Tonight's Selections

1. Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette, Standards vol. 1 (1983)
   This was the third album that these three made together, but the first of jazz standards. (The first these three made was Tales of Another, which was a Gary Peacock album released in 1977.) Later, of course, they would make many more such albums and establish themselves as one of the great piano trios of all time. The highlight here, for me, is "God Bless the Child", which is just wonderful, with a long, tuneful solo from Peacock.
2. Steve Tibbetts, Yr (1980)
   Probably not someone a lot of people know, Tibbetts has made several albums for ECM. He is a guitarist, mostly, but a multi-instrumentalist. Most of his albums feature guitar and percussion by frequent collaborator Marc Anderson. This was his first album, release independently in 1980 and then in 1988 by ECM. What's most striking about it, and many of his other albums, is the variety of sonic textures. At one moment, it is quiet and peaceful, acoustic guitar and tablas, and the next there is a screaming electric guitar solo.
   Surprisingly, to me, the original pressing is much better. The later one, by comparison, is dark. That's not atypical, but ECM records generally have excellent sound, and indie pressing, well, don't. But that's not the case here.
3. Egberto Gismonti, Jan Garbarek, and Charlie Haden, Mágico (1979)
   This is a record I just love. All three of them are such great musicians, and so creative. The whole record is lovely, but the highlights for me are Haden's tune "Silence" and Gismont's "Palhaço" (of which there is also a nice recording on In Montreal, by Haden and Gismonti).
   I especially enjoyed listening to this one on the new speakers. They have such wonderfully deep, natural, and tuneful bass, so Haden's instrument shines. And they can keep up with the dynamics of Garbarek's saxophone. (Does anyone make as much use of the sax's dynamic range as he does?)
   The recording is, as usual with ECM, very good, though I'll always prefer the simplicity of the great jazz recordings of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
4. Oregon, Music of Another Present Era (1972)
   The first record that Oregon released (though the second they recorded). As such, it doesn't yet have the recognizable Oregon sound that would shortly emerge, though it is there in places. This album is more experimental. All four of them---Ralph Towner, Glenn Moore, Collin Walcott, and Paul McCandless---play a number of different instruments, in different combinations on almost every track. The sonic textures they achieve can be wonderful, but it's a bit dizzying and the album as a whole doesn't really hang together for me. Still, it's an interesting listen, if one that is slightly dated, in a way that the next two, Distant Hills and Winter Light, are not.
   A decent but not a great recording, it basically has the usual flaws from multi-tracking and over-dubbing.