Tomasz Stańko Quartet - Lontano (2006)

Recorded in November 2005, Lontano was the conclusion to a trilogy of albums recorded by the Tomasz Stańko Quartet: the trumpeter, now in his sixties, backed by a trio of fellow Poles half his age, who'd continue to produce great music in their own right.  The quartet's expansive, cinematic feel for space and patient, at times near-ambient improvisational pace reached their apex in the diffuse, impressionistic music on this aptly-titled album.

At the album's core are its title tracks, numbered I, II and III, a total of 40 minutes of free improvisation credited to the full group.  Whether they were all recorded as a single session or as three separate takes I'm not sure, but the Lontano tracks provide the deepest expression of this quartet's spacious sensibility, the shorter pieces that surround them highlighting the spare beauty of Stańko's writing and more sublime playing.  Stańko reaches back to his first ECM appearance for a fresh take on Tale, and even further to his first appearance on LP, the muscular version of Komeda's Kattorna giving an upbeat contrast to sublime ballads like Song For Ania and Sweet Thing.  A masterpiece of an album that keeps on giving with every listen.

link

pw: sgtg

Tomasz Stańko at SGTG:
Jazzmessage From Poland
Purple Sun

TWET 

Balladyna
Freelectronic in Montreux
Bluish
Bosonossa And Other Ballads
Matka Joanna 

Suspended Night

Neighbourhood (Manu Katché) 

Wolność W Sierpniu - Freedom In August
Dark Eyes
Wisława
Polin

Tribute To Tomasz Stańko, London Jazz Festival 2022

Arvo Pärt - Miserere (1991)

It's definitely Pärt weather now, so dropping in on the great Estonian composer today at the turn of the 90s.  Settled in by this time to a fruitful relationship with ECM New Series, the three works featured here were recorded in late 1990 with the Hilliard Ensemble, Western Wind Chamber Choir, Beethovenhalle Orchestra and others.

The 34-minute title piece comes first, with its stark choral liturgy interspersed with orchestral swells and the organ playing of Christopher Bowers-Broadbent.  Miserere remains one of Pärt's most immersive works in its controlled power, and it sounds sublime in this first recording.  A short respite is programmed next in Festina Lente, very much cut from the same cloth as the Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten.  We return to Old Testament liturgy for the final track, Sarah Was Ninety Years Old, but wordlessly.  An intermittent drumbeat forms the backbone of the piece as the Hilliards in turn add plaintive melodies, the culiminative effect (once Broadbent's organ enters for the finale) being another masterpiece of steady pacing to thoroughly entrance the patient listener.  This might not be Pärt's easiest album to get in to, but it pays some of the greatest rewards.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Tabula Rasa

Kanon Pokajanen

Spiegel Im Spiegel

Other posts featuring music by Pärt:

Trivium

Re: ECM

Christmas in Budapest, 2016

James MacMillan 60th Birthday Concert, 2019

The Fruit Of Silence at Truro Cathedral, 2019

BBC Concert Orchestra, Proms 2021

Alexei Lubimov - Der Bote: Elegies For Piano (2002)

A sublime programme, and one spanning the centuries from baroque to modern, performed by Alexei Lubimov (b. 1944, Moscow).  This recording was made by DRS Radio in Zurich at the end of 2000, and released as an ECM New Series album a year and a half later.

 

Kicking off with a 20-minute stretch that pairs CPE Bach and John Cage, it's clear that this is no ordinary classical solo piano recital.  But you know what, the Fantasie Für Klavier and a nice pacey In A Landscape complement each other just fine, and things just get more interesting from there.  With an overall theme of 'elegies', and an album title of 'the messenger' (taken from the haunting final piece), as a concept piece it plays out well, and just sounds heavenly.  Balancing stock repertoire choices like Liszt, Chopin and Debussy with the kind of more recent composers that have long been Lubimov's interest (Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov), he turns in a great set that feels satisfying from beginning to end on every listen.

link

pw: sgtg

Barre Phillips - Mountainscapes (1976)

One of the most satisfyingly avant-garde ECMs from the label's first decade, and also the first appearance in-house for reedsman John Surman, whose association with ECM continues to this day.  Recorded in March 1976, Mountainscapes was the result of the Surman-Phillips-Martin trio being given fresh purpose by the addition of Austrian electronics wizard Dieter Feichtner.  

