Jan Garbarek - Visible World

This 1995 release followed closely on the heels of the enormously successful Officium, Jan Garbarek's meditative collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble. The same tranquil aesthetic prevails on this release, but the methods and materials differ. Garbarek opts here for the recording studio over the monastery, building up many of the tracks himself with percussion and keyboards as well as the keening, resonant sounds of his soprano and tenor saxes. His compositions emphasize folk-like melodies and ethereal soundscapes, and there's effective work from pianist Rainer Brüninghaus and bassist Eberhard Weber. The often-dramatic percussion from Marilyn Mazur, Manu Katché, and Trilok Gurtu adds ceremonial and world-music touches to some superior work in the New Age genre. --Stuart Broomer Amazon.com

Proves the theory...

Great sidemen don't always make great composers. Jan Garbarek is a brilliant contemporary saxophonist. His body of work playing with the likes of Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden, Ralph Towner, Art Lande and other ECM artists is simply stunning.

But "Visible World" can only be described as a collection of banal Kenny G. new-age cliches. What happened? Perhaps Jan wanted to go after some of that big Kenny G. cash? Or maybe, absent the collaboration of other great musicians, Garbarek's creativity left him? Either way, this CD is beneath him, certainly not a reflection of his prodigious talent. Skip this, and instead savor some of his most amazing work on Keith Jarrett's "Personal Mountains". May 18, 2008

Music That Changed My Life!

Well, well. Jan Garbarek is amazing no matter what he does, but here specifically the compositions and musicianship are stunning. The music is powerful in that it is effervescent in its quality, soulful and vibrant. It penetrates deep and affects you sonically. The production is, as usual with ECM, flawless and moving. Lay back and the melodies take you anywhere and everywhere. October 30, 2007

I think I'm going to give Jan Garbarek a lifetime free pass . . .

. . . as far as I'm concerned, he can do just about whatever he wants and earn a five-star review from me.

I have a somewhat curious relationship to this disc of his. I remember purchasing it and being rather disappointed. No, not rather, MAJORLY disappointed. I thought it lacked rigor, soul, you name it. So much so that I sold it.

Then, after coming to my senses a decade later, I re-checked it out.

And was completely, absolutely, bowled over, estimating that it may, just, be his finest recording ever.

What happened in the interim? I'm not completely sure. I bought Rites and In Praise of Dreams. I revisited Legend of the Seven Dreams, I Took Up the Runes, and It's Okay to Listen to the Gray Voice, and concluded that here was a master of jazz elegiacism--perhaps the greatest and most important move of this alien yet homely music.

And I decided that Garbarek, on account of the hugely evocative move (the purely elegiac) that he makes on almost all his discs--but most decisively here--deserves a Lifetime Free Pass.

What does that mean? For me, it means that unless he makes a major misstep, everything he records merits utter musical absolution: No Purgatory for this master of the heart and soul of jazz melancholy.

Isn't that a little silly? I suppose so, but I can't help it. First off, his soprano sax concept and execution alone merit such exceptionalism. Has there ever been a player who gets so much pathos out of an instrument? I don't think so, and I also don't think there ever will be.

Second, he's somehow, magically, single-handedly bridged the gap between New Age and authentic jazz in his soprano sax playing and overall musical conception and soundscape. Tell me if you detect even the slightest hint of Kenny G in these grooves, and I'll retract everything I've said. But you won't. Trust me.

Third, I venture to say without contradiction that you'll hear here sounds and voices seldom if ever heard elsewhere. Take "Visible World - chiaro" as an example. What mystery! What pathos! What friendly weirdness! But "Desolate Mountains I" sustains and extends the aesthetic by leaps and bounds, and its successor, "Desolate Mountains II" somehow, magically, ups the ante.

Look. We're in the hands of a master here. No room for gainsaying. Nor second-guessing. Nor grousing.

