I believe that Universal, their worldwide distributor, restricts e-sales in the US. It’s the same for ECM albums on HighResMusic.com. Instead, we have to make do with delayed, incomplete distribution via Universal to HDtracks.com or ProStudioMasters.com. Really annoying, but par for the course with labels and distributors.
Thanks for the information. That’s a bummer. Guess will have to wait for the next holiday sales at HDTracks or ProStudioMasters.
Does anyone in the U.S. see the latest Bobo Stenson Trio release, Contra La Indecisión, in MQA on Tidal? I thought I saw someone reference it on the What Are You Listening to Now thread, but I can only find a non-MQA version. Thanks!
I’m in the US, see non-MQA only.
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In Europe too - the reason is an error in the software which transfers data from Tidal DB to roon DB.
I brought this up yesterday - but no answer and no correction till now…
Seeing the same here – I edited your thread’s title for clarity and pinged Mike for follow-up.
Keep in mind that it is a weekend though – I should hope most Roonies are tending to their families…
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OK dumb question time. How do I access the playlist? If I click on it it takes me to a Qobuz sign in page, I login and the Qobuz app opens and I then get taken to the standard Qubouz homepage. Can’t see the playlist. Help 
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Hi,
I don’t know either but am new to Qobuz. I posted the share link provided by Qobuz for that particular playlist. Perhaps some advanced user will pitch in.
Show us the place you found the link.
I assume the link was copied when you hit the Share button in the Playlist. I’ve just done that with a different playlist and then copied the link to an email. On clicking on it everything works fine - I get taken to the playlist in Qobuz. So not sure what’s going on here.
On the iPad Qobuz app went to the playlist, clicked the three dots menu, clicked on share, clicked on copy and then pasted the link here.
I do not know if will make a difference but I made sure that the playlist privacy was now set to “public”:
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All works fine with that link, too. On my IPad it brings me to a page that shows the Qobuz software to be installed on the IPad and has an open button since Qobuz is already installed. Pressing on open then gets to the playlist.
How about this?
It’s an ECM trio with a piano in it - by the master, Mr. Paul Bley.
Sankt Gerold
Paul Bley, Evan Parker, Barre Phillips
Release date: 09.10.2000
ECM 1609
Format :
ECM brought this trio of innovative free jazz veterans together for the first time to make the critically-acclaimed ‘Time Will Tell’ album in 1994 - since then, it has become a popular institution on the touring circuit. ‘Sankt Gerold’ is a live album, taped at the Austrian mountain monastery that has been the site of many distinguished ECM recordings, and it roves through many different moods. Parker and Phillips goad Bley toward some of his most abstract and experimental playing, yet they also respond to his more lyrical improvisational impulses. All three musicians are changed by the context. This is free music making at its purest. If you like Sankt Gerold, then you’d probably like: Bley/Parker/Phillips, Time Will Tell Bley/Peacock/Motian, Not Two, Not One Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, Drawn Inward Barre Phillips, Aquarian Rain Maneri/Phillips/Maneri, Tales of Rohnlief
Background Press Reactions
Background
In 1994, ECM brought Canadian pianist Paul Bley, English saxophonist Evan Parker, and American bassist Barre Phillips to Oslo for an experimental recording. It marked the first time that the musicians had played as a trio and the first time that Parker and Bley had ever worked together, although Barre Phillips had plenty of history with both of them. The original idea was to initiate some contemporary improvised chamber music that might draw upon aspects of the free jazz tradition, perhaps picking up some threads Jimmy Giuffre (in his trio with Bley) left dangling after the historically crucial ‘Fusion’, ‘Thesis’ and ‘Free Fall’ albums, music in which ‘abstraction’ and lyricism could co-exist. The ‘Time Will Tell’ session, however, quickly went beyond this rough blueprint, as the musicians reflected upon a great deal of shared experience, common goals, uncommon listening, and parallel musical ac-tivities over decades of New Jazz experimentation.
Reactions to ‘Time Will Tell’ were positive: ‘A brilliantly conceived trio’ (Down Beat); ‘The op-portunity to hear Parker in a setting of such brevity and concision is both rare and rewarding’ (Fan-fare); ‘Bley’s aphoristic style, dealing in ambiguity, seems a quite different part of the free spectrum to Parker’s passionate energy. But both have an impulse towards purity…in the end it all works beauti-fully’ (Jazz on CD); ‘A challenging but highly rewarding record’ (Time Out); ‘An album of both re-fined lyricism and pleasingly literate energy’ (Jazz Journal); ‘Exquisite rapport…Parker sets aside his customary fierce intensity to accommodate Bley’s preference for more spacious soundscapes. A fasci-nating session’ (Gramophone); ‘Quiet and careful improvisation that grippingly blends orthodox con-struction and abstract playing…As inviting to non free jazz listeners as this kind of chamber free-jazz gets’ (The Guardian, Jazz CD of the Week); ‘The title track is a near-perfect illustration of the way three senior players with yard-long CVs and utterly distinctive voices are still able to touch base with their own musical upbringing. Parker’s Coltrane inflexions are only the most obvious example; Bley and Phillips dig deep into their own memories as well. A superb album, recommendable to any-one.’ (Penguin Guide to Jazz).
The musical success of the alliance prompted Bley/Parker/Phillips to take the project to the road and the group has since become a semi-regular touring institution, appearing at jazz festivals and on the club circuit. On one of their first tours together, in 1996, ECM invited them to make an additional concert at the Propstei Sankt Gerold, the monastery in the Austrian mountains that has been the site of many ECM recordings, including discs by Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble, Giya Kancheli, Paul Giger, Anouar Brahem, Eduard Brunner, Michelle Makarski, Barry Guy/Maya Homburger, and others… The concert was duly recorded, and music drawn from it makes up the disc now presented as ‘Sankt Gerold’.
