Dis is a set of six pieces by Jan Garbarek, recorded in duo with American guitarist Ralph Towner in Oslo in December 1976. Its Norwegian titles name wanderers, plateaus, shadows, drizzle and haze. On three of the pieces a windharp, sounded by the wind itself, adds a drone that no player controls. The two players leave a great deal of space around it.
Garbarek plays tenor and soprano saxophones and wood flute, Towner 12-string and classical guitars. Garbarek had been recording for ECM since Afric Pepperbird in 1970, and in 1974 he had joined Keith Jarrett for Belonging. He and Towner already knew each other from Towner's Solstice (1975), but here the setting is reduced to almost nothing. On Skygger they are joined by the brass ensemble Den Norske Messingsekstett. The sessions took place at Talent Studios with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer, and the cover is a photograph by Franco Fontana. ECM released the album in May 1977.
The windharp frames the record. It opens it with Vandrere, returns at its centre in Viddene, and closes it with the title track. Over its long, wavering tones Garbarek's saxophone moves slowly, with a hard, singing edge, and on Dis his wood flute takes its place. Krusning ("ripple") is a sombre duet for saxophone and guitar, with Towner's 12-string carrying the harmony. In the ten minutes of Skygger the brass gives a ceremonial weight to Garbarek's lines, which alternate between bold phrases and passages that move with the ensemble.
A windharp was an unusual sound for a record filed under jazz, and ECM used the instrument again years later on Arvo Pärt's Te Deum. Writing on ECM Reviews in 2010, Tyran Grillo noted that "the windharp anchors the album into place, appearing at its center and outer edges". Grillo also praised the varied terrain and wooden tones of the title track, and heard Garbarek playing "like a blind scribe, scoring his runes into ephemeral surfaces: water, earth, and air".
This is the CD edition of ECM 1093 (catalogue 827 408-2), first released in 1977.
