Abaton is a musical unit of composer and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, violinist Mark Feldman, and cellist Erik Friedlander. Abaton is also the title of the group's double-CD ECM debut, produced by label boss Manfred Eicher. Disc number one is made up of four Courvoisier compositions. The second holds 19 improvisations for trio. Very different, they nonetheless dovetail to offer a solid portrait of a composer-led group that views stasis and movement with equanimity. Ianicum, the opening work on Abaton, begins with a single lower-register pitch from Courvoisier's piano. It is repeated and answered by the other players in small, brief phrases before becoming a twinned line where left and right hands move seemingly in opposition yet with such restraint that the music is seamless. Dynamics are held tautly in this work, as Friedlander bows long enough in his statements to keep the bridge of harmonic striation constructed. Space and short tones become enmeshed as extensions of one another. On the title track, Feldman opens with a clipped series of notes that come from his middle register and then engages Friedlander in a gradually developing series of nearly pulsing lines that touch upon Eastern modalism and Western counterpoint. Courvoisier enters with a single chord to anchor the lengthening lines and bring them back to point zero as a spacious, Messiaen-like austerity gives way to more frequent pronouncements, until she becomes interwoven contrapuntally with the pair in a warm yet dissonant melody line that feels almost Occidental in its origin. There is plenty of soul in these exercises; there is a great transference of emotion taking place in the exercising of dynamics that seemingly come to explode as the first disc plays on.

1		Ianicum
2		Orodruin
3		Poco a Poco
4		Abaton
5		Icaria 1
6		Imke's
7		Icaria 2
8		Clio
9		Nova Solyma
10		Spensonia
11		Octavia
12		Icaria 3
13		Sonnante
14		The Scar of Lotte
15		Turoine
16		Archaos
17		Ava's
18		Brobdingnag
19		Calonack
20		Precioso
21		Sekel
22		Izaura
23		Narnia