 

The collision of free jazz and synth ooze makes for a unique and thoroughly enjoyable listening experience, with the tracklist simply a numbered suite to immerse yourself in.  Parts III and VII are duos between Phillips' bass improvisations and the eerie glow of Feichtner's synths, cut from a 40-minute free-form session (imagine that in its entireity sitting in Eicher's vault somewhere...).  The closing piece makes good use of a happened-to-drop-by John Abercrombie, adding another texture to this singular record.

link

pw: sgtg

Collin Walcott - Cloud Dance (1976)

Essentially John Abercrombie's Gateway Trio with a very different lead voice, in the form of Orgeon/CODONA's multi-instrumentalist (here focusing on his considerable talents on sitar) Collin Walcott (1945-1984).  This stunning record was recorded in the same month as Gateway's debut, right in the white heat of ECM's golden age with a lineup who perfectly merge jazz with Indian musical forms.  

 

Lengthy explorations giving the quartet full chance to shine, like opener Margueritte, sit alongside miniature features for Walcott and Dave Holland such as Prancing and Eastern Song.  Abercrombie is by turns liquid and languid (Night Glider, the lovely title track) and throughly electrified (Scimitar).  Walcott's sublime playing remains the star of this album, and would continue to occupy a unique space in the ECM sound world (including with a reformed Oregon) until his tragic accidental death at the age of 39.

link

pw: sgtg

Collin Walcott at SGTG:

Miles Davis - On The Corner

Egberto Gismonti - Sol De Meio Dia

Jacob Young - Evening Falls (2004)

It's been an ECM kind of week for me, so here we are again, this time jumping back a decade for another guitarist, in his debut with the label recorded in December 2002.  Lillehammer native Jacob Young has been working with some of the hottest names in Nordic jazz since the 90s, and here fronts a two-horn quintet that includes one of my favourite ECM trumpeters of recent years, Mathias Eick.

Rather than put his clear guitar talents front and centre, Young's sound on this set of his own material is a sumptuously arranged and well-meshed group performance of highly lyrical tunes.  The immersive melancholy makes Evening Falls a well-chosen title for just under an hour of late listening.  As well as enjoying Young's lean playing, Eick is the obvious breakout star of this session, but Vidar Johansen sounds fantastic here too, especially when he switches from sax to bass clarinet.  Lovely stuff all round.

link

pw: sgtg

Wolfgang Muthspiel - Driftwood (2014)

Sublime guitar trio date recorded in May 2013, led by Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel.  Bookended by tributes to two formative influences, Joseph (Zawinul) and Bossa For Michael Brecker, all the material is Muthspiel's other than the group-composed title track.  It's a highly enjoyable and varied set of eight tracks in a trim 41 minutes, often prioritising texture and ambience.  Dazzling runs of notes share the space with plenty of breathing room, Larry Grenadier undepins it with both rock solid basslines and melancholy bowing, and Brian Blade on drums keeps structure and momentum to this great set of impressionistic pieces.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Travel Guide (with Ralph Towner & Slava Grigoryan)

Momo Kodama - La Vallée Des Cloches (Ravel, Takemitsu & Messiaen) (2013)

Sticking with ECM and classical today for some incredible 20th century piano music, played by Osaka-born pianist Momo Kodama.  Maurice Ravel's Miroirs suite is rendered in all its tricksy, impressionistic wonder with crystal clarity, with Kodama's rendering of Une barque sur l'ocean (one of my favourite piano pieces of all time, which made me buy this album) capturing the delicacy of every lapping wave.  The other substanital work on the album is Olivier Messiaen's birdsong catalogue La Fauvette Des Jardins, evoking a garden-warbler and several other birds on a midsummer's night, and as a bridge between the two French masters Kodoma plays Rain Tree Sketch by Toru Takemitsu, chosen for its interesting similarities to the other composers.

link

pw: sgtg

Ravel at SGTG:

