Customer Reviews

I Have the Room Above Her

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the liner notes to another ECM album, a musician (Edward Vesala, I think) suggests that playing "free ballads" is one of the hardest things to do in jazz. I guess it has to do with reconciling the tension between free or avant-garde playing and the sensitivity necessary to pull off a great ballad performance. I only mention this because I think the three musicians on this CD do a great job of reconciling these two tensions, offering what's essentially a "ballads" album containing adventurous and challenging improvisation.

The album starts out slowly, with "Osmosis Part III" sounding like we're joining things about halfway through. It sounds like 3 am and the musicians are quietly lamenting some great loss. The next few tunes, with the exception of "Odd Man Out", all proceed at a very relaxed, dreamy pace. There's a beautiful interpretation of the title tune and another, shorter version (excerpt?) of "Osmosis" to close off the first half. The second half of the album is more up-tempo, and the individual songs better defined. "Dance" is a classic Motian tune, hummable yet convoluted, with some feisty interplay between the trio. "Harmony" starts out as a Motian-Lovano duet, one of the few tunes here that contains a really linear pulse. Lovano's playing on this tune is all about quiet, controlled intensity. "The Riot Act" is the tune where Frisell dips into his effects most heavily (though he does it in a more subtle fashion on other parts of the album). "One in Three" is an unusual mix of alternating ballad and intense non-ballad sections. The album closes in a melodic fashion with "Dreamland".

As other people have commented, Bill Frisell is at his "jazziest" here -- a few effects here and there, plenty of his characteristic twang. Lovano plays warmly, beautifully, and brilliantly; the comparisons another reviewer made to Lester Young and Stan Getz are appropriate, not because Lovano sounds like them, but because there's the same appreciation that "sound" matters as much as "notes". "Dewey Redman meets Lester Young" isn't too off the mark. And Mr. Motian sounds like he's having a great time. He's not especially interested in "drumming" here, but there aren't many drummers who understand melody as well as he does. You can get a lot out of this album just by listening to him.

If this sounds like your kind of thing, then I really recommend picking up this album. Just three veteran musicians enjoying themselves making subtle, beautiful music. When the CD stops, the mood lingers.

(I think the comparison made to Charles Lloyd's Voice in the Night album is interesting, and if you like the "mood" of the ballads on that album then you'll like what you find here. That said, that album was a lot more straight-ahead, up-tempo and explicitly blues-rooted. This one is more introverted and a lot more "free", as the jazz parlance goes.)

Featuring mostly dreamy, spacey balladlike tone poems, I Have the Room Above Her creates an alluring aural palette that by turns beguiles, mesmerizes, and mystifies. This magical music operates in territory not unlike that of late nineties Charles Lloyd (specifically, Voice in the Night) with Frisell spinning out moody Abercrombie-isms, Motian channeling the spirit of the great Billy Higgins, and Lovano digging into the very darkest heart of his instrument and uncovering balladic statements of such depth and poignancy as to nearly wring tears from the listener. The result: 3-in-the-morning heartbreak music of immense proportions.

The title tune, a lovely line by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, here handled with a delicate despair, conjures up an entire world of longing, perfectly captured in the crepuscular disc sleeve photograph. With but little imagining an entire cinematic drama of loneliness and desperation set amid urban squalor unfolds in one's head as the evocative tunes ("Odd Man Out," "Shadows," "Dance," "The Riot Act," "The Bag Man," "One in Three") spin by. As the never-to-be star-crossed romance slouches away from the imaginary film's protagonist, the music takes on an edgy, brittle dissonance, and we're left with the wistful remnants of a ghostly "Dreamland."

Gorgeously engineered by James A. Farber assisted by Aya Takemura, and produced by the inimitable Manfred Eicher, this represents a high point in the ECM catalog, making it one of the finest jazz recordings of all time. Anyone even slightly drawn to the dusky jazz so brilliantly realized here will want to check out this very special disc.

Highest recommendation.

A superb performance by three exceptional players which seem telepathically linked. These three men can create lakes of notes, sea of notes where you can swim freely with your mind, where you can get lost. The sense of a big space is something that you can immediatly perceive from the first notes of this recording. And it's not a mere case because you have here two of the best players when atmosphere time comes, Bill Frisell (with his nice ambient, chorused, bell like guitar tone ... and with his nice open, unresolved and suspended chords) and Paul Motian (delicate and creative in his approach to the drum set). They can create here at their best, without the firm pulse of a double bass (there isn't one at all by the way). So here they litirally paint scenaries in space, they create watercolours of notes, sounds tapestries on which Joe Lovano superimpose melodies and comments like words, sentences, thoughts with nice melancholy. This is a spectacular recording even from an hiend enthusiast point of view. The stage is big, very dimensional, the listening session very satisfying. Few tunes break for a little the sense of pace of the recording, for instance the third, "Odd man out" which speaks a more earthly language. Or the standard tune "I have the room above her" ... more romantic and less spacial, less ethereal. Or also in "Dance" which as the title state, we find ourselves obviously more in a "free, atonal jazz" type of context, with more rhythmic figures going on, more impulse, a sense of urgency. But with "Shadows" for example we are again shoot in space. Let your thoughts run freely while you enjoy the delicate and intimate atmospheres, these three master musicians can create. "The most legitimate of all poetical tone is melancholy." Edgar Allan Poe

Jazz for the 21st century. A dream team plays a well-rounded collection of enigmatic but evocative pieces: a different 'kind of blue'. Frisell's guitar playing is beautifully articulated and understated. I hadn't heard Lovano or Motian before, but now I'm an instant fan. Not for those who like big showy sax and loud drums, but a treat nonetheless.

