Reviews of the week

UK and Us media welcome the freshly released album Mountain Call by Miroslav Vitous

Seven years in the making, with Vitous now 78, Mountain Call reflects a lifetime’s immersion in classical music alongside jazz, and the balance of spontaneity, nuance and cinematic atmospherics that offered him. Across multiple improv dialogues and two suites (all short, Vitous being no fan of loquacity), the set prominently features DeJohnette, who died in October, with Esperanza Spalding, saxophonist Bob Mintzer and the phenomenal French clarinettist Michel Portal, who died in February. Eight duo tracks for Vitous and Portal (mostly all-improvised) are worth the album alone, for their ever-shifting mix of mellow lyricism and challenging curiosity. In four improvisations on a standard clarinet, Portal segues graceful swoops, plaintive queries and staccato punctuation against Vitous’s turbulent undercurrent of muscular plucked runs and percussive accents. […] ‘Mountain Call’ could hardly be a more personal contemporary music chronicle from an unflinching one-off.

John Fordham, The Guardian

‘Mountain Call’, his first ECM album as a leader in a decade, feels like a reflective summation of the many musical paths he has explored. Recorded intermittently between 2003 and 2010 in Vitous’s Prague studio, the album unfolds as something of an artistic self-portrait. It moves fluidly between free improvisation, chamber-like ensemble writing, orchestral textures, and subtle studio manipulation. Vitous has long been interested in blending acoustic performance with technological possibilities – an interest that intensified during the years he spent developing orchestral sampling software – and here those tools are used not as gimmicks but as compositional extensions. The album’s most striking moments arrive in the duets with French clarinet virtuoso Michel Portal, whose passing in early 2026 adds a bittersweet resonance to these performances. Portal’s bass clarinet lines weave with Vitous’s bass in brief, sharply etched improvisations that open and punctuate the record. Tracks such as ‘New Energy’, ‘Second Touch’, and the haunting closing title piece reveal a telepathic musical dialogue. Vitous’s dramatic arco playing on ‘Mountain Call’ itself, set against Portal’s dark, expressive tone, becomes one of the album’s defining highlights. Elsewhere, Vitous revisits a long-standing musical partnership with drummer Jack DeJohnette. Their collaboration dates back decades, including early ECM recordings with guitarist Terje Rypdal.  Here, the two musicians rekindle that chemistry with vigorous rhythmic interplay. […] DeJohnette also contributes a carefully textured solo passage within the three-part suite ‘Evolution,’ joined by clarinettist Bob Mintzer. A different mood emerges in the five-part suite ‘Rhapsody,’ where vocalist and bassist Esperanza Spalding appears in her first ECM outing. Singing Vitous’s lyrics and occasionally blending her voice into the instrumental textures, Spalding adds warmth and lyricism to the album’s otherwise exploratory palette. Her exchanges with soprano saxophonist Gary Campbell and drummer Gerald Cleaver give the suite a playful, conversational energy. Despite its many collaborators, ‘Mountain Call’ never loses sight of its central voice. Vitous’s bass – sometimes melodic, sometimes orchestral in weight – guides the music through its shifting formats.

Mike Gates, UK Vibe

All the music presented here is unlike Vitous’s earliest recordings under his own name or with Weather Report. At times it is nearer to the contemporary classical output of say, Bartok or Ligeti, but fused with much intriguing and frequently captivating improvisation.

Roger Farbey, Jazz Journal

‘Mountain Call’ showcases Vitous’s talents as an improviser, composer, and arranger. But it also highlights his place as a pioneer of creative sampling technology, blending live performance with orchestral samples and layered textures. Eight of the relatively brief eighteen tracks are improvised duo renderings between Vitous and Portal. […] ‘Mountain Call’ could easily be entitled ‘The Many Sides of Miroslav Vitous’ as it encompasses his breadth of improvisation, composition, and orchestral sampling. It is reassuring to hear his voice again.

Jim Hynes, Post Genre

The new duo recording Memento by Marilyn Crispell and Anders Jormin enchants reviewers in the UK and Germany

The music, and album as a whole is carefully programmed to balance improvisation and composition to the extent that the improvised sound composed and vice versa. The first four pieces heard are all freely created from the beautifully touching ‘For The Children’ with Jormin’s eerily pitched arco playing in the higher registers of the bass and the gently floating melody from the piano. ‘Dialogue’ is just that, a quietly inspired and deeply felt conversation between Crispell’s piano lines and Jormin’s pizzicato bass that is full and warm toned in contrast with ‘Contemplation in D’ when the bassist’s more incisive phrasing and touch are played over sparse accompaniment from the piano. […] Within these remarkable and compact pieces, only two of the eleven tracks exceed the five minute mark the two musicians create a sound world that is full of melody and silence, and it is the space between the notes that make the resulting music so engaging. One can imagine the scene in the recording studio as Crispell and Jormin react to the sound of the room, their respective instruments and each other as they carve out these musical sculptures.

Nick Lea, Jazz Views

Was machen zwei Menschen, die sich gut verstehen, aber selten begegnen, wenn sie sich nach Jahren wieder treffen und Zeit haben? Nun, sie erzählen sich etwas. Die meisten benutzen hierfür Wörter. Marilyn Crispell und Anders Jormin verfügen über einen zusätzlichen Draht: ihre Instrumente, also Klavier und Kontrabass. Und wie es ihre Natur ist: Sie quatschen sich nicht im erzählerischen Egotrip voll. Stattdessen deuten sie an, hören sich zu, vollenden einmal gemachte Ansätze, greifen das Erzählte des Partners auf, denken es weiter, antworten darauf. Die Pausen in dieser Art von musikalischem Zwiegespräch sind dann so wichtig wie die einzelnen Töne. […] Wer sich die Zeit nimmt und mitfühlt, den beginnt die Musik zu berühren, und man wird sich daran erfreuen, wie Kontrabass und Piano ein Thema entwickeln, es hin und herreichen, neue Gedanken hinzubringen und im Spielen und im zögernden Abwarten dicht beisammen sind.

