Since forming in 2003, the Avant-garde improvisational jazz trio Zen Widow has produced three albums for the Italian objet-a label. Their fourth album, presented here, is a special collaborative distribution effort with Intervention Records, titled Zen Widow IV – (from one dark age to another).

This 180-gram vinyl release places an emphasis on highly melodic, spacious, and engaging treatments of medieval compositions ranging from Gesualdo Da Venosa, the Burana and Chantilly Codex, Welsh Gower folk melodies and texts, as well as the Bach Cello suites. These rich compositions are then reimagined through the lens of a highly accomplished and adventuresome jazz-improvised music trio.

Zen Widow is an international improvisational music-jazz super group. They have recorded and performed in clubs and festivals throughout the United States and Europe for the last 20 years. The trio consists of Gianni Gebbia (Bb soprano saxophone Рcornettophone ) from Sicily, Italy, Matthew Goodheart (grand piano — transducer-actuated gong) from New York, Garth Powell (drums, percussion, and gongs) from Los Angeles, and is joined by special guest Dwight Trible (vocals) for this recording. Their previous release featured trumpet and jazz master Wadada Leo Smith, and like this recording was produced by Joe Harley (Blue Note — Tone Poet Series, Charles Lloyd, and Music Matters Jazz).

The percussionist who has a great deal to say on this record is Garth Powell. Powell is AudioQuest’s Senior Director of Engineering and designs AudioQuest’s Niagra series of power conditioners and its Mythical Creatures line of A.C. and signal carrying cables. He’s also an extremely talented percussionist as you’ll discover listening to this record, which was produced by “Tone Poet” Joe Harley and engineered by Mike Ross, who in the 1990s recorded many of the classic AudioQuest Music records at Ocean Way Studios, produced by Harley including highly coveted releases by Mighty Sam McLain, Doug MacLeod and many others.

The recording venue was famed Capitol Studios “A” live to 2-track analog tape, May 2022 with another familiar engineering name, Steve Genewick assisting. Kevin Gray mastered and cut lacquers. The production is “double A” ‚Äî analog recording and analog cutting with the exception of the last track that is finished high-res digital to accomodate a minor vocal level adjustment, so is D-A-A.

As powerful as these performances are, the sonic results created by this production/engineering team is equally stunning — a truly reference quality analog experience.

The single-gatefold jacket is a deluxe Old Style “tip-on” from Stoughton, designed by Intervention’s longtime Art Director Tom Vadakan.