RITES de Jan Garbarek

RITES: grabado en Oslo en marzo de  1998

Personnel: Jan Garbarek (soprano & tenor saxophones, synthesizer, percussion, samples); Jansug Kakhidze (conductor, vocals); Torstein Grythe (conductor); Bugge Wesseltoft (accordion, synthesizer, sound effects); Rainer Bruninghaus (piano, keyboards); Eberhard Weber (bass); Marilyn Mazur (drums, slit drum, cymbals, percussion); The Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra; Boys From The Choir Solvguttene.

Rites, a double CD, is his attempt at forging a synthesis that takes improvisation into the heart of ritual music and creates a new form of spiritual from them both.The music is slow, tenuous, and repetitive. It hardly matters -- on disc one, anyway -- which of the pieces are being played. All of them have spare, chant-like melodies that are lifted by myriad percussion instruments and keyboards, which provide a spacious ambience in which to enfold them both. Even Garbarek's trademark icy saxophone -- usually made more so by Manfred Eicher's production -- is warm, watery, and deeply entrenched in this warm mix that falls over listeners like a fine meditation blanket; like that blanket, it begins to stir emotions from deep within the heart of the listener.