Jan Garbarek's 2009 ECM album folds field recordings from Patagonia and Norway into his soaring saxophone and a string quartet. It's spiritual without being pious, intimate without being small — the sound of a man listening as much as he plays.
There is a particular kind of silence that settles over the Norwegian Telemark region in winter. Jan Garbarek has spent his career learning to play into it, not against it.
By 2009, after four decades on ECM, the saxophonist had earned the right to make an album like Citadelamerica — a record that sounds less like a statement and more like a meditation overheard. He brought field recordings from two radically different landscapes: the remote Argentinean steppe and the wind-scoured coast of western Norway. Then he sat down with a string quartet and a violist, and let the room do the rest.
The quartet is the Cikada String Quartet, a Norwegian ensemble with the kind of clean, unhurried attack that ECM engineers have been chasing since the 1970s. Kim Kashkashian joins on viola, her instrument’s dark grain a perfect counterweight to Garbarek’s soprano saxophone. The album was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug, who has been Manfred Eicher’s right-hand man since the label began. You can hear the space between the instruments — the air itself becomes part of the arrangement.
What separates Citadelamerica from Garbarek’s other “sacred” works is the way the field recordings refuse to stay in the background. They aren’t wallpaper. The opening title track begins with the sound of wind across open ground, then a single viola note holds for so long you start to feel the altitude. When the saxophone enters, it’s as if the horn is translating something the landscape just said.
Manfred Eicher, as always, was in the control room. He is famous for letting tape roll through entire takes, refusing to piece together a performance from edits. The result here is a suite of pieces that breathe in real time. You can sense the musicians reacting to each other’s vibration rather than counting bars.
“Wake, Wake” is the album’s most straightforward melody, and it’s the one that sticks longest. Garbarek’s soprano line floats over a cushion of strings and a ghostly, almost subliminal percussion loop (one of the few overtly rhythmic moments on the record). It sounds like a hymn that forgot to announce its religion.
There is a risk, with any Garbarek album of this period, of drifting into the background yourself. The saxophone is so legato, the strings so patient, that the music can become ambient if you’re not careful. But Citadelamerica rewards attention. Listen to the way Garbarek’s breathing shapes each phrase — you hear the intake of air before the note, a reminder that this is a man, alone in a room, coaxing sound from a tube of brass.
“The Dying Animal” is the album’s most confrontational piece. The title comes from Philip Roth, but the music owes more to Garbarek’s early work with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. His tenor saxophone rasps against the strings, refusing to soothe. It’s the moment the album proves it isn’t mere relaxation music.
The album closes with “The Swan,” a piece that sounds like a benediction. The field recordings return, the room breathes out, and Garbarek’s horn ascends into a high, thin note that could be a bird or could be a signal. He holds it until the natural decay of the room swallows it.
This is what post-ECM spiritualism sounds like: not a destination, but a listening post. You check in for a while, then the wind changes.
Where did the title *Citadelamerica* come from?
Jan Garbarek has said the title is a composite word suggesting a fortress-like America, but also a citadel of the Americas — a reference to the Patagonian field recordings and the album’s sense of vast, empty spaces.
Is this album purely acoustic, or are there electronic effects?
The album is almost entirely acoustic — Garbarek uses no effects on his saxophone. The only non-acoustic element is a subtle, layered percussion loop on 'Wake, Wake,' created by manipulating a field recording of footsteps on gravel.
How does *Citadelamerica* compare to Garbarek’s earlier ECM work like *Officium*?
While *Officium* paired Garbarek with a vocal ensemble (the Hilliard Ensemble) for a kind of medieval-jazz hybrid, *Citadelamerica* is more personal and textural — the string quartet replaces the voices, and the field recordings add a cinematic, almost documentary quality that is absent from the earlier album.
Further Reading
More from Jan Garbarek