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Jazz Articles about Esbjorn Svensson
Esbjorn Svensson Trio (E.S.T.): Seven Days of Falling
by John Kelman
Now in their tenth year, the Swedish piano trio e.s.t. has gradually evolved into a significant force on the European scene, playing to packed houses and releasing records that figure on jazz and pop charts. Why they've never managed to achieve the same level of success in North America is a mystery. The more elegant alternative to the Bad Plus, they share a similar penchant for song-like structure, but with a more delicate approach, clearly rooted in Bill Evans and ...
Continue ReadingNils Landgren/Esbjorn Svensson: Swedish Folk Modern
by John Kelman
Contrary to Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch, jazz is no longer an American or, even more specifically, Afro-American art form. Jazz has, in fact, always been about incorporating music from various traditions, folk and otherwise, into something of a cultural melting pot. While American musicians including John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis looked to African music and, more close-to-home, blues as sources to be developed and evolved, so do artists from other parts of the world, including Jan Garbarek ...
Continue ReadingEsbjorn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.): Strange Place For Snow
by Jim Santella
Classic acoustic jazz need not be a mirror image of our record collections. The Esbjörn Svensson Trio proves that the art form can sound as fresh and new as it was when Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Marian McPartland, Oscar Peterson and Billy Taylor first began reaching out in new directions. Svensson, Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström swing with clarity of feeling and an intimate, soul-stirring attitude. Their compositions on this, the trio's 5th recording venture, remind us that jazz is ...
Continue ReadingE.S.T.: Somewhere Else Before
by Jim Santella
The Esbjörn Svensson Trio offers natural sounds with innovative extras. Formed in 1993, the piano trio plays straight-ahead jazz the way we remember it, and the way it should live forever. They've released six CDs in Sweden so far. This album is a collection of tracks from their last two CDs: From Gagarin's Point of View (1999) and Good Morning Susie Soho (2000). But the music of E.S.T. isn't limited to mainstream jazz revisited. In order to share their fresh ...
Continue ReadingEsbjorn Svensson Trio: Somewhere Else Before
by David Adler
A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a big article by Stuart Nicholson on the “new European jazz." The article spotlighted jazzers from overseas like Nils Petter Molvaer, “Magic" Malik Mezzadri, Bugge Wesseltoft, and Eivind Aarset (the article didn't mention Erik Truffaz)--artists who are blending acoustic jazz with turntables, drum-n-bass beats, and/or other club-culture elements. Of course, America has its own practitioners of this new music, but what's different about the Euros is they're fostering a scene, packing ...
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