AMG (2 !)
_Amazon.com Editorial Review:
This 1992 recording by the Garbarek Group has their customary blend of Norwegian folk themes and original compositions, with the leader's big-toned soprano and tenor saxophones at the heart of a music that combines cool lyricism and intense, if restrained, passion. It's the emotion that Garbarek can concentrate in a single note that distinguishes his work. His soprano is a keening wail in the unaccompanied introduction to "Brother Wind March," his high-register tenor an impassioned cry on "The Tall Tear Trees." Rainer Brüninghaus's piano provides a reflectively lyrical contrast, while the shifting rhythms of percussionists Manu Katché and Marilyn Mazur add variety to the reiterated themes. The CD is filled with distinctively Norwegian touches. Grieg's "Arietta" is a wistful vehicle for Garbarek's soprano, while the traditional "Gautes-Margjit" is the briefest of melodies. The haunting "Psalm" is sung by Agnes Buen Garnas with whom Garbarek recorded Rosenfole, while Mari Boine, singer and Laplander activist, performs her "Darvanam" with just Garbarek's tenor as accompaniment, invoking another world of musical possibilities. The CD concludes with a serenely beautiful version of Jim Pepper's "Witchi-Tai-To," first recorded by Garbarek almost two decades before, and touching on Pepper's Native American roots. --Stuart Broomer
_Amazon.com - Reviewer: Jean Couture from Canada, April 16, 2002
One of the great ECMs *****
I've been amazed. This album of a sort-of contemporary jazz is extraordinary. First of all, the title tune which introduces to this album, Twelve Moons, has an hypnotic melody that sounds like 'an entrance in a trance'; this 'entrée de plain-pied' in a nordic world of Dämmerung - neither light nor dark - and crystal clear sky is close to transcendance, at least musically (if not philosophically).
On this cd, Garbarek and his carefully selected musicians have reached something new: if Kind Of Blue or Extrapolation have, respectively, reached and surpassed the limits of the artform, then such is the case with Twelve Moons - - this could be the 'Kind Of Blue' among all the albums by Jan Garbarek.
A Masterwork. Not that it compares per se with the most famous record from Davis, but it belongs to a handful of titanic recordings in what we'll agree to draw under the name of jazz.
A cold, vast, often upsetting landscaft appears in your mind's eyes thanks to the magic of this music. Some tracks seem to share this subjective impression of a remote territory, with a shyness - or confinement - almost similar to the slim light of the northern sun. The sound is accurate but a bit dry and desolate, just as it should be; the production is splendid from a technical point of view (Eicher's 'arcane touch' is part of the success - rarely a failure in the case of ECM). As a fact, Twelve Moons provides a sound of it's own, but at the same time typical in mood of numerous other ECM titles.
Among the titles, I have noted 'There Were Swallows', 'The Tall Tear Trees' and 'WichiTaiTo' as my favorites, although the album is mesmerizing from debut to end. This remote music is thought, meditation, mountains, valleys, images of a deep forest where light has sunken for eternity... |
