Illusion Suite

Stanley Cowell Trio

Illusion Suite
Release date: 17.07.2000 ECM 1026
CD18,90 €out of print
LP14,90 €out of print
Play Sample
EN / DE
On Illusion Suite, “the charms are quiet”, as Down Beat put it, reviewing the album in 1974. “it creeps up on you and hits you in the ear in subtle ways. Things you hadn’t noticed keep jumping out. This album most directly and accurately pictures [Stanley Cowell’s] fresh keyboard approach”. On the album – Cowell’s only recording for ECM – the pianist’s trio is completed by Stanley Clarke on bass and Jimmy Hopps on drums.
Auf Illusion Suite ist "der Zauber leise", wie Down Beat es 1974 in einer Rezension des Albums ausdrückte. "Es schleicht sich an einen heran und trifft auf subtile Weise ins Ohr. Dinge, die erst an einem vorbeigehen, springen Stück für Stück aus der Faktur hervor. Dieses Album präsentiert [Stanley Cowells] frischen pianistischen Ansatz auf direkteste und präziseste Weise". Auf dem Album – Cowells einzige Aufnahme für ECM – wird das Trio des Pianisten durch Stanley Clarke am Bass und Jimmy Hopps am Schlagzeug ergänzt.
Featured Artists
  • Stanley Cowell Trio
  • Stanley CowellPiano
  • Stanley ClarkeBass
  • Jimmy HoppsDrums
Recorded

November 1972, Sound Ideas Studio, New York

Original Release Date

28.11.1973

…With his own trio on “Illusion Suite,” Cowell finds a remarkable tone that, as personal as it is, set something like a template for a new modernist classicism. A conservatory-trained musician, Cowell has a full, lush, and nuanced piano sound (and ECM reproduces it vibrantly); he composed all six tunes on the album, and they cover a wide musical range, from the polytonal ballad “Emil Danenberg” (named for a piano professor at his alma mater, Oberlin) and the intricate funk of “Miss Viki” to the hard-driving post-bop of “Cal Massey.” An eclecticist, Cowell treats the studio like a realm apart. He uses piano, electric piano, and thumb piano, and also overdubs of Clarke’s bowed bass. An inspired, imaginative, energetic improviser, Cowell digs deep into the harmonic complexities of his tunes while building mercurial melodic lines on the fly. In short, it’s a trio recording that opens out prismatically into the music of the future—and its emphases and inflections are just as timely now.
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker