Label: ECM Records, 2023
Personnel - Bobo Stenson: piano; Anders Jormin: bass; Jon Fält: drums.
Sphere is another beautiful album by the 78-year-old Swedish pianist and composer Bobo Stenson who, with a unique style, brings his trio to new heights. The musicians involved in the project are Anders Jormin, a poetic bassist who has been accompanying him since the mid ‘80s, and Jon Fält, a sensitive drummer who first joined them in 2008 for the album Cantando (ECM).
Per Nørgård’s “You Shall Plant a Tree” opens and closes the album with two different versions, immersing us in a vast sea of tranquility and deep feelings. The second track, “Unquestioned Answer”, is in memory of the modernist American composer Charles Ives, taking the same title as one of his unusual musical works. It’s a spacious Stenson piece shrouded in mystery and restraint where the trio explores emotional atmospheres with occasional abstract scraps and loose threads.
The rubato dramatics of “Spring”, a classical composition by Sven-Erik Bäck, contrast with the palpable terrain offered by “Kingdom of Coldness”, one of the most bewitching cuts on the album. The latter was penned by Jormin, who makes a good use of the arco to define a circular ostinato; Fält creates an irregular stream through hair-raising cymbal scratches and brushed skins; and Stenson is as lucid and sensitive as ever in his melodic candor.
Stenson, who played with legendary saxophonists Charles Lloyd and Jan Garbarek as well as with trumpeters Don Cherry and Tomasz Stanko, doesn’t hide the classical intonation on Bäck’s “Communion Psalm”, touching our souls with an introspective sense of freedom. His superlative melodies are even more intense on the exquisite “The Red Flower”, on which the bassist and the drummer build a subtle, stably rooted foundation.
The immense beauty of Sibelius’ “Valsette Op 40 No. 1” is possible due to the extraordinary cohesiveness of a one-of-a-kind trio that knows how to navigate spaces with both tantalizing vagueness and conscious direction. Virtuosity lives here with no need to show it off.
Favorite Tracks:
04 - Kingdom of Coldness ► 06 - The Red Flower ► 08 - Valsette Op 40 No. 1