Steve Swallow: Winter Songs

While it is true that much of the modern jazz landscape thrives on the burning fire of the avant-garde, albums like Steve Swallow's Winter Songs operate on an entirely different frequency. This is a classic ECM Records slow burner—an album that does not flash like lightning, but instead radiates a calm, late-night glow. It evokes the quiet stillness of sitting by a fireplace after the rest of the house has gone to sleep, where the music demands a deep couch, a nice pair of headphones, and total attention to both the notes being played and the spaces between them.

Recorded at Sear Sound following the profound loss of his wife and longtime musical collaborator, Carla Bley , Winter Songs is both an artistic statement and a meditation on grief and survival. As is the case with many ECM recordings, the album is classy, incredibly spacious, and unfolds at its own unhurried pace. Here, the nine tracks are titled "One" through "Nine," no need for clever titles to match the mood of the pieces, only the simplicity of a number is necessary.

To understand the sonic depth and beauty at play, one only needs to let the opening track, "One," completely take over. The recording is so immaculate that every individual wire of Adam Nussbaum 's brushes can be heard moving across the drum head. It is like listening to car tires softly crunching the fresh, undriven snow on a quiet road just before dawn. At the very end of the track, the raspiness of Chris Cheek 's saxophone and the trumpet of Mike Rodriguez  hit the exact same frequency as those brushes, forming one sound as the song ends.

Elsewhere, such as on "Two," the genius of Swallow's architectural foundation begins to reveal itself; his bass does not just hold down the bottom, he is playing a sophisticated counter-melody right beneath the surface, hiding in plain sight. On "Three," the importance of Sear Sound becomes obvious. Gil Goldstein 's piano opens the song with notes you do not just hear, you feel them in your chest. The legendary live room at Sear Sound acts as an instrument itself, allowing the notes to resonate deeply and clearly. Throughout the album, Steve Cardenas  expertly weaves his guitar into the music, supporting it and enhancing it, but seldom grabbing the spotlight. It is the rhythmic foundation of these three instruments, along with Nussbaum's drumming, that allows the horns to soar and play freely, knowing that they have a safety net behind them.

It would be easy to categorize Winter Songs as an act of mourning. While it is that, it is also much more. The space between the notes soberly echoes the space left in Swallow's life by Bley's passing, but to stop there misses the all-encompassing nature of the album's theme. By sequentially naming the pieces "One" through "Nine," Swallow is counting the steps as he is moving forward out of the darkness. However, he is not doing this alone: this is also the sound of his trusted friends helping him pull through.

Just as spring follows the harshest of winters, this album is the sound of a rebirth beginning to take place underneath all of the snow. Winter Songs is an extraordinarily human record, and a deeply profound testament to the healing power of music.