The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

Even at rare lackluster moments, the sporadic ruminations of vocalist Norma Winstone, pianist John Taylor, and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler never fail to grow in a depth of sound and color few trios can match. Yet Azimuth, as the group came to be known, was more than a triangular configuration, but a multifaceted statement on music as shapeable material. This exhumation of twilit pasts begins in “How It Was Then,” a survey of long-forgotten cotton fields bowing to the winds of passage. Stars open and close—each an eye on the verge of tears—to the rhythm of Taylor’s string patter. Such evocative touches abound throughout the session, paving stretches of empty road in “Looking On” and stirring up dizzying articulations in “Whirlpool.” As on previous Azimuth outings, Wheeler remains the voice of reason, foiling Winstone’s apparitional poetics with solid chromatics. He is the keystone of “Stango” (Stanko + tango?) and glows in his multitracked rendering of “How Deep Is The Ocean.” For her part, Winstone goes wordless in foggy scenes like “Full Circle,” but always with the tender signatures of Taylor’s plush commentary close at hand. Bobo Stenson’s “Mindiatyr” drops another nod to the ECM matrix, building careful reminiscence and holding us as the mind would cradle a memory. Because it feels so much like an ending, the fibers of “Wintersweet” that follow weave a cloak of epilogue and reprise Winstone’s gorgeous lyrics at the fore.

How it was then… is a genealogy of emotions and places, a tale of winter blooms that hook their stamen onto errant sunrays and uproot themselves into weightless life. Though not as essential as earlier work, it waits all the same with bated breath and open arms.

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