For Lullaby, Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick draws on the quartet formation in a programme that includes some of his most exploratory and improvisatory qualities, with a cast of ECM familiars Kristjan Randalu and Ole Morten Vågan on piano and bass, and new arrival Hans Hulbækmo on drums. There’s a sense of abandon within these melodic songs, as the musicians flow smoothly between harmonies, collectively building momentum from within the forms. Eick’s immediately recognizable and soothing tone is often confronted by Randalu’s in turns lyrical and energetic keyboard-flights, soaring above a propulsive, always engaging rhythm section. The album was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo.

Mathias Eick follows up his melodically charged leader debut, 2008’s The Door, with something delectable. This time he fronts an expanded, smoother band that includes saxophonist Tore Brunborg within a nest of Scandinavian talent. Ever at their center is Eick, whose threefold role as composer, performer, and arranger takes on fuller idiomatic body.
Skala shares key aspects with its predecessor. It is another set of eight originals, which too can be divided into three acts of two, three, and three scenes, respectively. Act I likewise opens with the title track and, like its earlier counterpart, only seems to grow more translucent as instruments are added. Yet the similarities end there, for the music is something else entirely. Here is a musician who not only has listened deeply to others on the path to enriching his compositional breadth…

Back with a newly formed quintet, gathered together for a particularly fruitful 2024 session in Southern France, the German pianist Benjamin Lackner presents a different and exciting side of his composer-approach. Trumpeter Mathias Eick is the sole returnee from Lackner’s debut Last Decade, and can be heard in striking dualism with Mark Turner’s idiosyncratic saxophone dialect, forming a key-characteristic of the interplay that permeates Spindrift. The horn-duo and pianist are joined by the nonpareil bassist Linda May Han Oh and French drummer Matthieu Chazarenc, who was part of Lackner’s trio before the pianist’s tenure with ECM. Subtle fanfares meet contemplative lyricism in a programme of originals that always puts melody and ensemble chemistry first. Saxophone and trumpet take the lead, forming their own little ensemble section, and contribute elegantly interwoven lines and striking solos to an especially harmonious group sound and a tuneful set of songs. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick opts for a different approach on Midwest. Four years after the song-like Skala, his sophomore ECM date that has attained "classic" status in European critical circles, he employs notions of history, folk tradition, and dislocation. This album was inspired by Eick's time spent playing the American continent; his tour began on the West Coast. When he entered the rural, upper Midwest and encountered its vast open spaces, he began to feel a sense of "home." He later learned that over the past two centuries of immigration, over a million Norwegians had settled there. After conceiving a "road" album that would begin in Hem, the village of his birth, and traverse the ocean to America, Eick enlisted violinist Gjermund Larsen (a folk musician who has contributed to Christian Wallumrød's ECM recordings), pianist Jon Balke, double bassist Mats Eilertsen, and percussionist Helge Norbakken. The compositions are all lyrical, in typical Eick fashion, but with Larsen they take on a rougher, more earthen quality.

Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick makes his ECM debut as a leader with this set, which features keyboardist Jon Balke and a guest appearance from Stian Carstensen - usually an accordionist, but here playing that jazz-band rarity, the pedal-steel guitar. Eick (who also plays vibes and guitar) has played with everybody from the pioneering Trygve Seim collective to Chick Corea, psychedelic group Motorpsycho and contemporary jazz-rock band Jaga Jazzist. His silky, unbrasslike sound is ideally suited to this undulating groove-landscape, and pianist Balke's apposite fills and asides help give the music a collective fluency. But there's more angularity in the rough offbeats and low keyboard grunts under Eick's airy lines on the funky Stavanger, the stately Cologne Blues is like a slowed-down Carla Bley piece (with Carstensen's steel guitar shimmering beneath it, and a probing Balke solo), and there's a folk song lilt to the mid-tempo Williamsburg. A lot of it is slow tone-poetry, but Eick's rather mournful, puffs-of-air sound is pretty captivating.

Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick’s expressive playing, which according to the New York Times radiates a “pristine yet penetrating tone”, is remarkably well complemented in the company of his gifted supporting players and fellow travelers. Violinist Håkon Aase, one of the outstanding improvisers of his generation, shadows the leader with lines that reflect a profound background in folk as well as jazz. Drummers Helge Andeas Norbakken and Torstein Lofthus mirror their exchanges, as they interact with purring precision. Near the centre of the action, pianist Andras Ulvo and bass guitarist Audun Erlien ferry ideas between frontline and rhythm section and make statements of their own. On several tracks, the delicate swell of Stian Carstensen’s pedal steel guitar adds a dimension of mystery. When we leave was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in August 2020.