Tokyo

Wolfgang Muthspiel and his trio with Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums (“Together they have something of the empathy of the Bill Evans trio” – Downbeat) go into their third recording-venture swinging, setting the stage for what may be the group’s most adventurous trio recording with a delicate reading of Keith Jarrett’s “Lisbon Stomp”. Throughout the album however, the Austrian guitarist and his American cohorts turn the spotlight towards Wolfgang’s captivating originals, touching on balladic lyricism (“Pradela”, “Traversia”), subtle folk infusions (“Strumming”, “Flight”), as well as oblique chamber jazz (“Weill You Wait”) and twangy rock and roll (“Roll”). As has become custom, Wolfgang alternates between acoustic and electric guitars fluently and in equal measures, framing his soft touch and fluid lines in a programme that seems to encompass the entirety of the broad idiomatic scope he has unravelled over the past decades. By closing with a shrewd take on Paul Motian’s “Abacus”, Muthspiel bookends the album with implications of a large chunk of both the jazz and ECM history. The record is named after the Japanese capital, where all of the trio’s ECM dates were captured. Tokyo was recorded in October 2024, then mixed in Munich in February 2025 and produced by Manfred Eicher.