Alborada Del Gracioso arranged for marimba duo

Takemitsu at SGTG:

Asterism, Requiem, Green, The Dorian Horizon

November Steps

Messiaen at SGTG:

Quatre Études De Rythme
Des Canyons Aux Étoiles
Turangalîla Symphony / Quatour Pour La Fin Du Temps (EMI recordings cond. by Rattle)
Turangalîla Symphony / L'ascension (Naxos recording cond. by Wit)
Et Exspecto Ressurrectionem (Philips recording cond. by Haitink)
Et Exspecto Resurrectionem (Erato recording cond. by Boulez), etc

Éclairs Sur L’Au-Delà...

Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians (1978)

Steve Reich's big break, both in terms of drawing together all his compositional ideas up until then into a masterpiece, and also in the public consciousness, this ECM release reaching his widest audience yet.  Deutsche Grammophon were actually responsible for this premiere recording, and had been sitting on it for a year or two when Manfred Eicher spotted its potential.  The 56-minute continuous piece became a hit with audiences who heard a warmth and accessibility that until then wasn't generally associated with the more austere forms of minimal music.

 

Music For 18 Musicians starts by setting out the pulse that will sustain it for the duration, as well as the sequence of eleven chords that will be slowly cycled through in its subsequent sections.  Arch forms, organum and cantus inspired by Perotin and section cues on the metallophone inspired by gamelan music all give the music its gorgeous symmetry.  Phrase lengths are determined by the bass clarinetist and human voices, dependent upon how long they can breathe for, adding to the organic feel of the music as if the whole ensemble were one living, breathing organism.  Section VI, at the 31 minute mark, is always my favourite in its joyous rhythmic/vocal focus, but Music For 18 Musicians is always best experienced as a whole.  Back in the vinyl era, this ran up against the same problem as E2-E4 later would, namely that flipping the record over temporarily broke the spell, but in the digital era there's no such drawback as it all runs in one sublime track.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:
Drumming, Six Pianos etc
Octet etc
Tehilim
Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards
Vermont Counterpoint / Eight Lines

The Desert Music
Sextet / Six Marimbas + bonus concert feat. Music For 18 Musicians
Nagoya Marimbas

City Life

Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa (1984)

The inaugural release on ECM's New Series imprint for classical music, and an album that was instrumental in elevating Arvo Pärt and his tintinnabular style of writing in the public consciousness.  Recording for this incredible-sounding collection took place in late 1983/early '84, apart from WDR's 1977 world premiere live recording of the eventual title track.

Two arrangements of Pärt's Fratres take up most of the first half of the album, the versatile composition first being performed by Gidon Kremer on violin and Keith Jarrett on piano, foreshadowing greater input by Jarrett to ECM's new classical sub-label.  The piece's haunting sequences of chords and interlocking harmonies are also performed by the cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic.  In between is one of Pärt's most famous orchestral pieces, the sublime Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten.  To finish the album, the aforementioned premiere recording of Tabula Rasa is in two parts: just under ten minutes of fiendish string canons and cadenzas, then a wide-open, heavenly expanse of prepared piano and gorgeous orchestration.

link

pw: sgtg

 

Previously posted at SGTG:

Kanon Pokajanen

Spiegel Im Spiegel

Other posts featuring music by Pärt:

Trivium

Re: ECM

Christmas in Budapest, 2016

James MacMillan 60th Birthday Concert, 2019

The Fruit Of Silence at Truro Cathedral, 2019

BBC Concert Orchestra, Proms 2021

Tigran Hamasyan, Arve Henriksen, Eivind Aarset, Jan Bang ‎- Atmosphères (2016)

Double album of atmospheric improvisations / ambient jazz / just great music, from the combination of four of ECM's most interesting latter-day musicians.  Armenian pianist Hamasyan was joined for this three-day recording session in Italy by Norwegians Henrisken on trumpet, Aarset on guitar/electronics, and Bang on electronics/sampling.

