SUSANNE ABBUEHL – Compass (2006) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Susanne Abbuehl startled listeners in 2001 with her debut release, April, in which she took on the poems of e.e. cummings, and created lyrics for a Carla Bley composition. A studied and original vocalist -- she worked with Jeanne Lee -- she is also a solid composer. Her aesthetic and restrained approach lend themselves easily to Manfred Eicher's production M.O. On Compass, Abbuehl and her band, which features the wonderful clarinetist Christoph May, dig deep into the words of James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, and the music of Sun Ra and Chick Corea. The project is once more refined and mannered yet utterly ambitious beginning with her original composition "Bathyal." Here May's bass clarinet introduces Wolfert Brederode's piano that is given dimension by drummer Lucas Niggli's brushed cymbal and snare work. Abbuehl's voice enters not as whisper but as soft yet full-throated, "Do not run just yet/Do not hide..." ushering in a call to wait and observe, to look around and be touched by the bloom of flowers, by the environs as a balm for a fallen heart. The rippling piano sends waves just above the lyric, and offers the listener a way in. On "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair," (a daring chance in a jazz setting after Patty Waters '60s recording broke all the rules), is not so much referential as reverential. She bases her read of John Jacob Niles' tune on Luciano Berio's folk song arrangement. It's nearly pastoral, but May's clarinet adds an eerie dimension, making it one of the most beautifully articulated versions on record. (She also translates another of Berio's folk songs gorgeously in the French traditional song "La Foliare.") Abbuehl's musical composition to accompany a section from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is a slightly angular, with hand percussion accompanying the piano and bass clarinet. Likewise her composition for William Carlos Williams' poem Primrose is skeletal, slightly quirky and off kilter and fits Williams' taut poem like a leather glove. But it is in her own lyrics set to the music of Ra's "A Call for Demons," that the other side of her particular brilliance shines so brightly: taking Ra's suspended spatial approach, she economically creates a "call" to the forces of light and darkness that is seductive and bluesy, almost like a torch song, a lover's call. As May's clarinet whimsically touches the melody of Corea's "Children's Song No. 1," accompanied by shakers used ever so tautly and sparely, the piano enters and provides a harmonic backdrop for Abbuehl, Her singsong vocal embraces the whimsy but creates a new space for reverie and nostalgia that is not sophomoric but romantic and urban. Compass is a record of dreams and visions, shared sparely yet frankly with images and tensions subtly revealed, opening song into a netherworld that encompasses the balance of all things. It goes further than April, is more confident and assured, and Abbuehl's compositions and lyrics are the place of entrance and quiet revelation. Thom Jurek  
Tracklist :
1 Bathyal 5:46
Susanne Abbuehl
2 Black Is the Color... 4:18
Susanne Abbuehl
3 Where Flamingos Fly 4:53
John Benson Brooks / Harold Courlander / El Thea
4 Lo Fiolaire 3:43
Arranged By – Susanne Abbuehl
Music By [Based On "Folk Songs"] – Luciano Berio
5 Sea, Sea! 4:17
Susanne Abbuehl / James Joyce
6 Don't Set Sail 3:58
Translated By [Poem Transl.] – Arthur Waley
Words By [Poem By] – Feng Meng-Lung
7 The Twilight Turns from Amethyst 5:25
Susanne Abbuehl
8 Primrose 5:12
Susanne Abbuehl
9 Bright Cap and Stramers 4:37
Susanne Abbuehl
10 A Call for All Demons 4:44
Susanne Abbuehl / Sun Ra
11 Children's Song, No. 1 2:58
Susanne Abbuehl / Chick Corea
12 In the Dark Pine-Wood 3:03
Susanne Abbuehl
Credits
Clarinet – Michel Portal (tracks: 2, 4)
Clarinet, Bass Clarinet – Christof May
Drums, Percussion – Lucas Niggli
Music By – Susanne Abbuehl (tracks: 1, 5 to 9, 12)
Piano – Wolfert Brederode
Producer – Manfred Eicher
Voice – Susanne Abbuehl
Words By – Susanne Abbuehl (tracks: 1, 10, 11)

