When an ensemble includes NEA Jazz Master Marilyn Crispell, Norwegian folk visionary Benedicte Maurseth, legendary Czech improviser Iva Bittová, and interspecies clarinetist–author David Rothenberg, you can expect something extraordinary. Four Fold, released November 21, 2025, is far more than a collaboration—it’s a convergence of worlds, languages, and species. It’s a record woven from birdsong transcriptions, folk traditions, avant-garde improvisation, and the distinct creative spirits of four musicians who have each pushed boundaries within the ECM Records orbit and beyond.
The album’s origin story is as rich as its sound. What began in 2018 as a residency at Banlieues Bleues in Pantin, Paris—a cultural crossroads buzzing with global influence—slowly evolved into a rare sonic ecosystem. The group used Olivier Messiaen’s original birdsong transcriptions as a conceptual launching pad, releasing their improvisations into wild, intuitive territory. A year later, the quartet expanded with the addition of Iva Bittová in Woodstock, and in 2019, the music was captured in a single, intense day at Nevessa Studios.
Across 11 tracks, Four Fold unfurls as a tapestry of quartets, trios, and duos where no moment repeats and every gesture feels alive. It’s music that breathes, shifts, challenges, invites. The interplay is instinctive—Maurseth’s introspective Hardanger fiddle lines, Crispell’s harmonic abstraction, Bittová’s elemental vocalizations, and Rothenberg’s clarinet gliding like an animal learning new ways to move.
In the album’s visuals, photographer Ingo J. Biermann—known for his ECM portraiture—captures that same organic spirit, providing an aesthetic bridge between the sound and the musicians behind it.
We sat down with David Rothenberg to dive into the making of this album, the unpredictability of improvisational chemistry, and the way nature continues to shape his musical identity.
Interview with David Rothenberg
David: I had played with each of these musicians on and off for many years, and I really wanted to hear what would happen if we all got together in the same place at the same time. Each has such impeccable musicianship and independent, strong personalities. How would everyone sonically get along?
David: We were in the Banlieues, just outside the city of Paris in Pantin.. A suburb full of people from all over the world. That immediately gave a sense of globalism to the project. We had a whole week to experiment together and explore, really a luxury in the traveling world of improvised music.
David: I have long been influenced by bird songs in my own music, and was early on impressed by the meticulousness of the way Olivier Messiaen could transcribe these songs right in the field, without even recording them. I even traveled to Australia twenty one years ago to listen to the lyrebirds with the same guy who took Messiaen out to hear them, Syd Curtis. Messiaen’s student François-Bernard Mâche came to our Paris show… it was an honor to see him there.
David: By the time we recorded this record, nearly all traces of Messiaen had flown off into the wind. But Marilyn used Messiaen’s harmonic abstraction to fine effect. What he called “modes of limited transposition,” with a lot of augmented chords, allows every harmony to stand independently, and gently morph into the next one with remarkable fluidity.
David: If you go to an Iva Bittová show and tell her afterwards, “I loved it,” she might look you straight in the eyes and say, “no you didn’t. If you did, you would jump right onto the stage and join in.” That’s how it is in Czechia, and she brought this sudden unpredictable energy into the recording studio too.
David: Somehow it worked. We knew this was the only time we had, and we had to make it count.
David: The fact that the duos, trios, and the full quartet each said something different and collective, where the individuality of all these solo forces combined into something that could not have been expected.
David: Marilyn always tells me that even if we don’t hear samples of birds, their inventiveness remains in the way we have learned to play after inhabiting their songs. The original recording had more bird samples, but we gently removed them to acknowledge that in some way, each of us had become a different kind of animal than before we started.
David: It was an honor to have Ingo there, we’ve been good friends for a long time. In his mission to photographs all ECM artists, he came to us straight from shooting Jack DeJohnette. It is quite hard to photograph the inner sould of musicians, and Ingo can do it.
David: Time for this crew to hit the road. Hopefully all the positive response we’re getting from this album that had been sitting around in the vaults for some time now will lead someone, somewhere, to invite us out on tour.
Closing Thoughts
Four Fold isn’t just a meeting of four remarkable musicians—it’s a living document of intuition, trust, and sonic curiosity. Recorded in one breath yet shaped over years, it stands as a testament to what can happen when artists let the unexpected take the lead. Whether exploring the mathematics of birdsong or the organic chaos of spontaneous interplay, this quartet has created a world entirely its own.
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