Paul Motian, I Have the Room Above Her (5*)

(Paul Motian, drums; Joe Lovano, tenor sax; Bill Frissell, guitar)

This is exceptional music played by experienced and inventive artists --musical brothers who listen to each other intently. The tunes have melodies but you won't be humming them to yourself afterwards. Nonetheless, they are melodic in the best sense of the word. Motian, Lovano and Frissell, all major musicians, have played together so long by now that they fit each other like glove to hand, making intensely musical statements on every cut of this album.

Motian, 75, is amazing. He doesn't eschew rhythm on these cuts but rhythm is clearly secondary. He drops the rhythmic drive that is central to the work of the great bop and post-bop drummers and instead produces a susurrus of displaced and subtle accents. His drumming is a matter of nudging and whispering, sounds wash up against the horns and disappear and reappear again.

What can you say about Lovano and Frissell? Though I have favorites among albums by Lovano, I've never heard him play badly. This is one of his very best, showing to the fullest his intelligent lyricism. His tone, occasionally an issue for me, is quietly gorgeous here. Frissell, playing in a context like this, adds hermetic, surprisingly lyrical solos as well. A+ for all three of them!

Dave Keymer

Modesto CA

I must own several hundred ECM releases by now. This CD has grown into one of my favorites.

Paul Motian is SO much more than a drummer. Mere drummers keep time. Motian, by contrast, communicates timelessness.

Motian is the Creator of Space; Lovano is the king of tone; and Frisell adds color and imagination. The trio together explores adventurous territory with great intuition and sensitivity.

If you're looking for a new sonic architecture with an urbane, urban edge, this is it.

An outstanding offering from three of the most brilliant, imaginative, and mature musicians of our day.

What a marvellous recording! Calm, but yet intense. Cannily orchestrated, but yet rich in interplay. Deep, yet not pretentious. A joy to listen.

The reason I got this album is simply because of Bill Frisell. I have all of his solo albums and I have a bunch of albums where he was a session guitarist, and have been a huge fan for a couple of years. I simply can't get enough of his beautiful, textural guitar style. The man can quite simply....play anything he likes and get away with it. Not saying that what he plays is out-of-place, but he has such a strong distinctive style it's hard not notice or take note.

"I Have the Room Above Her" is what I consider to be one of the trio's best work to date. It's so moody and dark, yet it's very soothing and beautiful. Really mellow and laid back. Kind of skimmers along and allows alot of space in the music, which I love music to have an "open" quality anyway. I know when I compose something I like to leave alot of space in there so it can allow for someone else's style to really come to the front.

I also enjoy the playing of Joe Lovano and Paul Motian. I believe Joe Lovano is one of the greatest sax players that ever lived. His tone is easy on the ears unlike alot of other sax players. Paul Motian (who's almost 70!) is unbelievable. To say he sets the pace for the music is an understatement, because he's the backbone or the glue that holds this music together.

This album is a great purchase for anyone who's into these three amazing musicians or anyone who's into good melodic jazz.

Usually, this slower, mellow sound would be enough to put me right to sleep. And Mr. Frisell alone has the tendency to do that time & again...as well as does a lot of ECM material.

But this disc...in agreement with the other reviewers, is a whole lot more than just slower ballady type cuts. Yes, definitely mellow, but pay attention to the amazing minimalist thing happening here. Not a wasted note.

I also love the spacing in the music...not to sound too fluffy, but I think it takes a closer, deep listen to really appreciate this trio...not something you'd want to put in as you're cruising down the highway...but perfect for a Sunday morning kick-back with your coffee.

I have to admit that this is the first I have heard of Bill Frisell, even though my friend has been raving about him for a few months. I am somewhat familiar with Paul Motian, through his bebop band and his classic work with Bill Evans. And I have heard my share of Lovano, playing everything from the most nondescript of 90s hard bop to much more creative large ensemble and trio work. I really didn't know what these guys would sound like together, and I am always wary of these trios that leave out bass players, because it just leaves too much unused space.

Well none of these guys are stuck in traditional space-filling modes here, thankfully. I love Paul Motian. I will say it again. Paul Motian is one of my favorite drummers, up there with Tony Williams and Roy Haynes and Nasheet Waits. He doesn't play jazz drums here, but does something that only a really awesome drummer could do: he usually lets the time float in the air, in a way that neither the listener nor the soloists ever know where things are going to land (or lift back off again), but also in a way where things never lose momentum.

Bill Frisell plays a tricky role, too, filling out the low end of the tone spectrum without subtracting from Motian's rhythmic complexities, using a skillful minimalist approach to harmonic sketching, and providing a direct counterpart to Lovano's melodic and semi-melodic. Frisell is a great guitar player, he does a lot of effective guitar-y things with tone and effects, while Lovano conveys a similar expressiveness by using his thick and earthy tone, and facile but purposefully unpolished technique.

Of course, describing this music, as i just did, does not do any good, because you should just listen to it. If you are not looking for anything closely resembling a straight ahead album, but are interested in more of a moody late night journey type thing, you should listen to this CD, because it is very good. After you listen to it, you will not really know what songs to go back to, it will just hit you as a whole, especially if you are not used to this type of thing.