Cantilena is the second and last album by First House, the London quartet led by alto saxophonist Ken Stubbs with Django Bates at the piano. Recorded in Oslo in March 1989 and released by ECM that November, it is a set of ten short, carefully drawn pieces. Most pieces last between three and five minutes, with clear melodies and open space for the two horns.
Stubbs formed the group in 1983, and it won the European jazz competition in Leverkusen in 1984. During a Norwegian tour in July 1985, which included the Molde festival, it recorded its ECM debut Eréndira at Rainbow Studio. Four years later the same line-up returned there: Stubbs on alto saxophone, Bates on piano and tenor horn, Mick Hutton on double bass and Martin France on drums. Jan Erik Kongshaug engineered and Manfred Eicher produced. The group broke up soon afterwards.
The writing is shared between the two front men, five pieces by Bates and four by Stubbs, plus Madeleine After Prayer by Eddie Parker, a brief and contemplative interlude. The title track opens the album with Stubbs's alto in a relaxed, nocturnal mood. On Bates's Underfelt the theme turns in circular motifs, and Stubbs's solo travels far beyond the written material. In Dimple Bates leaves the piano for the tenor horn, setting its round brass tone against the alto while Hutton and France keep the pulse light and moving. Jay-Tee brings the most urgent solos from both horns, and Stubbs's Pablo closes the record on a quiet piano figure.
American critics noticed the record on its release. In Saxophone Journal in 1990, David Liebman found Stubbs's playing "remarkably cliche free" and welcomed young musicians working towards a group sound. Writing for ECM Reviews in 2012, Tyran Grillo described the album as "an even more effective chunk of progressive jazz" than Eréndira. In Billboard in April 1990, Jeff Levenson named Stubbs and Bates among the young British players who looked to John Coltrane as a spiritual forebear.
This is the CD edition of ECM 1393, first released in 1989, with a cover graphic by Ingema Reuter.