In this live performance, intensities are differently calibrated; the trio playing has grown more de-tailed, more intricate, listening-and-reacting is hyper-alert, and where ‘Time Will Tell’ alternated between duo and trio improvisations, ‘Sankt Gerold’ also offers a number of exceptional solo fea-tures. These include three Parker solo pieces, two on soprano, using circular breathing and rhythm patterns in characteristically dazzling ways, and a mysterious concluding improvisation on tenor (a horn he uses only rarely for unaccompanied work). Of Bley’s two solos, ‘Variation 9’ , begins with familiar dark rumblings in the bottom register, announcing the imminent arrival of poetic music that connects to the beginning of Bley’s story on ECM, and the peerless solo album ‘Open, To Love’. ‘Variation 6’, in sharp-edged contrast, sounds like bebop by way of Schoenberg. Barre Phillips, mas-terful free bassist, delivers a beautiful arco solo and a long pizzicato feature, which moves from guitar-like fingering to expressive, percussive attack.
In the five years that have passed since ‘Time Will Tell’ all three musicians have surfaced in other contexts on ECM. Barre Phillips is, at the time of writing, on the road with Joe and Mat Maneri, taking further the music begun on another production project, ‘Tales of Rohnlief’. Evan Parker has issued two albums with his Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, ‘Toward The Margins’ and ‘Drawn Inward’ and produced a third, Kenny Wheeler’s ‘A Long Time Ago’. Paul Bley surprised many with the recon-vening of his innovative 1960s trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, whose ‘Not Two, Not One’ was their first collaborative recording in 35 years.
‘Sankt Gerold’ bears out an observation made by Jon Balleras in Down Beat a decade ago: ‘Bley has the wonderful ability to allow his music to move where it will. The effect is one of total freshness, of music that has never been heard before and never will be heard again.’ Or as Bley himself puts it: ‘For me, the only obsession is changing the music.’
Press reactions
Choc Jazzman
Bley’s originality lies in the way he can synthesise the abstract and the orthodox. His melodically engaging phrases constantly echo the phrase-shapes of the others, and progressively seduce them into following his. Parker, particularly in his most ferocious episodes of seamless tenor-sax intensity, almost defies accompaniment, yet Bley complements him with extraordinary appropriateness. When the pianist drifts into more spacious episodes for his plangent harmonies and oddly angled phrases, Parker sounds far warmer and more conventionally lyrical than he generally does on disc. Meanwhile, Barre Phillips on the one hand offers swirling, smoky bowed textures and on the other creates great tension between his precision of pitch and buzzing-bee abstractions, suggesting the presence of a very deep sitar. The mood is patient, exploratory and reflective, but that takes nothing away from the music’s ethereal urgency.
John Fordham, The Guardian
This record is challenging and rewarding. Listening to it is one of the most purely pleasurable things I’ve done for my ears in awhile. In its dozen tracks, twelve variations, I hear three instrumentalists terrifically, acutely aware of the overtone profiles of their instruments, freely improvising by matching and contrasting harmonics-rich working materials. Resonances, surfaces, interiors, reflections. This active acoustic interplay is enhanced by the gorgeous sonic environment in which the recording was made, the Austrian mountain monastery that gives the disc its name. … This is lush, tactile music, bristling with pleasures uniquely its own, tightly focused improvising carried out by close listeners with active imaginations.
John Corbett, DownBeat
Pianist Paul Bley’s cool, abstract lyricism and bassist Barre Phillips’s firm, dramatic underpinning create a more transparent, often rhapsodic environment for Parker’s elusive, atomized microtone and circuitous patterns. Their ultra-quick responses to each other allow them to explore a broad range of dynamic nuances and melodic contours with a clarity of counterpoint that may occasionally grow agitated but never turns dense or distracting. It’s impossible to call Parker’s playing “mellow” but, from the listener’s standpoint, this is probably the most comfortable setting in which to hear his unorthodox, fascinating saxophone.
Art Lande, Pulse
Featured artists
Paul Bley Piano
Evan Parker Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone
Barre Phillips Double-Bass
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Thanks a lot for the recommendation. I will give it a listen.
as I’m sure you know, there are some wonderful piano trios off ecm
e.g. Bley with Hirshfield on ‘Notes on Ornette’
and the Brad Mehldau Trio (that I’m seeing at the Barbican in March)
and GoGo Penguin…
the Bad Plus
Trichotomy
all excellent trios
my fav on ecm are perhaps Bley ‘not 1 not 2’ and ‘When Will the Blues Leave?’
[sorry for slight thread drift]
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That’s working now, thanks - looks like it was the privacy being set to public that helped (I thought it might be licensing issues across different geographies - I’m in the UK)
Thanks for the playlist, I’m listening now! Other curated playlists of ECM favorites encouraged!!
I had forgotten, the playlist is also in Spotify:
Speaking of ECM, was looking for a different Joe Lovano album and Roon reminded me of Motian/Frisell/Lovano’s I Have the Room Above Her. How could I have stayed away from this so long? I heard this trio live at the Village Vanguard in 2008, a few days from when this was recorded. Motian dropped out of the scene soon after due to his terminal illness, but I won’t ever forget that gig. I’ve been lucky to hear Lovano and Frisell live many times since, but Motian’s subtle, airy touch is very hard to replace. Brian Blade, in his own way, is the closest in my current top jazz drummers pantheon (if you need to ask, the others are: Eric Harland, Jack DeJohnette, Tyshawn Sorey, Allison Miller, Nateesh Waits, Greg Hutchinson, Dan Weiss).
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