Featured Artists
- Marilyn Crispell Trio
- Marilyn CrispellPiano
- Mark HeliasDouble-Bass
- Paul MotianDrums
February 2003, Avatar Studios, New York
Storyteller
Marilyn Crispell Trio
- 1Wild Rose
04:10 - 2Flight of the Bluejay
04:37 - 3The Storyteller
06:05 - 4Alone
04:44 - 5Harmonic Line
05:48 - 6Cosmology 2
05:35 - 7Limbo
06:51 - 8Play
05:10 - 9The Sunflower
03:59 - 10Cosmology 1
03:58 - 11So Far, So Near
09:27
Marilyn Crispell first became known as a sprinting free-jazz pianist with lyrical tendencies, but now the lyricism has taken over. The energy has been subsumed into calmer phrases, heavy with implication. What’s best about her growth over the past decade is that she has shed her outer mannerisms in favour of finding her inner pulse: her keyboard touch, her improvised melody shapes, the rhythms she naturally gravitates toward, feel as if they’re full of their own weight and shape.
Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
The great success of Storyteller is in the telling. Crispell remains a strikingly lyrical pianist, and Motian is clearly inspired. Helias fits into this matrix without any apparent strain. The end result is music that dwells in abstraction but pursues beauty. And in its range of tempos, textures and moods, it presents a more multidimensional picture than even Crispell’s other recent triumphs. Any jazz fan should hear this album at least twice; if the first time doesn’t entice you, the second should do the trick.
Nate Chinen, Jazztimes
Marilyn Crispell has always had a sensitive touch at the piano. … So Storyteller, a spare and beautiful album of ballads by her new trio isn’t entirely unexpected. Crispell plays with astonishing concentration and attention to nuance, and rarely has an album captured her remarkably refined touch this well. … Crispell’s playing is more spacious and gentler than in the past. Motian’s elliptical percussive commentary and Helias’ ability to swing slow tempos help sustain the mood of intense introspection. This intensity is of a different sort than Crispell’s. But although the energy level is lower, the creativity and imagination remain high.
Ed Hazell, Jazziz
Crispell’s 2001 offering Amaryllis was a fine, somewhat unheralded record, a trio album of great poise and precision. Storyteller really picks it up from where it left off … Helias’s arrival has in no way altered the essential poetry of Crispell’s work, the finely balanced blend of evanescent, vaporous stanzas and hard, bold caesuras. Throughout this largely plaintive, at times bewitching set, those characteristics are unveiled with an assured hand; the music has a sense of both fluent linearity and whirring circularity. … Crispell’s harmonic sense is an intriguing one, drawing boldly away from earthy blues equations, falling between classical music’s doors of definition and jazz’s portals of possibility.
Kevin Le Gendre, Echoes
Storyteller sees Mark Helias taking over from Peacock, but the song remains much the same. In fact, this trio pare down the music even more; there are times when the space between the notes ring as loud as the notes themselves. The drummer’s plucked a few choice tunes from his back catalogue which showcase his usual folky immediacy and Helias contributes chamber music delicacy; Crispell only contributes three tunes out of the eleven, but the trio’s interplay and sensitivity make this and explicitly collaborative venture. … Motian’s quiet restlessness gives Helias plenty to think about; differing tempi and meters rub gently up against one another in a delicious frottage, while Crispell weaves in and out. … If all this sounds a bit fey, then rest assured that there’s plenty of muscle behind this music. It may not be applied often, but the fact that it’s there gives Storyteller a quiet but profound intensity.
Peter Marsh, BBC i
Musik ist Ort, Tageszeit, Wetter. Mehr als Bücher, Bilder oder Filme. Diese hier ist Sonntagmorgen, ein Seitenarm des großen Flusses, dort, wo das Wasser so träge zieht, dass es zu stehen scheint, sich an der Oberfläche kaum bewegt, darunter schneller, in verschiedenen Graden: das Klavier von Marilyn Crispell, der Bass von Mark Helias, das Schlagzeug von Paul Motian. Nicht immer ist deutlich, was oben, unten oder in der Mitte fließt, die Melodien wandern vom Flügel in den Bass, blitzen in den Tonfolgen des Beckens und der Trommeln auf und kehren wieder zu den Stahlsaiten zurück. ...
Nach den Crispell-Alben Nothing’ Ever Was, Anyway und Amaryllis – mit Gary Peacock als Bassisten – erscheint Storyteller wie der Abschluss eines Triptychons, das die weit verstreuten Kompositionen der drei in der Lyrik eines Trios sammelt und bündelt. Vielleicht muss man wie Marilyn Crispell durch das Fegefeuer des Freien Jazz gegangen sein, um so lyrisch gebunden spielen zu können.
