Birthday Music

1. 
   David Torn, Cloud About Mercury (ECM, 1986)
   If you're at all into progressive rock, and you don't know this album, you need to listen to it very soon. The rest of the band is Bill Bruford, Tony Levin---i.e., the rhythm section from the great King Crimson incaranation of the early 1980s---and Mark Isham on trumpet. Torn is a guitarist, and a very creative one.
   This is one of those genre-busting albums. It's somewhere between progressive rock and fusion, I guess.
   
2. 
   Jan Garbarek Group, It's OK to Listen to the Gray Voice (ECM, 1985)
   A stunningly beautiful album, with David Torn on guitar, Eberhard Weber on bass, and Michael DiPasqua on drums and percussion. The interplay between Torn and Garbarek, in particular, is worth the price of admission. And Weber plays bass like no one else.
   From here on out, it turned out to be mostly a night of Garbarek.
   
3. Ralph Towner, Solstice (ECM, 1975)
   Another of my favorite albums, and one of the great ECM records. Garbarek and Weber are here again, along with Jon Christensen on drums. Somewhat unusually for jazz, Towner plays classical and 12-string guitars, and occasionally piano. This is more straight ahead jazz than one gets with Oregon, and there are just lovely textures between the acoustic guitars, Garbarek's sax, and Weber's electric upright bass.
   The recording is extraordinary. It's hard to over-state what a wonderful audio engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug was, and how much influence he must have had on the 'ECM sound'. Here, he gives us a wonderful sense for the softness of Towner's classical guitar and, at the same time, the power of Garbarek's sax.
   
4. 
   Keith Jarrett, My Song (ECM, 1978)
   The second record from Jarrett's so-called 'European Quartet', with Garbarek, Christensen, and Palle Danielsson on bass. The only other studio album they made was Belonging, from 1975.
   This one is more lyrical than that one and less 'free' than Nude Ants (1979), which was recorded live at the Village Vanguard. A wonderful album.
5. 
   Keith Jarrett, Personal Mountains (ECM, 1989)
   Also from the European Quartet, recorded live in Tokyo in 1979. I would guess that this record maybe gives one more of a sense for what their concerts were really like. There's a lot of out-there improvisation, as on Nude Ants, but also more lyrical performances.