Ralph Alessi, Gary Versace, Drew Gress, Nasheet Waits

Quiver is the second album that the trumpeter Ralph Alessi made as a leader for ECM, released in February 2016, three years after his label debut Baida. It is a quartet record of ten Alessi compositions, mostly reflective in mood, where quick, supple melodic lines sit on a rhythm section that pushes without crowding. His lyricism recalls Miles Davis and Kenny Wheeler, while the writing keeps an angular, questioning edge.

The band changed in one place. Pianist Gary Versace takes the chair that Jason Moran held on Baida, next to bassist Drew Gress and drummer Nasheet Waits, the trumpeter's rhythm section of choice for many years. The quartet recorded in September 2014 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo with engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug. The album was mixed in October 2015 at Avatar Studios in New York, by James Farber with Alessi and Manfred Eicher, who produced it.

The pieces are short to medium in length and often begin quietly. Here Tomorrow, under two and a half minutes, opens the set with Alessi's warm tone against sharp accents from Waits. Smooth Descent is played rubato and leaves much of the space to Versace and Gress. The longest track, Gone Today, Here Tomorrow, runs almost ten minutes, with Alessi on Harmon mute over a low rumble of drums and rolling piano. The album ends on Do Over, a brisk coda of less than ninety seconds and the only piece taken at a fast tempo.

Critics placed the record in ECM's own trumpet lineage. In The Irish Times, Cormac Larkin heard a resemblance to Wheeler's Gnu High, made for the same label forty years earlier, and called the comparison "the highest of compliments". John Corbett wrote in DownBeat that Alessi "can squeeze a run like a lemon, juicing a melody into a little pool of liquid". In Jazzwise, Selwyn Harris praised compositions whose link to the improvised passages is "both seamless and organic", and found the trumpeter more accessible than before.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2438, first released on 19 February 2016.