Werner Stiefele, Rondo (Five stars)

The new album Patternmaster by the Mark Turner Quartet is acclaimed by media in the US and Austria

This is the third album by a quartet featuring Turner, Palmer, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Jonathan Pinson, and you can definitely hear that the four of them have settled into a deep creative relationship. They’re hewing to traditional dynamics — Palmer and Turner handle the melodies, and take turns soloing — but the freedom granted to Martin and Pinson keeps everyone on their toes at all times, elevating the performances into the stratosphere.

Phil Freeman, Stereogum

There are six original tracks here and each one offers the four gentlemen in this quartet equal opportunities to shine – and they do. These guys so thoroughly understand and trust each other that every minute of this album allows listeners to spend time with real masters.

Craig L. Byrd, Cultural Attache

Sein jüngstes Album stellt ganz auf die Eloquenz und Eleganz der Bläser – neben Turner am Tenorsax noch Jason Palmer an der Trompete – ab. Wobei Joe Martin (b) und Jonathan Pinson (dr) sich als kongeniale Partner erweisen, die Rhythmus- und Tempowechsel zu exekutieren verstehen und auf den sechs Stücken die perfekte Balance zwischen Lässigkeit und Sophistication wahren. (ECM).

Klaus Nüchtern, Falter

The album Dream Archives by Craig Taborn, Tomeka Reid and Ches Smith fascinates Italian reviewers

Queste sono le prime impressioni scaturite dall’ascolto delle sei composizioni raccolte in questo ‘archivio dei sogni’, una sorta di stringente e pregnante catalogo di rimandi stilistici ricercati, ricreati grazie alle differenti prospettive testimoniate dalle variegate personalità che animano l’approccio dei tre musicisti. Il disco, che propone quattro brani originali di Taborn oltre a ‘When Kabuya Dan-ces’ di Geri Allen e ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ di Paul Motian, mette in luce la profonda sintonia tra i tre musicisti, capaci di attraversare con spontanea naturalezza mondi sonori differenti, passando dal jazz classico alle suggestioni della musica da camera contemporanea, fino a incursioni nell’elettronica, il tutto in modo linearmente fluido e senza soluzione di continuità. (…) Taborn, oltre a confermarsi tra i più interessanti interpreti attuali del pianismo jazz, ribadisce in questo lavoro la sua caratura di artista innovativo, aggiungendo un tassello importante alla sua già nutrita e apprezzata produzione discografica.

 Alessandro Rigolli, La Gazzetta di Parma

Atteso debutto di un trio sfolgorante, già operativo dal vivo, capace di unire non soltanto tre formidabili musicisti e tre personalità artistiche di assoluto rilievo, ma tre prospettive, che riescono a raggiungere l’esito di una piena complementarizzazione nel suono co- mune. Se quest’ultima possibilità è ricercata e raggiunta di solito nel campo dell’improvvisazione più libera (alla quale, peraltro, i tre sono certamente adusi e della quale hanno dato ampie dimostrazioni in carriera – Taborn e Smith anche insieme, talora con esiti indimenticabili –), colpisce maggiormente che questa felice fusione si compia in un disco che abbonda anche di strutture formali ben definite. (…) Disco perciò imperdibile, di un gruppo che speriamo davvero possa raggiungerci anche dal vivo. Assolutamente commendevole la bella registrazione, di respiro naturale e veritiero.

Sandro Cerini, Musica Jazz

A German reviewer on the vinyl-reissue of the album Oracle by Gary Peacock and Ralph Towner within the Luminessence series

Was der US-Amerikaner allein mit der Band Oregon auf 31 Alben eingespielt hat, ist aller Würdigung wert. Doch der klassisch ausgebildete Komponist und Gitarrist verfolgte auch eine weitverzweigte Solo-Karriere und etliche Projekte. So gilt er ähnlich wie der Kontrabassist Gary Peacock (1935-2020) weit über den ECM-Kosmos hinaus schon als Multikoryphäe, bevor die beiden 1993 zum ersten gemeinsamen Album zusammenfinden. Unter der Regie von ECM-Mastermind Manfred Eicher spielen sie in den Osloer Rainbow Studios mit dem geschätzten Toningenieur Jan Erik Kongshaug sechs Peacock-, zwei Towner- und eine gemeinsame Komposition ein. Fernab von belanglosen Spielereien entsteht ein ebenso spannungsreiches wie charmantes Album, das nur gelegentlich auch in hohem Tempo seine Virtuosität entfaltet. Das Album mit geschmackvoll gesetztem, leichtem Hall auf der Gitarre, gibt es nun erstmals auf Vinyl.

Lothar Brandt, Mint

The album Tokyo by Wolfgang Muthspiel with Scott Colley and Brian Blade is recommended in a German music magazine

Auf dem ebendort eingespielten Album ‘Tokyo’ zelebriert der Gitarrist Wolfgang Muthspiel die hohe Kunst feinsinniger Dialoge mit dem warm pulsierenden Bassisten Scott Colley, die zumeist auf der Snare raschelnd unerhört dezent von Brian Blade strukturiert werden. Man schwelgt in feinduftigen Gespinsten, die hinreißend durch weit offene Räume mäandern und dabei einen unwiderstehlichen Charme entfalten. Großmeisterliche Klangkunst von traumhafter Schönheit, die obendrein auch noch superb swingt.

Sven Thielmann, Fono Forum