Of Mist and Melting

“A subtle tour de force” are the words with which Billboard met guitarist Bill Connors’s Of Mist And Melting upon the album’s release in 1978; and revisiting this music decades later only confirms that special spirits were indeed at work when the Manfred Eicher-produced session with Jan Garbarek, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette and Connors unfolded at Oslo’s Talent Studio in December 1977.

Following a period of electric guitar fireworks in various 70s fusion contexts, Connors’s spout with ECM saw the guitarist strip things back to their acoustic core, revealing chamber music dynamics transported by subtle nylon-string-acrobatics. In thoughtful and engaging interplay with what can retrospectively be considered an improvising “supergroup”, the guitarist presents six original compositions that blend the lyrically concrete with wide-flung open explorations – or as Jazz Journal put it several years later, “rarely have elements of ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ jazz combined so strikingly”.

Connors himself, listening to the album in 2025, seemed stunned to rediscover how deeply invested he became with the classical guitar during his 5-year stretch recording with Manfred Eicher for ECM. “It made me nostalgic for those times. I forgot how much time I had dedicated to playing this type of guitar,” Bill remembered, almost surprised by what he hears on his own recording. “Sometimes it seemed like, even though it wasn't what Manfred expected, it became exactly the album that we both wanted it to be.”