 | | Mathias Eick: Midwest
Mathias Eick reflects on distances travelled in this intensely melodic set of original compositions, which makes an imaginative journey from Hem, the tiny Norwegian village where the trumpeter grew up, to the vast plains of Dakota in the American Midwest. It was to the Midwest that hundreds of thousands of Norwegians travelled by sea in the 19th and early 20th centuries - and naturally they took their music with them. In similar spirit Eick, a Norwegian improviser-composer strongly influenced by North American jazz, here reintegrates some of the colours and textures of his native folk music in these newly-created pieces. In the frontline of the line-up featured here he is partnered by the brilliant violinist Gjermund Larsen, whose roots are in the Norwegian folk tradition. Trumpet and violin exchange lines and soar together above a brilliant rhythm section with Jon Balke at his most lyrical, Helge Norbakken periodically finding pulses that can suggest tribal drumming or buffalo hooves, and the resourceful Mats Eilertsen helping to drive the music forward. The original inspiration for the album was sparked by a gruelling North American tour: “I’d been out on the road for a long time and was feeling homesick. Then we reached the area called the Rural Midwest and I suddenly felt as if I was home. I had a se nse of why the early settlers would want to build their farms there. It reminded me very much of parts of Norway. ”
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 | | Giovanni Guidi Trio: This Is The Day
The Giovanni Guidi Trio plays jazz of uncommon originality and reflective depth. On their second ECM album, Italian pianist Guidi, US bassist Morgan, and Portuguese drummer Lobo continue the work begun on the 2011 recording City of Broken Dreams, with pensive, abstract ballads which shimmer with inner tension. Each of the players has a strong sense for the dialectics of sound and silence. The repertoire is mostly from Guidi’s pen, but also includes the standard “I’m Through with Love”, Cuban songwriter Osvaldo Farrés’ “Quizás, quizás, quizás” (familiar to jazz listeners through, above all, Nat King Cole’s version), and “Baiiia” by João Lobo.
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 | | Paolo Fresu / Daniele di Bonaventura: In maggiore
Sardinian-born trumpeter Paolo Fresu and bandoneonist Daniele di Bonaventura from Fermo, Italy, indicated the depth of their musical understanding on 2010’s Mi stico Mediterraneo, a collaboration with Corsican singers A Filetta. Left to their own resources they explore a very broad range of material which includes original ballads by both men, improvisations, a Puccini theme from La Boheme, liturgical music, pieces by legendary Chilean songwriter Victor Jara and Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jaime Roos, music of Neapolitan composer Ernersto de Curtis, “O que sera” by Brazil’s Chico Buarque and more. Daniele Di Bonaventura has spent much of his creative life bringing aspects of jazz and music of South American traditions together, and Paolo Fresu is one of the outstanding lyrical voices of contemporary improvising. When Fresu plays muted trumpet, he makes a point of bringing Miles Davis to mind; at such moments, Di Bonaventura’s bandoneon becomes a chamber orchestra behind a soloist. The relationship between the instruments is continually changing throughout this attractive programme, recorded in the warm and spacious a coustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in May 2014, and produced by Manfred Eicher.(The session itself has already achieved a measure of renown: scenes from it appear in the new documentary Wenn aus dem Himmel by Italian filmmaker Fabrizio Ferraro, which is currently making the rounds of the festivals.)
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