Konrad Heidkamp, Die Zeit
Crispell und ihre beiden einfühlsamen Partner (der Kontrabassist Mark Helias und der Schlagzeuger Paul Motian) exponieren und improvisieren ausschließlich im Rubato. Der Atem hat den Herzschlag als rhythmischen Unterbau abgelöst. Die subtilen, lyrischen Melodien, die aus den Federn aller drei Musiker stammen, sind eingängig – gerade deshalb, weil gewisse Wendungen wiederholt werden und weil die harmonische Grundstruktur nachvollziehbar bleibt. Da werden im intimen Salon nachdenkliche, oft etwas traurige Geschichten erzählt, der Ausdruck bleibt verträumt, impressionistisch. Nur sehr selten zeigt das Seismogramm Ausschläge. Dennoch ist diese wunderbare Musik stets intensiv.
Nick Liebmann, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Schönheit und Komik sind Qualitäten, die sich nahezu ausschließen. Komik hat immer mit dem Einbruch von Realität in eine konstruierte (wir könnten sagen: prästabilisierte) Harmonie zu tun. Mit dem Unangemessenen, der Diskrepanz zwischen dem Ideal und dem Leben, wie der alte Schiller gesagt hätte. So stehen wir denn staunend vor einer Musik, die problemlos beides schafft: Humor und Schönheit. Marilyn Crispell, 1947 geboren und in „klassischem“ Ambiente aufgewachsen, entdeckte als junge Frau bald die Faszination des Widerspruchs gegen alle Arten von voreiliger Versöhnung. Im Jazz, dem sie sich zuwandte, pochte der Nerv des Protests und wurde Expression über Form gestellt...
Am schönsten aber gelingt Crispell die Quadratur des Kreises auf Storyteller. Nicht weniger als fünf Titel stammen von Paul Motian, dem Drummer, der mehr zu spüren als zu hören ist, als eine Art Generalbevollmächtigter für Klischeesabotage und Begeisterung im Wortsinn. ... Selten, bei so viel Struktur und Mut zur Einfachheit, ist ein interaktives Trio so bei der „allmählichen Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Spielen“ zu verfolgen, ein buchstäblich erhebendes Erlebnis und ein Vergnügen zugleich.
Peter Rüedi, Die Weltwoche
Auf Storyteller, der jüngsten CD ihres Trios mit Paul Motian, dem Altmeister des freilaufenden Schlagzeugs, präsentiert Marilyn Crispell mit Mark Helias nun einen Bassisten aus ihrer eigenen Musikergeneration: Und wieder fügen sich die unterschiedlichen Temperamente und Charaktere wundersam zu einem vielschichtig schimmernden Ganzen. In den strengen Bahnen von zehn Kompositionen aller drei Musiker, bewegen sie sich mit äußerster Freiheit und Konzentration. Kein Platz bleibt da für pyrotechnische Verblendungen, für gehörloses Plätschern vorgeprägter Muster. Drei Geister und drei Stimmen in vielen Tonlagen. Eine Welt von Geschichten, die wohl nur darauf warteten, erzählt zu werden.
Stefan Hentz, Financial Times Deutschland
Marilyn Crispell’s 2001 ECM release “Amaryllis” was described, by Gary Giddins in the Village Voice, as “uncommonly thoughtful”, and “dramatic [in its] expression of lyricism”. This is equally, if not more, true of “Storyteller”. Since Crispell arrived at ECM with her landmark recording, “Nothing ever was, anyway”, reinterpreting the compositions of Annette Peacock, she has been re-evaluating the meaning of ‘intensity’ in her work and rechanneling it, allowing other aspects of her musical personality to come to the fore.
If the parameters of her early work were defined by energy, speed and attack – she counts amongst the most articulate of pianists to have been profoundly influenced by Cecil Taylor – the lyrical qualities of her music have consistently distinguished it from the output of many contemporaries – as indeed Taylor was the first to recognize. In the recent music there is a more rigorous sense of form, as well as an awareness that power can often reside in the unstated. Nothing is abandoned in the new music but when characteristic torrents of sound are unleashed in “Cosmology 2”, ten songs into the set, the impact is the stronger for the tension established along the way.
In other words, the lyricism and the energy balance each other, and the music as a whole is the stronger for it. “It’s all evolving process,” Crispell told the San Francisco Bay Guardian. “And the process is not something you can pin down. Categories don’t account for process… I’m feeling more open about expressing everything I feel and not playing what I think I should play to satisfy anyone’s preconceptions, including my own.” And, to the Boston Globe, “Energy will always be part of me – even when I play Bach, which is still my favourite music – but now my lyrical side feels more centred. Intensity remains the thread that ties all of my music together, although now some of the intensity is inner-directed.”
