Elegy is the ECM debut as leader of Theo Bleckmann, the German-born singer and composer based in New York since 1989. It is a set of his own reflections on death and transcendence, with a song by Stephen Sondheim and a Zen poem among them. Bleckmann wanted to face mortality with some lightness, and much of the record is wordless, with his voice treated as one instrument among five.
Bleckmann first appeared on ECM in the Meredith Monk Ensemble, on mercy and impermanence, and then as guest vocalist on Julia Hülsmann's A Clear Midnight. For Elegy he brought two partners of some twenty years, guitarist Ben Monder and drummer John Hollenbeck, and two newer ones, pianist Shai Maestro and bassist Chris Tordini. He wanted players "not hell-bent on soloing all the time". The quintet recorded in January 2016 at Avatar Studios in New York, with James Farber as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. Eicher suggested short free improvisations drawn from the written material, which became Semblance, Cortège and Alate.
Sondheim's Comedy Tonight, reworked in memory of Bleckmann's mother, is slowed right down until the comic song turns sombre. On The Mission his wordless line almost sounds like a wind instrument, while Monder's guitar suggests a science fiction soundtrack. In the title track, Tordini's droning bass under the voice creates an otherworldly mood. To Be Shown to Monks at a Certain Temple sets an English version of a poem by the eighth-century monk Chiao Jan over sustained guitar. In Take My Life, which Bleckmann describes as an imagined dying process partly inspired by Bach's cantatas, Monder takes a rare solo close to prog rock.
Critics found the album gentler than its subject. Thom Jurek of AllMusic called it "a gentle wonder" and noted that only four of its songs carry lyrics. John Fordham wrote in The Guardian that the band's independence ensures "startling music-making is the overarching theme". In DownBeat in 2017, Bobby Reed heard the voice working on equal terms with the quintet, with results closer to art rock than to mainstream jazz.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2512, first released on 27 January 2017.
