tune’s sonic sheen with his snare probes and cymbal washes.
The first real grooves emerge on “Medication,” a slightly upbeat tune that builds on a simple ascending scale, with motifs that double back on themselves unexpectedly.
Returning to a kind of solace of sound, the openness of “The Impossibility Of Silence,” aired out to allow Sheppard’s tenor to sing its slightly mournful melody, creates the effect of being suspended in time.
In tandem with Benita, the melody and the improvising go hand-in-hand, the pace suggesting infinite patience with the material, an inner group stillness made manifest as the song lingers on like an eddy off the main branch of a quiet river.
“I See Your Eyes Before Me” offers a series of band bursts before settling in again with Sheppard (on tenor) and Benita in dialog. The energy unfurls with help from Aarset’s guitar splashes and Rochford’s percussive crashes as the tune comes to a close.
Adding Aarset to what was originally a trio with Benita and Rochford deepens the music’s capacity to explore terrain the band was already traversing with their previous disc, Trio Libero (ECM).
Apart from the traditional “Aoidh” and an achingly beautiful cover of Elvis Costello’s lyrical “I Want To Vanish,” everything on Surrounded By Sea was composed by members of the trio. The aura of jazz elders is present on Sheppard’s “Looking For Ornette.”
This closing tune (as well as the rest of the album) was recorded in 2104, long before Coleman’s death, ending Surrounded By Sea on a poignant note.
John Ephland (DownBeat)