The backbone of Atmosphères is the ten-part Traces suite, with a handful of compositions by Hamasyan's national legend Komitas threaded through it.  With no drummer, and the suite only occasionally catching fire (such as Parts 2 and 7), the main mode of expression is free-floating, wispy ambience.  I remember buying Atmosphères on its release, and taking a while to really warm to it - but it's well worth sticking with, everything here equally rewards background listening or close attention.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

Tigran Hamasyan at SGTG:

Luys I Luso

Eivind Aarset & Jan Bang at SGTG:

Dream Logic

Arvo Pärt - Kanon Pokajanen (1998)

Acapella choral masterpiece by Arvo Pärt, written for the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral.  Kanon Pokajanen takes its text from the eighth-century Orthodox (therefore sung in Church Slavonic) Canon of Repentance, with Pärt letting that liturgical language inform the structure of the music.

 

For this premiere recording in June 1997, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir were recorded in Niguliste Church, Tallinn, and sound phenomenal throughout, whether all 28 voices are combined or in the solos and responses.  The work's eleven sections climax in the full-on power of the Prayer After The Canon, to top off a sublime listening experience, whether you want to give it full attention or just wash over you in pure sound.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Spiegel Im Spiegel

Other posts featuring music by Pärt:

Trivium

Re: ECM

Christmas in Budapest, 2016

James MacMillan 60th Birthday Concert, 2019

The Fruit Of Silence at Truro Cathedral, 2019

BBC Concert Orchestra, Proms 2021

Garbarek, Rypdal, Stenson, Andersen, Christensen - Sart (1971)

Some more Terje Rypdal today, alongside an all-star cast of ECM legends on one of the label's most memorable releases from its formative years.  Sart is often regarded as a Jan Garbarek album overall, and indeed this is Disc 1 of the Garbarek box set that also covers Witchi Tai To and Dansere (links below), but really everyone in this quintet deserves their equal billing as per the album cover.

Most of side one is taken up by the title track, with Rypdal wah-ing it into gear as a post-Bitches Brew fusion exploration.  Garbarek is in full-on overblown free jazz mode, but Bobo Stenson's calmer piano keeps the track partly rooted in earlier post-bop traditions.  Fountain Of Tears finds Rypdal in even more avant-garde mode, sliding right up the guitar bridge as Garbarek and Stenson get in more fractured soloing.  A mellow ending sees Garbarek switching to flute.

Side two is introduced with a piano solo, and Stenson continues to sound sublime as Rypdal and Garbarek kick Sound Of Space into gear, both turning in great solo spots.  For the remainder of the album, short composing/playing spotlights for Andersen and Rypdal bookend another great group performance.  Essential early ECM at its finest.

link

pw: sgtg

Jan Garbarek at SGTG:
Afric Pepperbird (with Rypdal, Andersen & Christensen)
Triptykon (with Andersen)
Popofoni (with Stenson, Rypdal, Andersen & Christensen)

Witchi-Tai-To (with Stenson & Christensen)

Dansere (with Stenson & Christensen)
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows (with Christensen)
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints (with Christensen)
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

Terje Rypdal - Odyssey In Studio & In Concert (2012 compi, rec. 1975-6)

Double-album (and much more) that may just be Terje Rypdal's crowning achievement.  The Odyssey band was put together at a time when the Norwegian guitarist's playing, writing and arranging had become increasingly adventurous, synthesisng influences from George Russell and György Ligeti to come up with something truly unique.

With a quintet lineup that included trombone, organ, synth and soprano sax (the last two played by Rypdal), Odyssey the album bears only a glancing similarity to the general jazz fusion strains of the 70s.  For the most part, its 87 minutes are spent in a weightless, floating atmosphere, Rydal's guitar lines gliding over the top of glowing organ, synth and accompanied at times by the trombone and sax.  Only on a couple of occasions does it actually take definite rhythmic shape and pulse with forward momentum, most notably on the 23-minute epic Rolling Stone that ends the album.  And due to the album's length, for a long time the single-disc CD that was reissued didn't even include this closing track.

