My review of Mathias Eick's Midwest, today at All About Jazz.

Having first emerged on ECM Records, garnering significant attention for his work with fellow Norwegian, guitarist Jacob Young (2004's Evening Falls), and Finish pianist/harpist Iro Haarla (2006's Northbound), it seemed only a matter of time before trumpeter Mathias Eick would get the opportunity to start releasing albums of his own for the label. But if the trumpeter's first two ECM releases--2008's The Door, an all-acoustic quartet affair, and the larger-casted 2011 follow-up, Skala--became increasing electric (and electrifying) in live performances including Stavanger, Norway's 2008 Mai Jazz festival and Ottawa, Canada's 2012 TD Ottawa Jazz Festival, neither could prepare fans of the lyrically charged trumpeter for Midwest.

While interviewing Eick for the liner notes to '94-'14--a triple-vinyl box celebrating Norway's impossible-to-categorize Jaga Jazzist, with whom the trumpeter played until last year when, after spending fifteen years with the group, he left to focus more on his own music and his growing family--he revealed that Midwest would be a significant departure from his music of the last few years. And while it's true that this album--inspired by Eick's fascination with the American Midwest--is, indeed a departure in its wholly acoustic context and a Norwegian interpretation of Midwestern Americana, there's no mistaking Eick's warm tone, soft vibrato and predilection for melodies both melancholic and heartfelt.

The addition of Gjermund Larsen, a young musician gaining significant ground in his native Norway as a modernist-leaning traditionalist on violin and Hardanger fiddle--and, with his participation since 2007's The Zoo is Far (ECM), international attention as a member of pianist Christian Wallumrod's ongoing ensemble--lends Eick's quintet plenty of the credibility required to give Midwest its folkloric flavor. In addition to the return of the ever-versatile Balke on piano, the album also includes the similarly broad-minded Mats Eilertsen, a bassist increasingly well-known to ECM fans for his work with everyone from Jacob Young and Wolfert Brederode to The Source and Tord Gustavsen. Helge Norbakken, a busy Norwegian percussionist whose work with Balke's Magnetic North Orchestra, Batagraf and the keyboardist/composer's sadly overlooked Siwan (ECM, 2009)--in addition to trumpeter Jon Hassell's extraordinary Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street (ECM, 2009)--has long delved into the world of folk music with artists like singer Mari Boine, using his strange hybrid concoction of "real" percussion instruments and found materials like wheel rims to create both pulse and color.

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