Wolfgang Muthspiel, Tokyo Review

by Jeff Becker

Recorded in Tokyo and mixed in Munich, Wolfgang Muthspiel’s ECM Records album Tokyo captures a trio at a point where long-term collaboration allows meticulousness and freedom. The familiar narrative of acoustic and electric, folk and modern jazz is still present, but the deeper story here is how the trio uses instrumental roles as shifting leadership fields, and how tone and texture become compositional devices in the trio’s creations. The album captures the evolving maturity of Muthspiel’s trio with bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade.

Across Tokyo, Muthspiel treats sound color as an architectural element. The movement between acoustic and electric guitar gives the album a varied timbre, shifting in narrative perspective. On “Strumming,” for example, his percussive strumming sets a rhythmic architecture that Blade and Colley inhabit as the trio becomes one in shared motion. When Muthspiel breaks from the pattern into single-note lyricism, Blade assumes the pulse, echoing the guitar’s energy through drums and cymbals until the strumming returns. Colley has a perfect relay of harmonic and melodic interactions between the two.

This kind of dialogue recurs throughout the record. The musicians rotate leadership roles, with Muthspiel guiding harmonic direction in his compositions. Colley’s bass often functions as a counterpoint and harmonic center. Blade shapes the ensemble’s flow by sculpting air and decay rather than simply keeping time.

In Tokyo, the trio dissolves traditional hierarchy. In “Abacus,” their reading of Paul Motian’s piece, leadership is shared as the guitar opens the conversation, Colley expands it with warm resonance, and Blade paints responses across the stereo field. Muthspiel may drive intensity and color, but his control is more conversational than a lead instrument supported by bass and drums. The trio’s leadership is distributed, shifting measure to measure, phrase to phrase.

This democratic interplay constructs a kind of interactive relay, each player guiding transitions and shaping timbre with equal influence within the composition and improvisation. You can hear it clearly in “Flight,” when Blade’s drumming becomes thematic and Colley’s melodic bass subtly cues Muthspiel’s shift from rhythm to melody.

Muthspiel’s compositions unfold with a balance of melodic structure and space for spontaneity, creating arcs of tension and release that feel like mini-suites. “Pradela,” for instance, builds its lyrical theme toward an upper-register climax before melting into a folk-inflected groove. Harmonic shifts become conversational pivots; rhythmic changes are grounding sutures in development.

Likewise, “Diminished and Augmented” draws on classical guitar techniques to explore symmetry and imbalance. It’s an etude of modernism that feels tactile rather than theoretical. These are architectural sketches brought to life by the trio’s wide-ranging understanding of various styles and eras of music.

Under producer Manfred Eicher’s attentive ear, Tokyo breathes. Between Muthspiel’s chordal phrases, Colley’s sustained tones linger in the room; Blade lets the sound decay become part of the rhythm. Each performance grows naturally, giving the album its characteristic ECM spaciousness while never losing warmth.

What distinguishes Tokyo from Muthspiel’s earlier work is the marriage of folk themes, chamber lyricism, and modern-jazz harmonies in how seamlessly they’re integrated. The folk idiom isn’t borrowed for color; it’s embedded in the phrasing. The classical influence isn’t ornamental; it shapes articulation, patterns, and form. The jazz vocabulary flows naturally from everything else. This integrated aesthetic yields a sound that is global and fresh in balance, tone control, and collective phrasing.

European jazz fans will appreciate how “Flight” develops around an ostinato in compound time, functioning almost like a ground bass. Blade’s cymbal pulse creates an illusion of accelerating tempo without actual metric change, a subtle example of rhythmic elasticity. When Muthspiel introduces a second guitar layer, the expanded texture triggers the trio’s structural interactions defined not by bar line, but by ensemble unity.

In Tokyo, Muthspiel, Colley, and Blade turn a trio playing into a study of shared communication. Tokyo feels like a natural evolution of Muthspiel’s ECM work. The album reveals how three musicians can think together in color and space. For the jazz fans, the guitar trio format holds infinite possibilities as a cross-genre art form that traces the invisible architecture between them.