Mark Turner, Jason Palmer, Joe Martin, Jonathan Pinson

LP version. Patternmaster is the follow-up to Return from the Stars (2022) by tenor saxophonist Mark Turner's quartet, with the same lineup: Jason Palmer on trumpet, Joe Martin on double bass and Jonathan Pinson on drums. There is no piano or guitar, so the harmony is implied by two horn lines moving over bass and drums. The six pieces are all Turner's, with long themes that change tempo, rhythm and articulation as they go.

The quartet recorded in April 2024 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, with Manfred Eicher producing and Gérard de Haro as engineer. Turner first recorded for the label with the trio Fly, and led a different quartet on Lathe of Heaven (2014). The title comes from the Patternist novels of Octavia E. Butler: Patternmaster was published first, in 1976, but closes the series, and its ruler commands a network of telepaths. Turner speaks of the group's "psycho-spirituality", a heightened shared intuition, and of trust: "The more you trust, the more chances you can take and the deeper you can go with people."

The title track was written around the time Wayne Shorter died in 2023, and is a contrafact on his Pinocchio, first recorded by the second quintet of Miles Davis. Lehman's Lair is named after saxophonist Steve Lehman and grew from one of his tunes, though Turner gave it a simpler, "very singable" melody. The closing Supersister, twelve minutes long, first appeared in sparer form on Sky & Country (2009) by Fly. Here it opens on a drum-and-bass style part from Pinson and is transposed up a major third for the trumpet.

In The Guardian, John Fordham heard themes that recall Birth of the Cool tunes "gliding over the polyrhythmic grooves of the 21st century", and judged that the set "probably even has the edge" over Return from the Stars. Mark Griffith in Modern Drummer called the quartet "one of the best bands currently working for ECM", singling out the recorded sound of Pinson's drums and cymbals on The Happiest Man on Earth.

This edition is the vinyl LP, ECM 2835, released in March 2026 together with the CD. The cover photograph is by Max Franosch.