CD ECM Records Craig Taborn: Daylight Ghosts

2017

Craig Taborn - pian
Chris Speed - saxofon tenor, clarinet
Chris Lightcap - bas electric, contrabas
Dave King - tobe, percutie electronica


Keyboardist Craig Taborn’s Daylight Ghosts is the Minneapolis-bred New Yorker’s third ECM release as a leader, a quartet album following the solo Avenging Angel and trio disc Chants. Both projects earned wide acclaim, with The Guardian saying that Taborn’s “musicality and his attention to detail are hypnotic, as is his remarkable sense of compositional narrative within an improvised performance.” Along with the questing Taborn on piano and electronic keyboards, the quartet of Daylight Ghosts features two other luminaries from the New York scene – reed player Chris Speed and bassist Chris Lightcap – plus drummer Dave King, the leader’s fellow Minnesota native and one-third of alt-jazz trio The Bad Plus. Each player draws from a broad artistic background, as informed by rock, electronica and diverse strains of world music as they are the various permutations of jazz improvisation. Dynamism and spectral ambience, acoustic and electric sounds, groove and lingering melody – all come together to animate Daylight Ghosts.

However far from familiar paths the American pianist Craig Taborn strays, he sounds surefootedly convinced of his route, and however private his music, it emits a vivid intensity. Daylight Ghosts – a superb quartet set with Chris Speed on reeds, Chris Lightcap on bass and the Bad Plus’s Dave King on drums – operates in Taborn’s favourite free-floating manner: changing fragments of melody rather than dominant themes come and go, steadily transforming the moods. […] Only players with deep jazz insights and wide musical references could have made this fine album.
John Fordham, The Guardian

Taborn has been one of America’s most interesting and recognizable keyboard talents for close to 20 years. This album is terrific – the work of a mature stylist with deep confidence in his ideas.
Phil Freeman, New York City Jazz Record

In addition to his eighty-plus appearances as a sideman, pianist Craig Taborn has during the last six years found a happy home for his own music on the ECM label, where he's been able to establish a formidable body of work in just a few recordings. It makes sense, really, that after his solo record ‘Avenging Angel’ (2011) and trio outing ‘Chants’ (2013), he is now working with a quartet. An expanded group gives him more tools to work with, essentially. And this is a very good thing, since this release represents a definite breakthrough in Taborn's maturity as a composer. It's also the fullest realization yet of his talent as a leader, and it's a tremendous achievement, one certain to find its way onto a lot of Best-of-2017 lists (and yes, it's only February). […] On these nine, expertly-crafted pieces, we are reminded once again of the power of collective music-making, where ego takes a back seat to a larger musical endeavor. […]Yet another fascinating aspect of the recording is its use of electronics. Taborn uses electronic keyboards (sometimes simultaneously with piano), Lightcap occasionally plays an electric bass, and King supplements his conventional kit with electronic percussion. Yet although ubiquitous, and a fundamental aspect of Taborn's concept, these components are remarkably well-integrated and unobtrusive. As a result, the record largely retains the feel of an ‘acoustic’ record, with the subtle electronic elements present chiefly to give the record its underlying mood of mystery.
Troy Dostert, All About Jazz

Flexibility breeds uncertainty in this haunting album by the pianist and keyboard player Craig Taborn. His quartet of fellow Americans will switch suddenly from rock to ambient introspection. Melodies drift into view then dissolve. Acoustic instruments yield to electronics. The atmosphere is one of quizzical tension where musical versatility evokes the bric-a-brac of accumulated influence and memory.
Chris Pearson, The Times

Taborn has a strong interest in group chemistry and ‘Daylight Ghosts’ is an ensemble offering in the true sense of the term. In most songs it is the overlap and entwining of parts, the polymelodies as polyrhythms, that hold the attention, with head-solo-head strategies largely eschewed. Furthermore Taborn excels at conjuring ambiences where chords don’t so much shift as melt in and out of focus […] Taborn’s ability to blur the line between organic and synthetic timbres so that contemporary technology dos not at all feel like a bolted-on element in the arrangements is no less impressive. Sprightly non-western rhythms, fluid time and bluesy backbeats simply enhance this beguiling hypnosis.
Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise

