WHO Trio: Live At Jazz Festival Willisau 2023

This jewel of an album was released just too late for inclusion in AAJ's Best Jazz Albums of 2024: All-Star Break Edition, where contributors were invited to name their three best albums released during the first half of the year (the article can be read here). But five gets you ten that it will be included in at least one end-of-year best-albums list. And that is not the only headline. Live At Jazz Festival Willisau 2023 is that rarer than hen's teeth thing: an album that could appeal equally to aficionados of free-leaning collective improvisation, in this case by a piano trio, and also to connoisseurs of early to mid 20th century changes-based jazz standards, in this case compositions by Duke Ellington.

The WHO Trio—pianist Michael Wintsch, bassist Banz Oester and drummer Gerry Hemingway—have been here before. Their previous album, Strell (Clean Feed, 2021), recorded in 2019, had the musicians roaming through and beyond nine Ellington and Billy Strayhorn pieces. Four years later at Willisau the trio took the concept to the next level: seven of the nine tracks are either preceded or followed by "Reimagination" sections. These collective improvisations are abstracted so far from the Ellington source material, of which only distant echoes remain audible, that their composer credits are, with justice, attributed to Wintsch, Oster and Hemingway. See Track Listing below for details.

Some of the pieces on the album are well known: "Mood Indigo," "The Mooche" and "Black And Tan Fantasy." Others are relatively obscure: "Birmingham Breakdown" and "Self Portrait Of The Bean." Another three sit in between: "Wig Wise," "Angelica" and "Fleurette Africaine." The ninth track, "Interlude," halfway through the performance, is a brief WHO improvisation.

There are many moments of transcendent beauty on Live At Jazz Festival Willisau 2023, too many to itemize here. And by no means all of them are Ellington's original themes. Wintsch, Oester and Hemingway are such supremely lyrical players that they create passages of exquisite melodicism even on the hoof and out there. Oester, who introduces the themes as often as Wintsch, brings a deliciously "dirty" quality to his pizzicato playing, frequently plucking the strings in such a manner that they vibrate percussively against the fingerboard. Hemingway uses the cymbals sparingly, mainly focusing on tuned toms and bass drum, so bringing an out-of-the-ordinary tunefulness to his drumming. An exception is "Wig Wise / Reimagination #5," where snare drum and cymbals are to the fore. Wintsch commands attention by turning on a dime between high intensity Cecil Taylor-like two-hands passages and pelucid single-note lines.

Recorded at Willisau by Radio SRF, the sound is elevated by the mixing and mastering of Ezz-thetics' sonic jedi Michael Brändli. Clarity, presence and depth of tone are as good as they get. The album is the second release in Ezz-thetics' First Visit series, launched in summer 2024, and follows Alex Hendriksen's Lotus Blossom, reviewed here. That album also focuses on 20th-century jazz standards. There may be an emerging pattern here, there may not. Either way, the series is a welcome arrival.

Side Note: Ellington frequently co-composed his music. On Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins (Impulse!, 1963), "Self-Portrait (Of The Bean)," for instance, is credited to Ellington and Strayhorn, and "Mood Indigo" to Ellington and Barney Bigard. Ellington is, however, named as sole composer of these and the other six Ellington pieces on the WHO album. Just saying.

At the time of writing, no YouTubes from Live At Jazz Festival Willisau 2023 have appeared. Instead, a YouTube of Strell, which is pretty much in the zone, can be found below.