Elegy

Theo Bleckmann

EN / DE
Beyond being a vocalist of rare purity and daring, Theo Bleckmann is a sound painter who creates what JazzTimes has described aptly as “luminous webs” in music. The German-born New Yorker – after appearing on two ECM albums by Meredith Monk and another by Julia Hülsmann – makes his striking label debut as a leader with Elegy. This album showcases Bleckmann as a composer as much as a singer, with several instrumental pieces voiced by what he calls his “ambient” band of kindred-spirit guitarist Ben Monder, keyboardist Shai Maestro and the subtle rhythm team of Chris Tordini and John Hollenbeck. Highlights include Bleckmann’s sublime rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s “Comedy Tonight” (“tragedy tomorrow… comedy tonight”), as well as the mellifluous vocalise of “Little Elegy” and achingly poetic “To Be Shown to Monks at a Certain Temple.”
Theo Bleckmann ist nicht nur ein Sänger von seltener Reinheit und Kühnheit des Stils, sondern auch ein Klangmaler, der erschafft, was das Magazin JazzTimes treffend als „leuchtende Bahnen“ in der Musik beschrieben hat. Der in Deutschland geborene Wahl-New Yorker gibt – nachdem er schon auf zwei ECM-Alben von Meredith Monk und einem von Julia Hülsmann zu hören war – mit Elegy  nun sein bemerkenswertes Debüt als Leader für das Label. Das Album präsentiert Bleckmann gleichermaßen als Komponist wie als Sänger, mit mehreren Instrumentalstücken, die von seiner „Ambient-Band“ (wie er sie nennt) mit seinem Seelenverwandten, dem Gitarristen Ben Monder, dem Keyboarder Shai Maestro und dem subtil agierenden Rhythmusgespann aus Chris Tordini und John Hollenbeck mit Leben erfüllt werden.
Zu den Highlights zählen Bleckmanns sublime Fassung von Stephen Sondheims „Comedy Tonight“ („tragedy tomorrow….comedy tonight“) genauso wie die wohlklingende Vokalise “Elegy“ und das fast schon schmerzhaft poetische “To Be Shown to Monks at a Certain Temple”.
Featured Artists Recorded

January 2016, Avatar Studios, New York

Original Release Date

27.01.2017

  • 1Semblance
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    01:31
  • 2Comedy Tonight
    (Stephen Sondheim)
    04:16
  • 3Fields
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    05:07
  • 4The Mission
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    07:44
  • 5Littlefields
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    01:58
  • 6Elegy
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    06:44
  • 7To Be Shown To Monks At A Certain Temple
    (Theo Bleckmann, Chiao Jan)
    04:32
  • 8Cortège
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    02:04
  • 9Elegy (var.)
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    00:57
  • 10Take My Life
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    05:27
  • 11Wither
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    05:33
  • 12Alate
    (Theo Bleckmann)
    01:07
Vocalist and composer Theo Bleckmann has been a leader or collaborator on some of the most interesting jazz and new-music projects of the past 25 years. He has clear, crisp diction and can render a lyric poignant during a straightforward reading, but Mr. Bleckmann is unusually tech savvy and often uses delays and other effects to create an ethereal dreamscape. He has taken vocalese into the 21st century. […] ‘Elegy’ is an unusual recording for a performer known for his vocals, as they are not at the center of each tune. Some are instrumentals, and on others Mr. Bleckmann contributes elegant scatting to the work of his stellar band […] Today’s jazz is often as much about texture as it is about virtuosity, but in Mr. Bleckmann’s music it’s about both.
Martin Johnson, Wall Street Journal
 
Its underlying concept may be a dark one and there is, to be sure, plenty of introspective, existential-leaning music on ‘Elegy’; but, at the same time, Bleckmann and his empathically connected quartet also manage to deliver no shortage of beauty. Even with lyrics as final as ‘Take My Life’—‘Let me exhale once more and I'll be mute forever / May there be no heaven's gate / No other God than silence’—there's a certain buoyant joy to the music, with Monder taking a rare solo that's tonally connected to King Crimson's Robert Fripp but harmonically all his own and filled with an abundance of head-scratching techniques, all driven, with frenetic energy, by Maestro, Tordini and Hollenbeck.
John Kelman, All About Jazz
 
Bleckmann surrounds himself with longtime collaborators Ben Monder on electric guitar and John Hollenbeck on drums, as well two ECM initiates in pianist Shai Maestro and bassist Chris Tordini. Of the 11 songs here, only four contain lyrics, the rest are showcases for Bleckmann's considerable improvisational gifts and elegant technique. […] it reveals Bleckmann's creative authority as he searches the limits of both sound and silence for an expression that utters its own name. The album is a gentle wonder; it bodes well for an enduring relationship between artist and label.
Thom Jurek, All Music
 
A la tête de cette petite cohort, Bleckmann chante comme un angel.
Bernard Géniès, L’Obs
 
The set builds from minuscule beginnings in fine pianist Shai Maestro’s soft chords and restrained flutters in the voiceless opener, through the pared-down Sondheim, and into the ghostly-chorister ascents of ‘Fields’, as Monder’s warm guitar emerges […] Bleckmann’s subjects are mortality and hope, but his lightness of touch and the band’s independence (several pieces are instrumentals) ensure that startling music-making is the overarching theme.
John Fordham, The Guardian
 
