Ralph Alessi Quartet

CD version. It's Always Now is the fourth ECM album led by American trumpeter Ralph Alessi, after Baida (2013), Quiver (2016) and Imaginary Friends (2019). It introduces a new transatlantic quartet, formed after his move to Switzerland in 2020. The record is quieter and more chamber-like than its predecessors, with long stretches of duo playing between trumpet and piano before the full band takes over.

The pianist is Florian Weber, a partner of nearly twenty years who had already hired Alessi for his own ECM album Lucent Waters (2018). Swiss bassist Bänz Oester and American drummer Gerry Hemingway complete the line-up. "Anytime you play with new musicians with strong 'voices' such as these, it changes how you hear your music," Alessi said of the group. The session was recorded in June 2021 at Artesuono in Udine by Stefano Amerio, mixed in Lugano in December 2022, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Ten of the thirteen pieces are by Alessi, and three are credited jointly to him and Weber. The opener Hypnagogic sets the tone, with Alessi pecking out silvery notes over a spray of glissandi from the piano. The title track, another duet, is almost skeletal, its oblique chords leaving space around the trumpet. The quartet first enters on Migratory Party, over a deep groove. The second half grows more forceful, from the polyrhythmic swing of His Hopes, His Fears, His Tears to the syncopated Hanging by a Thread, the longest track at almost nine minutes. On the short Ire, Weber drives his solo into percussive clusters, pushed by Hemingway.

Reviewers noted how far the leader's sound reaches, from a pure, vibrato-free line to breathy and distorted tones. In DownBeat, Peter Margasak wrote that "the quartet balances beauty with friction, as the latter consistently heightens the former." Jim Hynes of Making a Scene called the album "a transportive experience, by turns mysterious, beautiful, and disarming." French monthly Jazz Magazine heard it as Alessi's most European and most impressionistic record so far.

CD edition, ECM 2722, released on 17 March 2023, with cover art by Fidel Sclavo.