Compass is the second ECM album by Swiss-Dutch singer Susanne Abbuehl, after her 2001 debut April. It moves between jazz, folk song and poetry, with settings of James Joyce, William Carlos Williams and the Ming dynasty poet Feng Meng-Lung. There are two songs from Luciano Berio's Folk Songs, and her own lyrics for tunes by Sun Ra and Chick Corea. Her voice stays low and close, nearer to speech than to display. The small band plays like a chamber group around it.
The album was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo in January and February 2003 and in October 2004, produced by Manfred Eicher with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer. Pianist Wolfert Brederode and Christof May, on clarinet and bass clarinet, were already part of her group, while drummer Lucas Niggli was new and brought a background in free improvisation. The French reedman Michel Portal joins on the two Berio songs, which Abbuehl scored for voices and clarinets only.
Bathyal, words and music by Abbuehl, opens the album with Brederode's piano moving like waves over Niggli's softly splashing cymbals; she describes it as "dream dancing in the sea". Black Is The Color... and the Auvergne song Lo Fiolairé, both first heard by her in Berio's arrangements, are pared back to a plainer, speech-like folk character. Three Joyce poems come from his 1907 collection Chamber Music. The Twilight Turns From Amethyst is shaped as a slow jazz ballad, with its image of a girl bent over the piano keys. Elsewhere Don't Set Sail, Arthur Waley's translation of Feng, becomes an after-hours duet with Brederode.
In The Guardian, John L Walters wrote that the album shows "how well she has forged a distinct and quite beautiful sound", and he found May an ideal partner for her voice. Duncan Heining in Jazzwise heard music that is "not difficult or unapproachable" but "thought-provoking and emotionally moving". The French magazine Jazzman made it a Choc du mois.
This CD is the 2019 reissue of ECM 1906, first released in April 2006, in a card digisleeve. It belongs to the Touchstones series, which ECM started in 2008 to bring catalogue albums back into print.
