Wolfgang Muthspiel, Tokyo Review

Wolfgang Muthspiel Trio: Dialogues in Tokyo

by Nolan DeBuke

In jazz, a trio can either narrow its focus to tight interplay or broaden into a world of color, space, and possibility. In Tokyo (ECM, Sept. 26, 2025), guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel brings a project that shows his musical language favors both intimacy and expansiveness, restraint and risk. With bassist Scott Colley and drummer Brian Blade, he crafts an album of ten tracks with a balance of structured and free. There is European lyricism warmed by folk jazz influences and sharpened by the edge of modern jazz dialogue.

Muthspiel’s trio launches into Keith Jarrett’s “Lisbon Stomp” with cheerful swing. The melody balances single-note lines and chordal responses, and the performance radiates a buoyant ease. Colley’s bass pushes and comments, while Blade finds the perfect balance of propulsion and playfulness. It’s a fitting homage to Jarrett’s pianistic architecture, reframed through guitar-driven textures.

The heart of Tokyo lies in the way Muthspiel transforms folk materials into a contemporary jazz narrative. “Pradela” opens with luminous guitar chords and a resonant bass presence, its spacious phrasing influenced by European chamber jazz but animated by a folk sensibility. The harmonic shifts become emotional pivots, until Blade enters midway, shaping a medium-tempo groove that blooms organically.

“Flight” deepens the experiment with ostinato textures. A repeating guitar figure sets a hypnotic foundation while Colley’s bass unfurls a melody of its own. Blade’s sixteenth-note pulse creates urgency, and as guitar and bass move into tutti, Muthspiel overlays another guitar voice to keep the ostinato alive. His acoustic solo is warm and story-driven and built on his ability to form melodic logic to tell his story.

On “Roll,” Blade initiates a funky jazz feel, with Muthspiel’s vamp supporting Colley’s bass melody. The cadential figure mixes hits and momentum, the trio reshaping variations in real time. It’s a miniature jam session distilled into 2:30 of restless invention.

“Christa’s Dream” shifts into electric territory. Muthspiel’s sound palette recalls a Rhodes more than a hollow-body guitar, with soft effects blurring into synth timbres during his solo. Blade is the orchestrator here, matching Muthspiel’s colors with cymbal shimmer and textural choices across his kit. The result is a ballad that manages to be both tender and experimental.

The aptly named “Diminished and Augmented” explores symmetry and contrast through classical guitar right-hand techniques. Motifs built from diminished and augmented intervals become melodic raw material, expanded into a trio conversation that flows through feels to transform the performance into an engaging narrative.

“Traversia” begins with rubato acoustic guitar and hints of 20th-century classical idioms. The trio then steps into time, Blade adopting a march pulse while Colley bows lyrical arcs over Muthspiel’s arpeggios. When Colley switches back to pizzicato for his solo, the transition feels like a return from abstraction to song. This is Muthspiel’s craftsmanship at its best: a composition both architectural and emotional.

“Strumming” lives up to its title: the guitar’s strumming pattern provides the architecture, expanded by Colley’s remarkable arco playing. The trio builds layers of folk-jazz and fusion textures, with Muthspiel later moving into sustained single-line phrases, his electric inflection adding breadth.

“Weill You Wait” introduces angular counterpoint, guitar and bass in tutti and dialogue, while Blade colors with painterly touch. Muthspiel’s solo blends classical guitar technique with world-jazz phrasing, embodying the cosmopolitan ethos at the core of this trio’s language.

Paul Motian’s “Abacus” serves as a fitting close with its conversational folk jazz stylings. Muthspiel leans into electric guitar effects, shaping a spontaneous dialogue that is meaningful and interactive. The trio doesn’t overstate; instead, they allow silence, color, and suggestion to do the heavy lifting.

Tokyo is a very enjoyable album of guitar-fronted trio communication. Where some guitar trios collapse into leader-with-rhythm-section, here each member is an equal partner in shaping sound. Muthspiel’s writing and playing are thoughtful, Colley’s bass is grounding and lyrical, Blade’s drumming is endlessly inventive without overshadowing. Together, they take listeners from Jarrett’s sprightly swing through European chamber lyricism, into folk textures, fusion colors, and Motian’s spacious abstraction.

Tokyo not just for ECM devotees but for any jazz fan interested in how a trio can stretch idiom into new forms while never losing groove, song, and soul.