The Door

Trumpeter Mathias Eick, in the first album released under his own name, focuses all the qualities that have made him a musician to be reckoned with in and around jazz of the last decade. “The Door” is distinguished by vaulting lyricism and clear-edged melodies, a strong sense of ambient space in the writing, and edge and excitement and openness to improvisation. The 28-year-old Norwegian cites Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Kenny Wheeler, Tomasz Stanko, Arve Henriksen and Nils Petter Molvaer as influences upon his stylistic evolution as a soloist yet “The Door” (recorded in Oslo’s Rainbow and Cabin Recorders studios in September 2007) also confirms that Mathias Eick has found his own characteristic and readily-identifiable voice.

Eick’s spacious pieces allow plenty of free range for Jon Balke, whose resourcefulness as pianist, always taking the path less trodden, is in evidence throughout the album. Balke’s playing, in a rare sideman role, is one of the pleasures of “The Door”. Orchestrator par excellence in presentations of his own music (particularly with Magnetic North), Balke the pianist is effectively an arranger-in-action here, continually opening up fresh perspectives inside Eick’s robust ballads and mid-tempo pieces.