Wolfgang Muthspiel and his trio with Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums (“Together they have something of the empathy of the Bill Evans trio” – Downbeat) go into their third recording-venture swinging, setting the stage for what may be the group’s most adventurous trio recording with a delicate reading of Keith Jarrett’s “Lisbon Stomp”. Throughout the album however, the Austrian guitarist and his American cohorts turn the spotlight towards Wolfgang’s captivating originals, touching on balladic lyricism (“Pradela”, “Traversia”), subtle folk infusions (“Strumming”, “Flight”), as well as oblique chamber jazz (“Weill You Wait”) and twangy rock and roll (“Roll”).
“Everything is connected in this trio,” says Wolfgang. “It’s never about a solo-trip, but everything intertwined, forming one single narrative. And it’s interactive – a constant conversation. That’s what I love about playing with these guys.” Indeed, over the past years the Austrian guitarist has grown increasingly close and fluent with his trio mates Scott and Brian – a development that has been refined over several tours across Europe, the US and Japan. The latter has also been the recording location for all of the group’s output on ECM, including, as the title reveals, this album. Tokyo, the trio’s third studio date, is a testament to the profound dynamics and subtle interplay that perhaps only a working band can muster.
As has become custom, Wolfgang alternates between acoustic and electric guitars fluently and in equal measures, framing his soft touch and fluid lines in a programme that seems to encompass the entirety of the broad idiomatic scope he has unravelled over the past decades. The experience gathered playing alongside Scott for the better part of the past five years has lead to an almost telepathic understanding between the guitarist and bassist – a quality that can be heard in the freedom on songs like “Lisbon Stomp”. “After Keith’s theme, it’s concrete time and free changes. This way of inventing harmonic progressions in the moment, together with Scott, is something we have cultivated and deepened over the years,” Muthspiel notes. The same controlled spontaneity can be heard in several places across the album, breathing space into the wistful rubato piece “Pradela”, or bounce into the tuneful “Flight” and remarkable elasticity into the claustrophobic acoustic jam “Diminished and Augmented”.
On “Strumming” Wolfgang understands his role as that of the “ride cymbal. That kind of layer that lends the tune its rhythmic drive.” The acoustic signal of the electric guitar is emphasized in the mix here, adding even more percussive quality to Wolfgang’s playing. In his stead, Colley takes the melodic lead, playing arco in several instances (a modus operandi he repeats on “Flight” and “Traversia”). It’s an album that favours the unorthodox in that respect: Brian’s drum fills over a vamp on “Weill You Wait” are more of a non-solo in their sparsity and laidbackness. On “Strumming”, he becomes the driving force in the coda, conjuring a subtle percussive crescendo in place of an off-the-rack mid-song solo, and for the up-beat “Roll”, his back-beat groove never repeats the same way twice. On the same piece, Wolfgang plays “Jaco (Pastorius)-like basslines on guitar, while Scott’s bass parts work like a horn section,” to put it in Muthspiel’s own words. “Memories of Keith vamps on the one hand and Weather Report on the other” were on the guitarist’s mind when writing the song. Weather Report may also come to mind on dreamy “Christa’s Dream”, as Wolfgang channels his inner Zawinul with a brief synthesizer-guitar sprinkle towards the end.
Some of the inspirations behind Wolfgang’s compositions are unexpected; He refers to legendary songsmiths Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen in connection with his simple guitarist approach on the folk-tinged “Strumming” (he says the same is true for his older composition “Hüttengriffe” off the trio’s debut Angular Blues). “Traversia”, written while hiking the Camino de Santiago, Wolfgang associates “rather with Messiaen than Gillespie”, due to its unorthodox harmonic fabric, far removed from functional harmony but flirting instead with a modal design. He wrote it on a children’s guitar during his travels, forcing him to use a capo on his regular guitar to replicate the range of a fourth above the usual tuning. “It gives the guitar a Renaissance colour – something almost lute-like”.
Other songs wear their references on their sleeve: The punned “Weill You Wait” is a direct homage to composer Kurt Weill, whose “Liebeslied” from The Threepenny Opera the trio had a pass at on their last album Dance Of The Elders (2023). Wolfgang continues to cultivate his admiration for Weill here with a stubborn chamber music piece that sounds almost anatomical in its execution. During the recording, Wolfgang showed Scott and Brian Weill performances by the composer’s wife Lotte Lenya. “The impression from her unique interpretation style accompanied our playing during the recording. As a result, the piece almost became a bit sassy – we deliberately don’t play it in an overly emotional or lyrical way, but rather with edge, almost harshly”. By closing with a shrewd take on Paul Motian’s “Abacus”, Muthspiel bookends the album with implications of a large chunk of both the jazz and ECM history.
Tokyo was recorded in October 2024, then mixed in Munich in February 2025 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