Eventually, in 2012 ECM gave Odyssey the 'Old & New Masters' box set treatment, with the original double album complete across Discs 1 & 2.  But that's not all - Disc 3 contains over an hour of previously unreleased music in the Unfinished Highballs suite.  Commissioned for Swedish Radio, and featuring the Odyssey band in collaboration with the 15-piece Swedish Radio Jazz Group, this is incredible music that does owe more to regular jazz, but still has Rypdal's unconventional signatures all over it.  One piece from the suite would be reworked by Rypdal for a subsequent album: Dine And Dance To The Music Of The Waves became simply Waves (see link below for that album).  The rest of the music went unheard until 2012, and now stands as another high point in Rypdal's output, not least the wondrous groove of Dawn, one of four central tracks to top the 10 minute mark.  Very highly recommended.

Original double-LP cover, 1975

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

Disc 3 link

pw for all: sgtg

 

Previously posted at SGTG:

Waves

Terje Rypdal featured on:

Afric Pepperbird

Popofoni

Satu

Nordic Quartet

The Sea

Vassilis Tsabropoulos - Akroasis (2003)

Very lovely solo piano suite from Athens native Vassilis Tsabropoulos, previously featured here in trio format - see link below.  Akroasis is based on five traditional Byzantine hymns, which together with three of Tsabropoulos' own compostions "became a poem of eight pictures".  Enjoy just under 45 minutes of blissful piano poetry.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Achirana

Keith Jarrett - The Survivors' Suite (1977)

Jarrett's 'American Quartet' (with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian) at their most uncharacteristic in a through-composed suite, and quite possibly at their best.  The Survivors' Suite was written by Jarrett specifically with a concert at NYC's Avery Fisher Hall (previously Philharmonic Hall, now David Geffen Hall) in mind, the restrained tempo apparently suiting the acoustics better.

On record, the 48 minute Suite is simply split into "Beginning" and "Conclusion" over the two sides.  Most strikingly of all, Jarrett plays no piano for the first eight and a half minutes, as a sombre bass recorder/horns and percussion stretch gradually builds.  He then leaves the sax to Redman to propel the music forward in the manner more typical of Jarrett, before reaching a calm piano interlude at Beginning's halfway point.  Haden and Motian are both highlighted as the first half nears its end.  Conclusion starts out in firey group interplay mode and largely keeps up that momentum, with great solo spots along the way.  Out of Jarrett's "weird but wonderful" corner of his discography (Hymns/Spheres, Invocations etc) this is arguably the summit.

link

pw: sgtg

Keith Jarrett at SGTG:
Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett 

Live-Evil
Expectations

Belonging
The Köln Concert
Hymns/Spheres
G. I. Gurdjieff: Sacred Hymns
Invocations/The Moth And The Flame
Concerts: Bregenz/München
Setting Standards: New York Sessions
Dark Intervals
Changeless
Tribute
Vienna Concert
At The Blue Note: Saturday, June 4th 1994, 1st Set

Standards In Norway 
Tokyo '96
La Scala

Jan Garbarek-Bobo Stenson Quartet - Dansere (1975)

More Garbarek-Stenson loveliness to go nicely with the turning of the seasons.  This follow-up to Witchi-Tai-To was notably different in composition - other than one arrangement of a Nordic folk tune, everything was written by Garbarek.  He regarded the 15 minute title track as "a breakthrough point for me, in trying to find the material I feel most at home with", and the album as a whole has the feeling of carving out his comfortable niche in European jazz, right down to all the track titles being in Norwegian.

After that opening trek across the rural open space evoked on the album cover, the rest of Dansere (in English, dancers) progresses in similar atmospheric form.  Svevende aptly conjures up its titular feeling over hovering above great fjords via Christensen's nimble drumming, as the winds blown by Garbarek turn to a full-on icy blast.  Bris (breeze) features the most energetic playing on the record, propelled by Stenson, then a short interlude Skirk & Hyl (cries and howls) is an aptly-described spotlight for Garbarek and Danielsson.  The record settles down again with a traditional shepherding ballad in Lokk, then Christensen heats up the groove just enough for Til Vennene (to friends) to end the album on a bit of indoor warmth.

