Once Around The Room : A Tribute To Paul Motian (2022)

"The double basses of Larry Grenadier and Thomas Morgan initiate the conversation. Then the scattered insistence of rhythm by drummers Joey Baron and Jorge Rossy enters, pushing Once Around the Room into consciousness with all the anticipation and hushed intent of an orchestra tuning before a performance. Airy clusters of guitar courtesy of Jakob Bro and electric bassist Anders Christensen introduce Joe Lovano's aching call summoning the spirit to make known "As It Should Be," the first of the saxophonist's two deeply realized compositions. It's a protean, trance inducing twelve-tone that swells out into Once Around the Room's larger hypnotic narrative. Acolytes all of the late Paul Motian, Bro, who made his ECM debut on the drummer's Garden of Eden (ECM, 2006) and Lovano, who goes back nearly four decades with Motian's many creative iterations, lead this album a meditative investigation of the collective soul. The common voice we all speak in if only we'd bother to listen to one another." (allaboutjazz)