Ayumi Tanaka, Thomas Morgan & Thomas Strønen Release 'Windflower' on ECM
The trio's album features improvised piano, bass, and drums recorded for the acclaimed jazz label.
Pianist AYUMI TANAKA, bassist THOMAS MORGAN, and drummer THOMAS STRØNEN have released WINDFLOWER, a new trio album on ECM Records. The recording brings together the three musicians in a collaborative session documented on the long-running Munich-based label known for its work in jazz and contemporary improvised music.
WINDFLOWER introduces a new trio, with the Japanese pianist Ayumi Tanaka, the US bassist Thomas Morgan and the Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen. Three players well-known to followers of musical directions at ECM, they shape their music together, weaving abstract and lyrical ideas in pieces whose flow and energy are influenced by chamber music and jazz, and by sensibilities of East, West and North.
The fragile windflower, or anemone, symbolises the transience of beauty in several cultures, and the need to grasp and cherish the moment. Here, free balladry is to the fore in an album whose luminous music features eight spontaneously composed tracks and an unconstrained arrangement of Tanaka's tune 'La Source'. For Ayumi and her fellow players, the means of creation is secondary to the destination. 'I want to compose music which sounds like an improvisation,' she has said, 'and to improvise music that sounds like it has been written…' Her LIFE STORY has addressed both modes, playing classical musical and contemporary composition in Japan before heading to Oslo in 2011, where Misha Alperin became a mentor as she began to explore 'Nordic' routes to jazz expressivity.
Tanaka's originality has been showcased in Thomas Strønen's projects including the albums Lucus and Off Stillness with the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide and the exploratory trio heard on the 2018 recording Bayou (with Strønen, Tanaka and Marthe Lea). Her own album, Subaqueous Silence, issued in 2021, was internationally praised for its creativity, ascetic rigour and sense of space. 'Tanaka makes every note count,' UK magazine The Wire observed. 'Not one is unfelt.'
Thomas Morgan made his ECM debut with the John Abercrombie Quartet in 2008, and since then has appeared in many contexts, among the most notable being his part in Masabumi Kikuchi's trio alongside Paul Motian on the 2012 released recording Sunrise. Besides his ongoing associations with Jakob Bro and Bill Frisell, Morgan has contributed to further piano trios led by Craig Taborn and Giovanni Guidi, attesting to the bass player's versatility and adaptability. Like Charlie Haden or Gary Peacock before him, he can access the essential in each improvisational setting, and to contribute to it, highly supportive but also with a strong voice of his own. The way in which Morgan threads a melodic bass line through the gently glittering phrasing of the piano on 'Tree of Stars' is among this album's highlights.
Thomas Strønen's recent releases include the album Relations exploring new threads of connectivity in a programme of lockdown duets with Chris Potter, Craig Taborn, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy. He also collaborated with John Surman on Words Unspoken, released in 2024. Strønen's association with ECM dates from 2005 and the ensemble Parish whose members included Bobo Stenson and Fredrik Ljungkvist. Subsequently, in the group Food, with musical partner Iain Ballamy, Strønen proposed fresh approaches to layered, improvised percussion. On WINDFLOWER the stark patterning of Strønen's drums on the title track opens up a new space in which dynamic interaction can take place, as the music unfolds.
The Tanaka/Morgan/Strønen trio played together for the first time at Oslo's Nasjonal Jazz Scene Victoria in September 2024. The potential of the combination was immediately apparent, and album producer Manfred Eicher proposed that they bring the project to Studios la Buissonne in Southern France, where WINDFLOWER was recorded in May 2025.
Ayumi Tanaka, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Strønen · WINDFLOWER is available August 11, 2026 via ECM. For more information, visit ECMRecords.com.
WINDFLOWER marks another release from ECM, a label that has maintained a consistent presence in both jazz and contemporary classical recording. BroadwayWorld previously covered the label's recent activity, including the ECM New Series release CON SLANCIO from Heinz Holliger and Marie-Lise Schüpbach, which marked 40 years of collaboration between the Swiss composer and the label.
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