Craig Taborn's third ECM album, 2017's ‘Daylight Ghosts’, is a sophisticated quartet date that finds the pianist deftly balancing his exploratory, classical-influenced jazz with subtle electronics, avant-garde flourishes, and a robust group aesthetic […] At turns unsettling and haunting, yet rife with a brightly dynamic lyricism, ‘Daylight Ghosts’ is an endlessly compelling, deeply imagistic album packed with Taborn's inspired musical juxtapositions.
Matt Collar, All Music

The inventive pianist and composer, as adept with electronics-girded grooves as a sort of ghostly minimalism, assembled jazz all-stars for his latest, a sure bet as one of the year’s strongest albums. […] an eclectic, richly melodic effort that emphasizes intricate group improvisation over individual fireworks. The results are often spellbinding, with a blend of tangled melodies and a near-ethereal grace.
Chris Barton, L. A. Times

A quartet recording that conjures mysterious forces and spectral shapes […] The originals combine elastic improve with chamber jazz clarity to gripping effect; Roscoe Mitchell’s mood-piece ‘Jamaican Farewell’ is a bittersweet cover.
Mike Hobart, Financial Times

The approach is based on integration of the written material and the improvisation, and on drawing on the different personalities of the four musicians. This takes the music some way away from a (theme solos theme) approach. In its place is a carefully controlled movement from ambient chamber-like textures, building in intensity through to high-energy rock-inspired collective improvisation. Chris Lightcap and Dave King are key to the way that the music builds up and Taborn complements them with solos that have a strong narrative flow. I found Chris Speed's role on tenor saxophone very interesting; his tone is very gentle and at first I wondered whether his sound was too low in the mix, but it quickly became apparent to me that his role was not that of a dominant front-line horn, but one integrating into the overall sound of the quartet. […] a thoroughly enjoyable album that provides evidence of Craig Taborn's ability to produce distinctive projects that reflect the contemporary jazz scene in New York.
Tony Dudley-Evans, London Jazz News


A subtle, intense set of original compositions played with controlled freedom by an excellent quartet that includes saxophonist Chris Speed, bassist Chris Lightcap and Bad Plus drummer Dave King. Eclectic and episodic, like a vaguely unsettling art movie, ‘Daylight Ghosts’ glows with the heat of invention, but it’s couched in language that Taborn’s predecessors would have understood.
Cormac Larkin, Irish Times

Craig Taborn has earned his reputation for dynamic introspection at the piano, along with an exceptionally fluent technique — meaning not only the mechanics of the keyboard but also the more furtive language of frequency, overtone and decay. His riveting new album, ‘Daylight Ghosts’, is the latest in a recent run of can’t-miss Taborn releases on ECM, and will probably be among the year’s best. It’s very much a band record, featuring several longtime associates: Chris Speed on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Chris Lightcap on bass, David King on drums. To a man, these are musicians on board with Taborn’s revelatory yet unhurried agenda, which plays out at times with all the subtlety of a creeping shadow. But they also share a knack for making intricate maneuvers feel unlabored.
Nate Chinen, WBGO


Taborn’s passion leaves its mark on the music. Each performance boasts unmistakable warmth. The title cut is a crosshatch of ascending and descending lines that nurture Bernard Herrmann-like eeriness, especially as the pianist perpetually reframes the band’s approach. Mysterious, yes. But always willing to reveal its secrets right in front of you, like delivering density to a spot dominated by light just moments previous.
Jim Macnie, Tone Audio

How does Craig Taborn manage to sound so mysterious while conveying so much visceral impact? He’s been doing it for quite a while, on his own records and in his contributions for artist such as Chris Potter and Roscoe Mitchell. But never has his vision been so fully articulated as it is here. It’s in the way Taborn uses his signature knotty melodies to great effect on ‘The Shining One’. It’s in the dark atmospherics of the title track. And it’s in the way pieces seem to degenerate then suddenly regenerate with a burst of energy […] Taborn’s explorations rarely venture so far out that they become opaque. Instead, repeating phrases and intersecting lines invite closer listening […] Among the many pleasures this record offers is the lager statement it makes: that of an already great musician cementing his place in the upper ranks of contemporary pianists and composers..
John Frederick Moore, Jazziz

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lo-_IFPcH-A" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>