As the title implies, his leader debut for ECM is a set of self-composed reflections on death and transcendence, but it’s nothing like as dark or morbid as that suggests. With a front-rank group that includes guitarist Ben Monder, pianist Shai Maestro, bassist Chris Tordini and drummer John Hollenbeck, Bleckmann spins an ethereal web of sound that hovers on the brink of ambience – wistful, hopeful sounds that ebb and flow like wind through a graveyard.
Cormac Larkin, The Irish Times
 
‘Elegy’ ist Klangsphären entfernt vom Mainstream und trotzdem nicht abgehoben. Die Musik funktioniert nicht nebenbei. Es geht um Leben und Tod  eines jeden Klangs.
Johannes Schmitz, Fono Forum
Beyond being a vocalist of rare purity and daring, Theo Bleckmann is a sound painter who creates what JazzTimes has described as “luminous webs” in music. The German-born New Yorker – after appearing on two ECM albums by Meredith Monk and on another by pianist Julia Hülsmann of Kurt Weill songs – makes his striking label debut as a leader with Elegy. This album showcases Bleckmann as a composer as much as a singer, with several instrumental pieces voiced by what he calls his “ambient” band with long-time associate Ben Monder on guitar, keyboardist Shai Maestro and the subtle rhythm team of Chris Tordini and John Hollenbeck. Highlights include Bleckmann’s sublime rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s “Comedy Tonight” (“tragedy tomorrow… comedy tonight”), as well as the mellifluous vocalise of “Little Elegy” and achingly poetic song “To Be Shown to Monks at a Certain Temple.”
 
“This record is called Elegy for a reason – each of its songs relates to death or transcendence in some existential way,” Bleckmann explains. “Several of the pieces are instrumental, with ‘Cortege’ a funeral march. In the song ‘Take My Life,’ I imagine what it would be like to die, losing facility bit by bit: losing your voice, your heartbeat, your breath. I wrote that one thinking about Bach and his cantatas, especially ‘Ich habe genug,’ which is about joyfully going into the afterlife. For this album, I wanted to create songs that deal with this subject matter not in a morbid way but with some light to it.”
 
Reflecting on his inclusion of the Sondheim song, Bleckmann says: “In its original version, ‘Comedy Tonight’ is upbeat and fun. I arranged it more atmospherically in memoriam for my mother, who recently passed away. She was a woman who was funny and always looking for things to make her laugh. I think that’s why she made it to 91 – she would find humor even in things that weren’t necessarily funny. I think that's an incredible trait.” Regarding “To Be Shown to Monks at a Certain Temple,” Bleckmann notes its thematic significance: “The lyrics come from a Zen poem that I set to music. It’s about not giving up. Don’t think about death, just keep on moving. Don’t be morose, keep on living.”
 
Bleckmann and company recorded Elegy at New York City’s Avatar Studios with producer Manfred Eicher, who helped shape the album. “Manfred had the great suggestion of using some of my written material as the basis for short free improvs,” Bleckmann recalls. “That’s how the instrumentals ‘Semblance,’ ‘Cortege’ and ‘Alate’ came about. We created these little interstitial islands to connect some of the songs. I often conducted them in the studio because there was so much space in these pieces.
 
“The sonic character of the band is very ambient,” Bleckmann adds. “I wanted a group of musicians who weren’t hell-bent on soloing all the time – I wanted that space and a lot of collective playing. The piano, with Shai, is the centerpiece of the orchestration, taking the lead role harmonically and sometimes even rhythmically. Ben and John, on guitar and drums, encompass the envelope around that, marking a lot of the sonic space. Chris, on bass, delineates harmonic change within that.” Maestro and Tordini are newer musical friends for Bleckmann, but his creative relationships with Monder and Hollenbeck stretch back two decades, with the three musicians contributing to each other’s projects regularly over the years. Bleckmann and Monder, in particular, have performed extensively as a duo.
 
“Ben is a very intense musician,” Bleckmann says. “He plays with such concentration that it can be mesmerizing. He’s someone who creates his universe through his sound, which is like that of no other guitarist. I’m really into sound – and that’s true for everyone in the band. Shai and Chris have their own, beautiful sounds on their instruments, while John – as such a great composer himself – explores sonic possibilities at the drums like no other drummer I know.”
 
The overall tone and tenor of Elegy – floating yet substantive, reflecting on serious emotions but with a lightness of touch – reflects Bleckmann’s thoughts on the inevitability of the life cycle, the sublimity of our life’s punctuation. He says: “From the very first piece, ‘Semblance,’ I wanted the tonality of this music to have something of that radiance, that light, I felt with my mother at the end.”
 
In describing the art of Theo Bleckmann, the Chicago Reader declared that he is “one of the most flexible and uncategorizable figures on the New York scene. Since the mid-’90s, he has been doing his thing in a niche of his own invention, somewhere between jazz, cabaret, classical, experimental and improvised music. He has got a strong, precise voice and impeccable pitch control… with range and curiosity. It’s tremendously rare for a singer to realize the potential of the voice so thoroughly.”
 
Bleckmann’s first appearance in a jazz context for ECM was his featured role on pianist Julia Hülsmann’s exploratory 2015 album A Clear Midnight – Kurt Weill and America, which The Guardian called “one of the great jazz treatments of the songs of Kurt Weill,” singling out Bleckmann’s vocal “eloquence.” Prior to that, he appeared as a member of the Meredith Monk Ensemble on the albums mercy (2002) and impermanence (2007).
 
Since 1989, Bleckmann has been a resident of New York, where his early champions included jazz vocal great Sheila Jordan. He has sung everything from songs by Charles Ives and Kate Bush to Las Vegas standards and Shakespearean sonnets, collaborating with figures from Laurie Anderson to John Zorn.