The Source and Different Cikadas is a meeting of the Norwegian trio The Source with the Cikada String Quartet and a group of guests. The trio is saxophonist Trygve Seim, trombonist Øyvind Brække and drummer Per Oddvar Johansen. The fifteen pieces move between written chamber music, jazz and free improvisation. It followed Seim's ECM debut Different Rivers, and most of the writing is shared among the three members.
The Source had been playing together since 1993. For this session they added trumpeter Arve Henriksen, the classical accordionist Frode Haltli, a pianist and a double bassist, so that the full ensemble numbers eleven musicians. Seim plays tenor and soprano saxophones and the clarophone. The line-up changes from piece to piece and the full group plays together only at the end. The album was recorded in November 2000 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.
Brække contributes five pieces, Seim four and Johansen three. Between them sits Funebre, a movement from the 1964 String Quartet by Witold Lutosławski. Peter Bacon of the Birmingham Post heard it buzz and clatter like a night sky in Africa. Sen Kjellertango is a cellar tango anchored by the cello, with soprano saxophone, trumpet and accordion on top. Two pieces are free improvisations. In the closing Tutti Free, as Peter Marsh noted for the BBC website, all eleven players slowly expand and contract as one body.
Different Rivers had won the annual prize of the German Record Critics, and the follow-up was received just as warmly. In The Guardian, John Fordham called it "a captivating demonstration of a truly contemporary music with jazz still its unmistakeable driving force". For Chris Parker in BBC Music Magazine it was "startlingly original, haunting, unclassifiable music", with the late Edward Vesala as a clear influence. Stephan Richter in Fono Forum found the melancholy of the debut much softened here, with plenty of humour, ironic tangos and swing numbers.
This is the CD edition, catalogue number ECM 1764, with fifteen tracks. It was first released by ECM on 13 May 2002.
