Driftwood

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Muthspiel / Grenadier / Blade
Driftwood

[ ECM / CD ]

Release Date: Friday 27 March 2015

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Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel makes his ECM leader debut with Driftwood, a trio album of subtlety and depth featuring renowned US jazz players Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade. Muthspiel - who recently made his first ECM appearance on Travel Guide as a member of a cooperative trio with fellow guitarists Ralph Towner and Slava Grigoryan - has enjoyed long, productive musical friendships live and on record with both Grenadier and Blade, leading to a sense of telepathic interplay on Driftwood. The trio creates a ravishing sound, captured with fidelity at Rainbow Studio in Oslo. Muthspiel has been praised by The Times of London for his "restless musical imagination". Lyrical, grooving and atmospheric by turns, the guitarist's compositions on Driftwood include tributes to his heroes Joe Zawinul and Michael Brecker.

Wolfgang Muthspiel guitar
Larry Grenadier double bass
Brian Blade drums

Muthspiel has been praised by The Times of London for his "restless musical imagination".

"Wolfgang Muthspiel is a shining light of the contemporary jazz-guitar generation." (The New Yorker)

"As much as 'Driftwood' speaks with the voice of three musicians whose distinctive and collective personalities imbue these eight tracks-seven by Muthspiel plus the collectively credited, spontaneously composed title track-there's a certain sense of what came before as well. When Muthspiel performs on nylon-string guitar, there are echoes of early Towner recordings like 'Batik' ...'Driftwood's' largely introspective tone is occasionally broken by brighter shards of light. When the tempo is brighter, as it is on 'Highline,' Muthspiel adopts a more assertive chordal stance-his grittily overdriven tone somehow managing to create sustaining chords even as he layers more deft linear work atop them as the piece builds to its definitive conclusion. Even with Blade and Grenadier's remarkably empathic-and, at times, portent-filled-ability to engage in more active trialogue with Muthspiel, the overall complexion remains impressionistic, the music filled with suggestive implication.
(John Kelman, All About Jazz)

Tracks:

Joseph
Uptown
Cambiata
Highline
Driftwood
Lichtzelle
Madame Vonn
Bossa for Michael Brecker