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

Label: ECM, 2018

Lineup – Bobo Stenson: piano; Anders Jormin: acoustic bass; Jon Fält: drums.

Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson’s musical aesthetics is all elegance and graciousness. He earned a sterling reputation while accompanying the brilliant saxophonists Charles Lloyd and Jan Garbarek, as well as trumpeter Tomasz Stanko.

As a leader, Stenson gained notoriety with his classic piano trio, which went through several changes along the way. Bassist Anders Jormin replaced Arild Andersen in 1993, right after the trio’s debut, and since 2008, Jon Fält earned the drummer’s chair, replacing Paul Motian, who had stopped by in 2005, also replacing the original member Jon Christensen.

Following a hiatus of six years, Stenson and his associates re-emerge with Contra La Indecision, another poetic work comprising ravishing originals (one by the bandleader, five by Jormin, and one by the collective) and world-class interpretations of compositions by Erik Satie, Bela Bartok, Silvio Rodriguez, and Frederic Mompou.

Just like it happened on Cantando (ECM, 2008), they open the album with a tune by the Cuban singer/songwriter Silvio Rodriguez, “Cancion Contra La Indecision”, which battles against the indecision with an enviable resoluteness of soft pianistic touch and tuneful melody throughout.

Jormin's tunes pervade a modernistic vagrancy that is quite absorbing - “Doubt Thou The Stars” starts delicately with Fält’s fully-integrated drumming, but turns into an awe-inspiring sort of dance played in six, revealing much of the trio’s spirit; “Oktoberhavet” is a richly harmonized song advancing at a simple triple tempo; “Stilla” boasts a magnanimous bass groove that, feeling like a rock riff, is grist to the mill for Stenson’s deft interventions; and “Three Shades of a House” turns to its advantage the independence of the three instrumentalists to compose a picturesque musical setting containing bright piano notes, occasional bass harmonics and fainted arco cries, metallic clanks and scratches, and plenty of conversational cymbal flair.

Whereas Stenson’s sole composition, “Alice”, was penned with relatively innocuous abstraction, featuring crying bowed bass and resolute brushwork, “Kalimba Impressions” is a short collective improvisation with a nice percussive flow.

Contrasting elements within a body of work can be extremely valuable and Stenson opted to deliver the Slovak folk song “Wedding Song From Poniky” by Bartok with an introductory rubato feel, subsequently throwing in some dramatic jolts on the lower register to shake the free-floating romanticism and dreamy classical intonations of the tune.

They render Satie’s “Élégie” with a blossoming vernal atmosphere and Mompou’s “Cancion Y Danza VI”, taken from Cançons I Danses collection, with intimate lyricism and ultimately groovy propulsion set off by Jormin.

Avoiding standards in his repertoire, Stenson displays the highly developed language that has been characterizing his cultivated playing throughout all these years. He also evinces a distinctive complicity with his trio mates, which obviously has positive repercussions in their sound. And how they seemed to have fun riding these sonic waves!

Favorite Tracks:
02 - Doubt Thou The Stars ► 06 - Cancion Y Danza VI ► 10 - Stilla