The band shows great poise and control throughout. The continual interaction between Crispell and master drummer Paul Motian is of immense subtlety (easy to argue that this is also one of Motian’s best recordings). Mediating between them is new band member Mark Helias. A very different player from Gary Peacock (the trio’s previous bassist), he completes and anchors the band. Helias shows a firm, rhythmic grasp, like a heartbeat – one reason why he was Ed Blackwell’s preferred bassist for many years – and also contributes a couple of tunes to the repertoire including the irresistibly catchy “Harmonic Line”.
There are strong pieces from Crispell here – “Wild Rose”, “Alone”, “So Far, So Near” - that reflect her current focus on both the poetic compression in the playing and the yearning for wider space in the form. And there is also a showcasing of Paul Motian’s gifts as a unique songwriter, which first flowered with the encouragement of ECM in the early 1970s. Crispell has gone back through three decades of Motian compositions to select six pieces for this recording – they range from “The Sunflower”, written for Paul’s wonderful group with Charles Brackeen and J.F. Jenny-Clark (see 1979’s “Le Voyage”), to “Light of the Bluejay” premiered by his Electric Bebop Band. All of the material is transformed by Crispell’s sensitive touch.
There is something essential in Motian’s writing that links it with Thelonious Monk’s (as a young drummer Paul played with Monk) and Crispell has isolated this quality. Motian’s tunes can seem both naïve and sagacious, both in the jazz tradition and from somewhere else entirely. In Paul’s case his melodic sense is likely influenced by the Armenian and Turkish music he heard in his childhood. The principles that drive the tunes are much like those that drive Motian’s drumming, well described by Bill Shoemaker in Jazz Times:
“Motian’s signatures are to be found in counterintuitive responses to the unfolding music: He chooses silence where many drummers knee jerk their way through a flurry of chops, and slips a cubist sketch of tune’s rhythmic implications into the niches most drummers simply ride through.”
If the parameters of her early work were defined by energy, speed and attack – she counts amongst the most articulate of pianists to have been profoundly influenced by Cecil Taylor – the lyrical qualities of her music have consistently distinguished it from the output of many contemporaries – as indeed Taylor was the first to recognize. In the recent music there is a more rigorous sense of form, as well as an awareness that power can often reside in the unstated. Nothing is abandoned in the new music but when characteristic torrents of sound are unleashed in “Cosmology 2”, ten songs into the set, the impact is the stronger for the tension established along the way.
In other words, the lyricism and the energy balance each other, and the music as a whole is the stronger for it. “It’s all evolving process,” Crispell told the San Francisco Bay Guardian. “And the process is not something you can pin down. Categories don’t account for process… I’m feeling more open about expressing everything I feel and not playing what I think I should play to satisfy anyone’s preconceptions, including my own.” And, to the Boston Globe, “Energy will always be part of me – even when I play Bach, which is still my favourite music – but now my lyrical side feels more centred. Intensity remains the thread that ties all of my music together, although now some of the intensity is inner-directed.”
The band shows great poise and control throughout. The continual interaction between Crispell and master drummer Paul Motian is of immense subtlety (easy to argue that this is also one of Motian’s best recordings). Mediating between them is new band member Mark Helias. A very different player from Gary Peacock (the trio’s previous bassist), he completes and anchors the band. Helias shows a firm, rhythmic grasp, like a heartbeat – one reason why he was Ed Blackwell’s preferred bassist for many years – and also contributes a couple of tunes to the repertoire including the irresistibly catchy “Harmonic Line”.
There are strong pieces from Crispell here – “Wild Rose”, “Alone”, “So Far, So Near” - that reflect her current focus on both the poetic compression in the playing and the yearning for wider space in the form. And there is also a showcasing of Paul Motian’s gifts as a unique songwriter, which first flowered with the encouragement of ECM in the early 1970s. Crispell has gone back through three decades of Motian compositions to select six pieces for this recording – they range from “The Sunflower”, written for Paul’s wonderful group with Charles Brackeen and J.F. Jenny-Clark (see 1979’s “Le Voyage”), to “Light of the Bluejay” premiered by his Electric Bebop Band. All of the material is transformed by Crispell’s sensitive touch.
There is something essential in Motian’s writing that links it with Thelonious Monk’s (as a young drummer Paul played with Monk) and Crispell has isolated this quality. Motian’s tunes can seem both naïve and sagacious, both in the jazz tradition and from somewhere else entirely. In Paul’s case his melodic sense is likely influenced by the Armenian and Turkish music he heard in his childhood. The principles that drive the tunes are much like those that drive Motian’s drumming, well described by Bill Shoemaker in Jazz Times:
“Motian’s signatures are to be found in counterintuitive responses to the unfolding music: He chooses silence where many drummers knee jerk their way through a flurry of chops, and slips a cubist sketch of tune’s rhythmic implications into the niches most drummers simply ride through.”
