Sounds and Silence Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Sounds and Silence Blu-ray Movie Review

You may not recognize the name Manfred Eicher, but if you like jazz, you've heard his work.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 27, 2011

If you’re old enough to remember those vinyl relics known as long playing records, and if by chance you were a jazz connoisseur in the Dark Ages of the 1970’s, you more likely than not owned more than a few releases by ECM Records. This sort of high end jazz counterpart to the hoity-toity classical world of, say, Deutsche Grammophon Records was the gold standard of jazz recordings in its day, at least with regard to more thoughtful, introspective fare that was often more exploratory than the relatively more mainstream and very successful work of Creed Taylor and his CTi outfit. Reading a list of ECM’s seventies jazz roster is like revisiting a contemporary Who’s Who of modern music, and includes such iconic names as Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Gary Burton, John Abercrombie, Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny, Jan Garbarek, Jack DeJohnette, Egberto Gismonti and too many others to mention. While ECM’s early releases specialized in jazz, one of the things that set the label apart from its kin was its roster’s ability to transcend genres. If Verve gave the world straight ahead wonderfulness, and CTi tended to mine a glossier, more easily accessible approach that would soon become more homogenized and known as what has been labeled (pejoratively and otherwise) Smooth Jazz, ECM always provided releases that were a kaleidoscope of unexpected treasures. Sometimes raucous and dissonant, other times charmingly childlike and decidedly tonal, any given ECM release could both challenge and delight, often in equal measure. ECM’s founder is a German music lover and visionary named Manfred Eicher, and many of the luminaries of present day jazzdom consider Eicher their initial mentor and guide through the often labyrinthine world of the modern recording industry. ECM branched out even more than it already was doing from its earliest days as the compact disc era was ushered in, and many of the label’s best known releases have been genre bashing fare like the collaborations between Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble or the minimalist classicism of Arvo Pärt. This fascinating 2010 documentary highlights the life and work of Eicher and how seemingly effortlessly he created a whole new idiom for modern music, one which combined elements of many supposedly disparate traditions.

Sounds and Silence is subtitled Journeys with Manfred Eicher, and as such it doesn’t really fall into the standard biographical documentary structure. While we do get at least a little background on Eicher, courtesy of his own brief reminiscences, what this piece more accurately documents is Eicher as a producer and mentor-partner to an incredibly wide array of performing artists. Sounds and Silence works in a hugely disparate selection of music, all of it ECM based, that includes everything from elegiac choral music to the raging dissonance of sax and percussion to more languid contemporary jazz to several neo-modern takes on folk or ethnic music. It’s a fitting testament to everything Eicher has stood for in his many decades atop the often precarious pyramid of the never predictable recording industry.

What becomes incredibly obvious as we watch Eicher at work with a number of musicians, including Arvo Pärt, Nik Bärtsch and many other musicians without umlauts in their names, is what a hand’s on producer he is. His background as a bassist obviously helps him to understand the musical content, but it is in his acute listening more than anything that Eicher seems to have found his producing niche. He is absolutely focused in all of the recording sessions shown in Sounds and Silence, often unbelievably so. He’ll talk about piano overtones and edit points with one artist and then review an orchestral score with another.

It’s also completely obvious from the many on screen testimonials offered up by a coterie of ECM recording artists how beloved Eicher is by the men and women who have been hired by him. Some of these people had never actually had a producer before, having wended their way through their own self-produced pieces for years, but they all to a person extol the virtues of having Eicher there to listen, offer support and occasionally a usually acute critiques.

As filmmakers Peter Guyer and Norbert Wiedmer mention in a brief essay included in this slimline trifold case, even though ECM has released more than a thousand recordings, many of which have been bestsellers (at least within the rarified confines of classical and jazz music), the label definitely does not have a conveyer belt mentality. Guyer and Wiedmer port over a quote about a publisher to describe Eicher’s contribution to modern music: Eicher is a sponsor of the intelligent and the extraordinary.

While some might want a more traditional biographical documentary, or perhaps even a more traditional concert documentary, this interesting hybrid presents a bit of background on Eicher, lots of recording studio footage, and several snippets of live performances. It’s like an Impressionistic portrait of a man who has reshaped modern music in his own image, but who remains mysteriously behind the curtain for all but the most astute fans, those who like to read the picayune credits in CD insert booklets. Eicher may in fact not end up being any better known as the result of Sounds and Silence, but for those who appreciate “the intelligent and the extraordinary,” this piece is a fitting homage to a man who has given the world some of the most remarkable music of the past half century or so.

Sounds and Silence Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sounds and Silence wafts onto Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is a very nicely detailed looking Blu-ray, with accurate colors and very good to excellent contrast. Several of the sequences are shot in dimly lit environments like recording studios and the inside of a cathedral, and those elements suffer somewhat from some minor crush issues which deprive the image of much if any shadow detail. The interview sequences are quite good, however, with abundant fine detail, and several of the close-ups of the performers involved in either their recording sessions or their concerts offer some astonishing fine detail, from flyaway hair to beads of perspiration dotting their faces. There are surprisingly few artifacts here, especially for an interlaced presentation, and overall this is a solid looking Blu-ray whose only real problem lies in the fact that so much footage was shot in dimly lit environments.

Sounds and Silence Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sounds and Silence has two lossless audio options, both DTS-HD Master Audio, one in stereo and the other a nicely detailed 5.1 surround mix. There are pluses and minuses to the documentary's approach and how that plays out with regard to the soundtrack. This is neither a straight ahead (no pun intended for you jazz fans) biographical piece, nor is it an unedited series of concert performances, and so the documentary must be approached with some realistic expectations. A lot of this is fly on the wall stuff, with Eicher and his artists working through recording session issues, and as such much of what's being said is not easily heard. The interview segments are obviously much better. The bulk of the documentary is in German, but several artists speak French or English, so this is a multi-lingual affair (with mandatory subtitles in one of three languages). The music elements sound wonderful, especially I the surround mix, but some may question why we're not offered more complete, unedited versions of these pieces, rather than mere smatterings of several sessions and performances. The overall fidelity of both of these tracks is spectacular, and the bombastic percussion sequences offer some surprisingly robust low end.

Sounds and Silence Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Manu Katché "Playground" (1080i; 6:45). This quasi-music video is a nice selection of clips of the French-African drummer walking and riding around New York in a cab interspersed with segments showing his ECM album being recorded. "Playground" is an enjoyable, if slight, piece with some nice unison sax-trumpet playing.
• Trailers (1080i; 1:29) is listed with a plural "s", but includes only one trailer for Sounds and Silence.

Sounds and Silence Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I am old enough to remember long playing records, and I am indeed a jazz aficionado, and ECM was one of the first labels I started collecting when I was a kid. When CDs became prevalent, it was one of the first labels I converted whole cloth to the new format. Anyone interested in ECM and its many iconic artists will find a lot to enjoy about this documentary, though it really doesn't offer any in depth information about either Eicher or the artists portrayed within the boundaries of the piece itself. This is more of a moment in time captured as a fractal reflection of what Eicher has accomplished over his storied career. Recommended.