Eli Winter - A Trick of the Light (2025)

A Trick of the Light is the new album by Chicago-based guitarist Eli Winter, an elegantly crafted and vibrant collection that finds the composer and bandleader at the height of his powers. The album opens with a dazzlingly intense arrangement of Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s “Arabian Nightingale” – a statement of intent that whips up a sonic storm. From there, Winter showcases his own compositions, from the muscular “Cracking the Jaw” to the dreamy expanse of the title track. Elsewhere, an abstract and concentrated rendering of Carla Bley’s masterpiece “Ida Lupino” forms the literal and emotional centerpiece of the record. Winter remains a natural collaborator, and A Trick of the Light welcomes star turns from David Grubbs, Mike Watt, Kiran Leonard (on a left-handed cittern, no less), among others. It’s testament to his restless curiosity and omnivorous musical sensibilities. In his own words, it’s a record that has “nothing to do with genre or idiom or homage or pastiche. It has everything to do with learning what the music wants, how it feels, and trusting when it wants something or doesn’t want it.”