Terje Rypdal (b1947), who helped define the ECM jazz sound, composed Lux Aeterna in response to a request from the Molde Jazz Festival. The commission was to produce something similar to the second movement of his Double Concerto (1992, released on ECM last year) in celebration of the new organ at Molde Church. Few instruments are less suited to jazz than a church organ, so it is no surprise that the music for soloist Iver Kleive is more Reger than Jimmy Smith.

For the New Series, ECM’s contemporary composition imprint, label-owner Manfred Eicher has recruited composers like Arvo Pärt and Giya Kancheli. Despite having very different musical backgrounds from those of ECM jazz stalwarts like Rypdal, Palle Mikkelborg and Jan Garbarek, these composers fit into the house style, while such compositions as Lux Aeterna question the relevance of a fixed frontier between a primarily improvised and a primarily composed genre. The third movement, with its elegantly melancholy muted trumpet, and the final movement, with its luminous lines for soprano, most effectively validate this approach. Elsewhere, when garish organ chords are unleashed, or Rypdal’s guitar soars in a kind of bel canto/pomp-rock fusion, the sense of balance is less sure.

The first movement introduces a limpid theme for strings. The voicings, decorated with tinkling piano and percussion, sometimes get schmaltzy, but Rypdal can score more acerbically. The second movement recreates a mountain wind that frightened Rypdal when he ran away as a child. Icy string sonorities are intensified by electronically-modified legato guitar elaborating the theme.

Åshild Stubø Gundersen’s contribution is the highlight, but there are enough additional passages of beauty to compensate for the occasional over-egging.