ECM Special III: New Music in Guitar

Following the first two ECM Special albums from the Japanese Trio Records imprint, this subsequent volume is the series’ first proper compilation, drawing finished tracks from a handful of canonical albums in the label’s history under the subtitle New Music in Guitar. That phrase is already a small philosophical disturbance. Not new music for guitar, as one might expect, but in guitar, as though the instrument were an interior world all to itself. Across these selections, the guitar becomes a threshold between the solitude of the hand and the vastness that opens when strings agree to tremble. The journey begins with “Love Song” from John Abercrombie’s Timeless. On acoustic guitar, Abercrombie is joined by Jan Hammer on piano for a reverie that seems to hover in the afterglow of an otherwise phenomenally kinetic listening experience. The melody is tender and circular, a moonflower in fullest bloom of night. Interestingly, although drummer Jack DeJohnette is billed on the album, he does…