The Widow in the Window is a quintet album of six compositions by Kenny Wheeler, recorded for ECM in Oslo in February 1990. It came straight after the sessions for his double album Music for Large & Small Ensembles, and it takes four players from that project into a smaller, more open setting. Wheeler's writing here is lyrical and harmonically restless, and his long themes leave room for every member of the band to solo.
Born in Toronto in 1930 and based in London from 1952, Wheeler had been making small-group albums for ECM since Gnu High in 1975. Here he plays trumpet and flugelhorn. Around him are John Abercrombie on guitar, John Taylor on piano, Dave Holland on bass and Peter Erskine on drums. All four also played on the large-ensemble recording, made in the same weeks. The quintet recorded at Rainbow Studio with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. Steve Lake wrote the liner notes. The booklet runs to twelve pages, and every piece is Wheeler's own.
The pieces are long, most between eight and fifteen minutes, so the band can develop each theme at length. The opener Aspire gives Abercrombie a long, warm solo, followed by an intimate one from Taylor. The title track begins with a slow descending line from Wheeler and gives Holland a long, singing solo. Ana, at almost fifteen minutes the centrepiece, opens with a modal introduction and moves from a shadowed theme to an open section driven by Erskine and Taylor. The piece had also appeared on the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra's ECM album, in a version for big band. Hotel Le Hot swings harder, with Erskine's drumming at its most inventive. The gentle Now, And Now Again closes the album at a rocking, unhurried tempo.
Writing for ECM Reviews in 2012, Tyran Grillo described the record as "more succinct yet equally classic" than the large-ensemble album that preceded it. He praised one of "Holland's most heartfelt solos on record" on Ma Belle Hélène, and called the album unmissable for listeners interested in Wheeler, ECM or boundary-crossing jazz.
This CD carries the original catalogue number ECM 1417 and was first released in 1990.
