John Taylor | "Tramonto" - DL Media Music

Recorded Live in Birmingham in January 2002, Tramonto Finds UK Pianist John Taylor in Celebratory, Outgoing Mood, Fronting One of His Most Dynamic and Quick-Witted Groups

Featuring Bassist Marc Johnson and DrummerJoey Baron, the Energetic Team that Would Later Collaborate on the Critically-Lauded ECM Recording Rosslyn

Available Today via ECM

“Taylor was a world-class jazz pianist who balanced elegant, graceful phrasing with densely concentrated note clusters in his improvisations. His inventive lines consistently opened new directions, creating opportunities for Johnson and Baron to show their individualalities. The trio’s interplay pulses with free-flowing vitality as they navigate between lyrical passages and intricate explorations, displaying remarkable collective imagination throughout this concert.” — All About Jazz

Recorded live in Birmingham during a Contemporary Music Network tour in January 2002, Tramonto finds UK pianist John Taylor (1942-2015) in celebratory, outgoing mood, fronting one of his most dynamic and quick-witted groups, with US musicians Marc Johnson and Joey Baron – the energetic team that would collaborate on the critically-lauded ECM recording Rosslyn, realized a few months later in Oslo.

Although John Taylor recorded prolifically for ECM from 1977, when he arrived with the Azimuth project, with Norma Winstone and Kenny Wheeler, he seldom appeared on the label in a jazz piano trio format. The singular exception was with the trio led by drummer Peter Erskine, to which Taylor also contributed compositions. Two such tunes – “Pure and Simple” and “Ambleside” – first showcased with the Erskine Trio, are revisited and powerfully transformed on Tramonto. “Ambleside,” a 15 minute epic of rapidly changing moods in this rendition, opens up for extended solos by all three players.

As John Fordham remarked in The Guardian, Taylor was “a superb composer for improvisers, crafting pieces that were romantically song-like yet harmonically unpredictable.” The tender “Between Moons,” which would also appear on Rosslyn, is a piece on which the enduring influence of Bill Evans is evident, underlined by Taylor’s interaction with Marc Johnson, who was Evans’s last bassist.

The concert programme is completed by Steve Swallow’s “Up Too Late,” which swirls from bop phrasing to free playing, and includes high arco soloing from Johnson, and skittering drums from Baron, and by the Ralph Towner composed title track. (Towner’s “Tramonto” was premiered on ECM thirty years ago by Towner in duet with Gary Peacock on Oracle).

Reviewing Rosslyn, UK magazine Jazzwise wrote that “Taylor’s subtle but energised touch and flowing melodic inventions find a ready response from Johnson and Baron, two players who excel in the kind of unexpected twists and turns and intricate textural interplay so typical of the pianist’s musical imagination.”

In addition to Rosslyn and the five albums with the Azimuth trio (Azimuth, The Touchstone, Départ, Azimuth ’85, and How It Was Then – Never Again), John Taylor can be heard on ECM recordings by John Surman (Stranger Than Fiction, Proverbs and Songs), Jan Garbarek (Places, Photo With Blue Sky), Kenny Wheeler (Double Double You, Music For Large and Small Ensembles, The Widow In The Window, A Long Time Ago), Norma Winstone (Somewhere Called Home), Peter Erskine (You Never Know, Time Being, As It Is, Juni), Miroslav Vitous (Journey’s End), Arild Andersen (Molde Concert), Mark Feldman (What Exit), and Marilyn Mazur (CelestialCircle).

Marc Johnson and Joey Baron have also recorded extensively for ECM and, as rhythm section partners, formed half of John Abercrombie’s band on albums including Cat’n’Mouse, Class Trip and The Third Quartet. Baron, furthermore, played drums on Johnson’s leader dates Shades of Jade and Swept Away.

Joey Baron is currently playing with the Fred Hersch Trio and can be heard on its newest recording, The Surrounding Green, issued in July this year. In recent years he has also worked closely with Jakob Bro, and appears on the Danish guitarist’s albums Streams, Bay Of Rainbows, and Once Around The Room.

Marc Johnson’s leader dates at ECM have explored music of wide stylistic range: from his hard-driving 1980s quartet on Bass Desires (with John Scofield, Bill Frisell and Peter Erskine), to the solo double bass recording Overpass, released in 2021.