Jan Garbarek - soprano Bill Frisell - guitar Eberhard Weber - bass Jon Christensen - drums 1. Considering the Snail 2. Dancers (Dansere) 3. The Last Stage of a Long Journey
I wish there was more of this -- covering tunes on Side 1 of the album. This band was exquisite. Frisell left the band because of a scheduling conflict that he was not made aware of in a timely fashion by ECM; tragic. Garbarek was crushed by the turn of events and elected to work with keyboard players after that, not guitarists.
Garbarek has assembled this type of group sound in his earliest ECM recordings with Arild Andersen on bass and Terje Rypdal on guitar with albums like Afric .Pepperbird. Solstice with Christensen and Weber and the wonderful acoustic and 12 string work of Ralph Towner may be my all time favorite ECM recording of the more than 500 that I’ve enjoyed. This version of Dansere is somehow even better/more dynamic than the album version with Bobo Stenson piano and Palle Danielsson bass and, of course RIP Christensen. Five out of four stars!
Hey Bill, that time when I saw you standing with your drummer outside the Tractor Tavern in Seattle while I was washing dishes in my second floor apartment across the street and then ran down to shake your hand (circa 1998-99) and I said that I'd been listening to you since the Seventies. It was actually 1982 with Eberhard Weber's Later That Evening. It's bugged me ever since that I got the date wrong. Forgive. I was in full blown Beatle Fan mode, I'm kinda surprised I didn't scream like a little girl.
