Chris Dundas, Oslo Odyssey

Pianist Chris Dundas puts together a quartet effort that models itself quite successfully on the classic phase of ECM jazz coming out of Europe in earlier days. Oslo Odyssey (BLM 1100/01) gives us two-CDs of music with a nicely balanced group of forces. Dundas wrote seven of the numbers, which are featured on the first disk. The second disk contains collaborative quartet-generated spontaneity, aka group improvisations.

The quartet is a good one. Dundas mans the piano with a generative in-the-moment presence that does not copycat as much as it revises and recreates anew, the legendary Arild Andersen is on contrabass, sounding great, Bendik Hofseth plays tenor, launching from Garbarek but going beyond to his own space, and Patrice Heral plays creatively and loosely on drums.

I especially like the second disk for its free-tonal qualities. But the whole set gives us a kind of revisitation of classic ECM jazz from the vantage point of today, which means it is no clone. It involves extension.

For anyone who loves the middle-period of ECM music, this will send you. There is non-formulaic playing and writing, a fresh take on it all. Recommended!

Ketil Bjornstad, La notte

Ketil Bjornstad, pianist, composer, leader of a sextet live at the Molde Jazz Festival in 2010, which is out as a CD entitled La notte (ECM 2300 3724553).

Ketil proffers what we have come to identify as "ECM Jazz," which means that it has a spaciousness, a lyricism, a composed element, an ambiance that essentially was stolen and bastardized eventually as New Age. To get back into ECM Jazz means in part to forget what New Age has made of it and appreciate the real thing, so to speak. Now not all New Age is terrible, but much of it doesn't stand up very well over time. ECM Jazz does.

So with that in mind we have some quite beautiful music from a sextet that includes Arild Andersen sounding great as always on contrabass, the brilliant Marilyn Mazur on percussion-drums, Andy Sheppard sounding a bit more Garbarekian than usual on tenor and soprano, plus Eivend Aarset in a post-Rypdalian mode on electric guitar, Anja Lechner on cello (sounding beautifully resonant) and of course Maestro Bjornstad on piano.

This is a sonically alive instrumentation that Ketil takes good advantage of in his compositions-arrangements and of course there is some world-class improvisation to be had from the band, including Bjornstad.

There is a lot of music to digest and it doesn't just follow in classic ECM footsteps but builds upon it. If you dig the Weber/Garbarek kind of ECM lyric sounds from the classic era this will remind you of it but it goes somewhere with it as well. Stunning and worth it for Arild Andersen alone. But of course there is much more! Listen and soar along if you will.