 

link

pw: sgtg

Jan Garbarek at SGTG:
Afric Pepperbird
Triptykon
Popofoni (also includes Stenson & Christensen)

Witchi-Tai-To
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

Jan Garbarek - Bobo Stenson Quartet - Witchi-Tai-To (1974)

Dug out this ECM classic for the first time in a long while following that post of Escalator Over The Hill a few weeks back.  Starting off with a lengthy exploration of A.I.R. from EOTH, this album saw Jan Garbarek's windswept, keening mature style begin to solidify in a half-Norwegian half-Swedish quartet.  Bobo Stenson on piano fully deserves his name's co-prominence in this group, with an early highlight being his spotlight performance on Kukka, the only tune written by a member of the quartet (Danielsson).

A firey take on Carlos Puebla's Hasta Siempre spices up the album with a propulsive performance by the late Jon Christensen, closing out the original first side in style.  Over on side two, both Garbarek and Stenson shine on the title track by Jim Pepper, then a full twenty minutes are given over to a group exploration of Don Cherry's Desireless.  A lengthy Stenson solo gives way to a full force gale of Garbarek, and so on.  One of the very best ECM releases from its mid-70s imperial heights.

link

pw: sgtg

Jan Garbarek at SGTG:
Afric Pepperbird
Triptykon
Popofoni (also includes Stenson & Christensen)
Solstice: Sounds And Shadows
Sol De Meio Dia
Paths, Prints
Song For Everyone
Making Music

Neighbourhood

Egberto Gismonti with Naná Vasconcelos - Dança Das Cabeças (1977)

Egberto Gismonti's debut appearance on ECM was originally planned as a completely solo album, the travel costs imposed by the Brazilian government precluding a full band.  Shortly after arriving in Norway though, Gismonti had a chance encounter with Naná Vasconcelos, and their instant kinship is what elevates this album from just incredible music to something even more special.

The concept that the two musicians agreed on, according to Gismonti, was "two boys wandering through a dense, humid forest, full of insects and animals, keeping a 180-feet distance from each other".  This is evoked straight away in the atmospheric introduction (named Quarto Mundo, possibly even before the late Jon Hassell used the term "Fourth World"), with flutes and voices evoking Amazonian wildlife.  The album's first suite then focuses on Gismonti's stunning guitar playing and Vasconcelos' percussive versatility.  Six songs are ran together for the LP's first side, including two from Academia Da Danças (link below).

The first half of the side two suite is given over entirely to Gismonti's piano, in a gorgeous piece called Tango that casts him as a Brazilian Keith Jarrett.  A low rumbling gong reintroduces Vasconcelos for a more atmospheric interlude including voices and handclaps, then Gismonti briefly returns to guitar.  To finish, a rush of shaken bells from Vasconcelos leads in to the choppy piano coda.  Both musicians would go on to international renown from here, on ECM and elsewhere, and on Dança Das Cabeças they produced a lasting landmark in their careers from a fortunate chance meeting.

link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: 
Academia Da Danças
Sol De Meio Dia 
Circense
Sanfona

Duas Vozes (with Naná Vasconcelos)
Dança Dos Escravos
In Montreal (with Charlie Haden) 

Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard & Steve Swallow - Trios (2013)

With the release of Trios, legendary jazz composer Carla Bley finally moved over from Watt, the ECM-distributed label that had released her music for decades, to the Manfred mothership.  This first appearance on ECM tied in with the re-establishment of the Bley-Sheppard-Swallow trio, whose last album in this format had been Songs With Legs in 1994.  They've since released a further two albums.

Trios offered no great surprises in the tracklist, being a Thelonious Monk-like revisitation of earlier compositions.  But like Monk, this just underlines how durable and outstanding Bley's iconoclastic body of work as a writer is.  The three lengthy suites here, with two shorter tracks upfront, might largely date back to the 80s, but they're cast afresh here as gorgeous immersions in sumptuous chamber jazz.  The simple palette of Bley's piano, Swallow's nimble bass guitar and Sheppard's breathy sax make for nothing short of a masterpiece that lets the strength of the writing and playing stand centre stage, and is a delight to return to over and over.

link

pw: sgtg

Carla Bley at SGTG:

The Jazz Composers Orchestra

Fleur Carnivore

Appearing Nightly