Jacob Young - Evening Falls (2004)

2018-07-15T13:03:53Z

Jacob Young - Evening Falls (2004)


1 	Blue 	7:19
2 	Evening Air 	6:48
3 	Minor Peace 	6:19
4 	Looking For Jon 	4:29
5 	Sky 	5:00
6 	Presence Of Descant	3:56
7 	Formerly 	6:48
8 	The Promise 	4:25
9 	Falling 	4:47

Bass Clarinet – Vidar Johansen
Double Bass – Mats Eilertsen
Drums – Jon Christensen
Guitar – Jacob Young
Trumpet – Mathias Eick
Tenor Saxophone – Vidar Johansen (6)

34-year old guitarist, composer, and bandleader Jacob Young hails from Oslo, Norway, making him a natural for Manfred Eicher's ECM label. Young was educated at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York, where he studied under Jim Hall and privately with John Abercrombie. Young's warm, rounded tone indicates a debt to the former while his wide harmonic palette owes to the latter; but his extended melodic vocabulary, gorgeous phrasing, and notions of group interplay are his own. What is immediately startling about Evening Falls is its lyricism; it doesn't sound like a guitarist's date. Young's compositions reflect song, paying careful attention to nuance and dynamic. There is plenty of room for improvisation and group interplay -- with veteran drummer Jon Christensen, trumpeter Mathias Eick, bass clarinettist and saxophonist Vidar Johansen, and bassist Mats Eilertsen -- around melodic invention. On "Sky," Young weaves a spacious frame that engages and centers around his own atmospheric guitaristry. It underscores and accents the trumpet's singing voice and the elegant, restrained use of bass clarinet and tenor as a backing voice, offering shadowy, restrained counterpoint, and harmonic extension. His fills dip, float and point, and his chord voicings are imaginative and painterly, guiding the tune from underneath, stepping out front only when it dictates. As a soloist, his command of technique is basically flawless; he's smooth yet soulful, graceful with just enough edge to make his occasional improvisational angularities poignant. The opener, "Blue," opens with guitar and bass, establishing an elegiac backdrop for the trumpeter and bass clarinet. Eick is mournful and melancholy; his playing is dimensionally expanded by Johansen's spare lines slipping out from just underneath to lengthen any given line's impression. The counterpoint between Young and Eilertsen that introduces "Falling," the album closer, is breathtaking. Its brevity offers respect towad space and silence even as it unfolds. What this final impression brings home is the empathy in Young's music. It makes for a beautifully balanced, elegantly performed, and poetically rendered listening experience. ---Thom Jurek, AllMusic Review

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Jacob Young - Forever Young (2014)

2016-06-12T14:30:33Z

Jacob Young - Forever Young (2014)


01. I Lost My Heart To You [08:31]
02. Therese's Gate [06:47]
03. Bounce [07:48]
04. We Were Dancing [05:55]
05. Sofia's Dance [07:35]
06. Comeback Girl [07:04]
07. 1970 [06:37]
08. Beauty [06:15]
09. Time Changes [09:34]
10. My Brother [07:43]

Jacob Young: guitars; 
Trygve Seim: tenor and soprano saxophones; 
Marcin Wasilewski: piano; 
Slawomir Kurkiewicz: double bass; 
Michal Miskiewicz: drums.

On his third date as a leader for ECM, Norwegian guitarist Jacob Young debuts an entirely new international quintet. His sidemen are saxophonist Trygve Seim, and pianist Marcin Wasilewski's trio featuring bassist Slamowir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michael Miskiewicz. Forever Young is more "song" oriented than either of his preceding albums. It's warm, spacious, rhythmically fluid, and deeply lyrical as evidenced by "Bounce," which moves along like a latter-era Roxy Music tune. But that melodicism isn't all pop-inflected. Opener "I Lost My Heart to You," introduced by the pianist, opens tentatively and tenderly and unfolds like a Brazilian folk song. Seim's articulation of the melody reveals its emotional resonance. Young plays a nylon-string guitar. His solo is free of angles; it offers tasteful arpeggios, accenting the changes as he plays into them. "Therese's Gate" is also touched by Brazil, but more by bossa, though its rhythmic signature is more elliptical. The interplay between Wasilewski, Young, and Seim is elegant, and full of ideas. "Sophia's Dance" features a wrangling acoustic guitar solo and Miskiewicz's rolling tom snare that evoke a tabla. The fat, electric guitar chords in "1970" recall early Wes Montgomery, but Young and Wasilewski unpack it into something more modern, sleek, and global with hints of Indian and Latin jazz. "Beauty" has an open country feel, with shimmering, strummed acoustic chords which frame Wasilewski's middle-register arpeggios in a breezy melody. Seim's insistent solo moves it toward the margins as Kurkiewicz's surging bassline urges him on. "Time Changes" is literal -- at least rhythmically -- it also swings through the head and bridge -- even when it engages a classic rock chord progression as one of its themes. Young's playing throughout offers great technical facility, but he is a democratic bandleader, never showy. Forever Young stands out in his catalog because it reveals an almost immeasurable growth in his compositional skills since 2007. These tunes inspire this fine band; they play as if they'd been playing them for ages. ---Thom Jurek, Rovi