Just accept it. Acknowledge it. And be grateful. February 27, 2007

This is One You Can Listen to in Peace

No, it's not a really great piece of work, but it is the best of the New Age jazz I've heard from Garbarek. It took quite a few listens for me to take to it though and I still can't stand the last track, with that weird vocalist.

The jazz fusion dream had to end anyway, and here Garbarek shows a rare capability of trasferring the creativity and attention to detail exhibited on "Places" and the Keith Jarrett compilations to the much more circumscribed energy of the New Age stuff. Even the modern classical music influences that made the Visible World tracks irritating to me now add to the overall effect.

A few more tenor sax pieces would have provided more balance, the soprano works on most of the songs.

The first track is quite nice, and the next three are also good, although the drum track in one of them is much too forceful. Also, the mood becomes very ponderous and you have to be in the right mood when you're listening to the fourth track or it'll sound too forlorn. "Desolate Mountains I", which is a bit too meandering a times, sets up one of the most interesting songs on the release, "Desolate Mountains II." The second "Visible World" track has a Debussy obtuseness about it, but it gets on your nerves for a reason: "Pygmy Lullaby" is soon to break the tension. "Desolate Mountains III" provides just the right link between these two songs, as it takes from the Keith Jarrett style vignette - short, unfinished and somehow sweet. "Pigmy Lullaby" is a truly beautiful melody and is perfectly suited to Garbarek's sweet, sorrowful, soprano sound. One flaw is that Garbarek's saxes almost always come in too soon, which doesn't allow the percussion and other instruments the room to make the songs truly stellar. The interesting percussion on "Pygmy Lullaby" is tentative and amateurish at the end and could have been much more cathartic. (But, that's New Age jazz for you: tentative, self-conscious, over-produced. On "Places," you're presented with much more emotionally unstable, stressed out material, but each instrument is completely absorbed with the song, so you don't get the kind of weak executions you sometimes get here.)

The next two tracks fill out and resolve the moods set forth, the former laying down a sexy, heart-broken, Gato Barbieri-like tenor line and the latter very syncopated and playful as it flutters about in a more flirtatious, unsettled mood. But, that's it, turn the thing off after this or you'll be sorry, unless you like Middle Easterners being treated for mental disorders.

The dead-end suggested by the CD's coastal graphic can also be seen as an extension forward into something more challenging and responsible than the thrill-sought highs of a pretentious past. The music here still retains some of the introspective need for intimate connections, one that unfortunately has since become anachronistic in a culture lost to the dehumanizing effects of hard bodies, cell phones and a pathetic self-centeredness, the human animal now a very dumb one. February 16, 2007

New-Agey but pleasant enough

Easy to understand the hostility with which this album is sometimes viewed -- it is Garbarek's most New-Agey recording, a smooth compilation of folksy tunes (including the lovely "Pygmy Lullaby" written by Rainer Bruninghaus and made into a monster hit by ultra-New-Age group Deep Forest years ago).

It is certainly a commercial offering, though perhaps not such a sell-out as some critics think. The title, "Visible World" seems to warn one what to expect, since what many of us love about Garbarek is the way his best music describes the invisible world, the intangible, the unearthly.

This CD is very earthly, mostly consisting of the kind of music that would go unnoticed in an elevator (how many Garbarek albums can you say that about?).

A favourite with many Garbarek fans is the now-ancient "Afric Pepperbird" album, with which Jan burst onto an amazed world in the late 60's. "Visible World" inevitably reminds one of that early work; but a comparison is saddening. If you want to see just how creative Garbarek can be in this area, take a listen to the earlier album!

But "Visibe World" is arranged and performed with an aplomb that makes it always enjoyable. And every now and then there is a passage (try the haunting and more typical track 14) which reminds you that you are listening to one of the great saxophonists of our time, and a musician who can never be dismissed.

In conclusion, this album will appeal more to fans of Grover Washington Jr or Kenny G than to listeners wanting something more engaging -- but then, why shouldn't Garbarek have his slice of that lucrative market, too?

But if you want to hear a take on this kind of music that comes from the INvisible world, try "Afric Pepperbird." July 25, 2005

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