Mark Turner

Mark Turner’s writing for his quartet on Return from the Stars (titled after Stanislav Lem’s science fiction novel) gives the players plenty of space in which to move, on an album both exhilarating and thoughtful in its arc of expression.  Solos flow organically out of the arrangements and, beneath the often-dazzling interplay of Turner’s tenor and Jason Palmer’s trumpet, the rhythm section of Joe Martin and Jonathan Pinson roams freely.   Although Turner has been a frequent presence on ECM in contexts including the Billy Hart Quartet, the Fly trio, and a duo with Ethan Iverson, Return from the Stars is his first quartet album since 2014’s Lathe of Heaven and an essential document of his artistry as a player and his conceptual thinking as a bandleader.

The shape and sound of the group continues to be guided by Turner's unique composer's muse, a blend of effortlessly subtle Birth of the Cool harmony-glides, register-sweeping Coltrane-to-Wayne Shorter sax-improv, and contrapuntal horn dialogues. On the title track, the ways the harmonies build and sway in improv conversation - drawing melodic motifs toward new turns or dropping back to let Joe Martin's bass briefly take the dominant role between the purrs of the horn lines and the tick of the drums – showcase Turner's intuitions about this instrumentation's collective potential for integrating through-written chamber music and freewheeling soloing. […] Within this quietly chamber-musical cloister Mark Turner is so at home in, ‘Return From The Stars’ is close to perfect.
John Fordham, Jazzwise