SUSANNE ABBUEHL - April (2001) APE (image+.cue), lossless

Switzerland-born singer Susanne Abbuehl studied with the influential vocalist Jeanne Lee (1939-2000) while attending the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, amidst her wholehearted interest in North Indian classical music. On her first release for ECM, Abbuehl and her fellow European musicians render an often thought-provoking program, augmented by the infamous "ECM aesthetic." However, the thrust of this outing emanates from the vocalist's incorporation of e.e. cummings' poems set to her music, while she appoints lyrics to a few Carla Bley compositions. Abbuehl possesses enticingly affectionate vocal attributes coupled with her soft incantations and atmospheric means of spinning a tale. Clarinetist Christof May serves as a near perfect foil for Abbuehl, as he frequently contrasts the singer's animated lyrical approach and tenderly stated choruses. The band utilizes punctuated rhythms and space as means for regenerating subtly executed micro-themes to coincide with these rather introspectively enacted works. A sense of fragility permeates this exquisite outing, as the artists' elegantly devised methodologies might be analogous to witnessing an oil painter applying strokes to a canvas. Simply stated, Abbuehl and associates have provided the modern jazz world with a picturesque soundscape, awash with articulately executed mosaics, that tends to impart a lasting impression. Recommended. by Glenn Astarita  
Tracklist:
1 Yes Is a Pleasant Country 5:27
Susanne Abbuehl / e.e. cummings
2 Ida Lupino 7:30
Susanne Abbuehl / Carla Bley
3 Closer 5:15
Susanne Abbuehl / Carla Bley
4 All I Need 2:56
Susanne Abbuehl / Wolfert Brederode
5 A.I.R. (All India Radio) 8:11
Carla Bley
6 Seven/Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond 3:41
Carla Bley / e.e. cummings
7 Skies May Be Blue; Yes 7:46
Susanne Abbuehl / Wolfert Brederode / e.e. cummings
8 'Round Midnight 4:17
Bernie Hanighen / Thelonious Monk / Cootie Williams
9 Maggie and Milly and Molly and May 6:36
Susanne Abbuehl / Wolfert Brederode / e.e. cummings
10 Since Feeling Is First 1:50
Susanne Abbuehl / e.e. cummings
11 Mane Na 5:45
Prabha Atre
Credits 
Arranged By – Susanne Abbuehl (tracks: 11) 
Clarinet, Bass Clarinet – Christof May
Composed By – Prabha Atre (tracks: 11)
Drums, Percussion – Samuel Rohrer
Music By – Carla Bley (tracks: 2, 3, 5, 6), Cootie Williams (tracks: 8), Susanne Abbuehl (tracks: 1, 7, 9, 10), Thelonious Monk (tracks: 8), Wolfert Brederode (tracks: 4, 7, 9) 
Piano, Harmonium, Melodica – Wolfert Brederode
Producer – Manfred Eicher
Voice – Susanne Abbuehl
Words By – Bernie Hanighen (tracks: 8), Susanne Abbuehl (tracks: 2 to 4) 
Words By [Poem By] – E. E. Cummings (tracks: 1, 6, 7, 9, 10) 

SUSANNE ABBUEHL - The Gift (2013) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

On her third offering for ECM, her first in six years, vocalist/composer Susanne Abbuehl utilizes the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, Sara Teasdale, and Wallace Stevens to explore solitude as it embraces desire, and the mysteries of nature. Though she has employed poetry as source material before, it has never been to this extent. Here, she has written the music for all selections but one, Wolfgang Lackerschmid's "Soon (Five Years Ago)," for which she provided lyrics. Backed by her longstanding pianist Wolfert Brederode, flügelhornist Matthieu Michel, and drummer/percussionist Olavi Louhivuori, Abbuehl moves inside the natural and sometimes angular rhymes of her sources, inhabits their rhythms, and delivers them as tender yet authoritative songs. Her restrained, refined approach not only carries their more subtle meanings across, but reveals their considerable power. (Check the brooding, hungry tension in Teasdale's "The Cloud.") Abbuehl uses Dickinson's poems most of all. The writer may be regarded as a mysterious, solitary, even tragic being, but the singer also unmasks just how many worlds -- even observed from the confines of a room -- her poet's imagination reached. On both versions of "This and My Heart," the singer makes the firmament respond to her offering: "It's all I have to bring today...This, and my heart, and all the fields/And all the meadows wide...." Michel's horn emphasizes Abbuehl's delivery as his smoky lines travel, fluttering, skittering, and intoning through a labyrinth; Louhivuori dances around the kit as a conduit for them, and Brederode becomes the respondent universe. Desire is a motivational force in many of these poems; from the earthiness of discovery in Dickinson's "Forbidden Fruit" and its ethereal projection in her "Wild Nights," to its certain spiritual and carnal expression in Teasdale's "By Day, by Night," to the unfettered wildness in Bronte's "Shadows on Shadows." Even in Stevens' "In My Room," solitude is the place where desire not only wants inherently what it wants immediately, but where its language provides it form to observe and project: "From my balcony, I survey the yellow air/Reading where I have written/The spring is like a belle undressing...." (Abbuehl offers a ghostly trace of the Beach Boys' tune of the same name in her refrain, not as humor but as an empathic device.) Throughout The Gift, Abbuehl's music and phrasing are strikingly intuitive and wholly artful; they transcend genre barriers. Her band's articulation of these compositions and the illumination they provide her voice are nearly symbiotic in their support; they create dimension and layered textures that add shades of meaning under her delivery. The Gift offers delight, tension, longing, and an opportunity to hear where written and sung speech are mirror images in the heart of language itself.  by Thom Jurek
Tracklist:
1 The Cloud 5:10
Susanne Abbuehl / Sara Teasdale
2 This and My Heart  3:39
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
3 If Bees Are Few 1:39
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
4 My River Runs to You 5:21
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
5 Ashore at Least 7:36
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
6 Forbidden Fruit 2:04
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
7 By Day, by Night 4:03
Susanne Abbuehl / Sara Teasdale
8 A Slash of Blue 1:33
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
9 Wild Nights 6:40
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
10 In My Room 4:53
Susanne Abbuehl / Wallace Stevens
11 Bind Me 1:22
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
12 Soon (Five Years Ago) 3:15
Susanne Abbuehl / Wolfgang Lackerschmid
13 Fall, Leaves, Fall 4:04
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Brontë
14 Sepal 1:31
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
15 Shadows on Shadows 4:03
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Brontë
16 This and My Heart [Variation] 4:27
Susanne Abbuehl / Emily Dickinson
Credits
Drums, Percussion – Olavi Louhivuori
Flugelhorn – Matthieu Michel
Piano, Harmonium [Indian Harmonium] – Wolfert Brederode
Voice – Susanne Abbuehl