Gitarzysta Jacob Young (rocznik 1970) jest muzykiem silnie osadzonym na scenie norweskiego – czy szerzej – skandynawskiego jazzu, w dorobku ma wspólne nagrania z takimi postaciami jak Karin Krog (świetna płyta „Where Flamingos Fly” z 2002 roku!), Arild Andersen, Nils Petter Molvaer czy Larry Goldings. Od 2002 roku od albumu „Evening Falls” (m.in z Mathiasem Eickiem na trąbce i Jonem Christensenem na perkusji) działa w barwach ECM.

Jego najnowsza płyta „Forever Young” (w tym roku przypada 30 rocznica wydania przebojowego albumu grupy Alphaville pod tym samym tytułem!) jest dla nas ważna, bo obok norweskiego saksofonisty Trygve Seima mamy tu w komplecie trio Marcina Wasilewskiego.

Kompozycje gitarzysty to w większości proste nastrojowe ballady (I Lost My Heart To You, Therese’s Gate, Comeback Girl, My Brother) wręcz o charakterze instrumentalnych piosenek, z łatwo rozpoznawalnym, nieskomplikowanym planem harmonicznym. Są też utwory z silniejszym backgroundem rytmicznym, jak 1970 (calypso?), We Were Dancing (bossa nova?) czy funkowy Bounce. Całość oczywiście podporządkowana koncepcji lidera, w tym nie tak często spotykanemu zestawieniu gitara (akustyczna bądź elektryczna) – saksofon tenorowy – fortepian. I tu ważna, wręcz kluczowa rola Marcina Wasilewskiego, by „wypełniając treścią” poszczególne utwory jednocześnie zachować balans między ideą Jacoba Younga a własnym pomysłem na partie solowe. Sam pianista, jak i całe trio dało się już poznać nie tylko przecież z płyt nagrywanych pod własnym szyldem dla ECM, ale też ze współpracy z innymi liderami, czego na tych łamach nie musimy przypominać. I oto kolejny, jakże trafiony przykład takiego zestawienia! Marcin Wasilewski bardzo subtelnie podkreśla linię gitary Younga (zwłaszcza akustycznej), wypełnia i uzupełnia tło, a w kilku dłuższych partiach solowych (Sophia’s Dance, Therese’s Gate, Beauty) potwierdza swą klasę i styl, wypracowany w oparciu o najlepsze tradycje pianistyki evansowskiej.

Saksofonista Trygve Seim, którego pamiętamy m.in. ze współpracy z Tomaszem Stańką, w wielu utworach po prostu przejmuje od Younga linie tematów i je wzbogaca, pozostając konsekwentnie w wyciszeniu, choć są też takie tematy, gdzie efektownie improwizuje (Bounce). Sekcja Sławomir Kurkiewicz-Michał Miśkiewicz bez zarzutu, precyzyjna w niuansach, brzmiąca jak podręcznikowy ECM, może podobać się we wszystkich bez wyjątku utworach, a ciekawostką jest długa coda w Time Changes, gdzie na bazie prostej bluesowej frazy fortepianu długie solo gra Michał Miśkiewicz. Świetna muzyka! Piszę to z pozycji radiowca, który szuka jazzu z wyraźnym pulsem, z muzycznie zarysowanymi osobowościami, komunikatywnego, pięknie brzmiącego. To jest właśnie taka płyta. ---Tomasz Szachowski, jazzforum.com.pl

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