Thin pickings in Muthspiel’s hints and scraps
Wolfgang Muthspiel Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club
The appeal of Austrian jazz guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel is hard to pin down. He doesn’t dazzle with virtuoso displays like Pat Metheny, or use pedal-driven electronic effects to waft us off to a dream world, like Bill Frisell. At this Ronnie Scott’s gig, the first of two to showcase his recent album Rising
Grace, Muthspiel was determinedly self-effacing. Often he would pick at a chord with a feather-light touch, or feint at a chord without playing it.
However, the others in the quintet would not let him take the crown of “quietest player on stage” without a fight. American trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire played the melody in the opening number, Triad Song, so quietly one couldn’t be sure he was playing at all, while Brian Blade tickled the drums with two “broomsticks”, a bundle of thin sticks tied to together. Scott Colley, on bass, was a model of discretion, and pianist Gwilym Simcock was unusually light-fingered for one who can often raise a storm.
So, what was the point of all this feinting and hinting? The first number, a sweetly neo-Bachian invention in broken chords, suggested it was just lack of ambition, opting for understated, lightweight charm. But fortunately things improved.
Intensive Care began with a long, rhapsodic, Spanish-tinged intro from Muthspiel, then on to a brooding slow number in which little melodic scraps slowly congealed into something more solid. Eventually Akinmusire found a vein of powerful lament, breaking out in trumpet howls that contrasted with the slow, dignified harmonies beneath.
This showed that Muthspiel likes to work by understatement, starting a piece in an assertive way but then winding the energy level down to almost zero. During these moments there were little hints – the coiledspring body language of Simcock, the occasional explosion in Blade’s drums, a sudden rasp from Akinmusire – of energy just waiting to spring out.
It proved the method can produce dividends, in terms of creating an electric undercurrent beneath what could seem mere thinness. But sometimes the music really did seem thin. Understatement in music is like excess – a wonderful thing, but only when used in moderation.
Wolfgang Muthspiel’s album Rising Grace is out now on ECM