Wolfgang Muthspiel

During the early 1990s, Wolfgang Muthspiel emerged as a jazz guitar hero, with a warm, lyrical sound and refined technique. And though, in the years since, he may not have gotten quite as much attention as players like Kurt Rosenwinkel and Julian Lage, he has maintained a consistently satisfying output of about one album per year, while continuing to develop his own intelligent and atmospheric voice in the six-string realm of modern jazz.

Muthspiel recorded Angular Blues, his most recent album as leader and his fourth for ECM, in Tokyo following a three-night run at the Cotton Club with longtime collaborators Brian Blade on drums and Scott Colley on bass. The album features earthy originals and a pair of standards—“Everything I Love” and “I’ll Remember April”—a first for