Esbjorn Svensson, a Swedish pianist and leader of the jazz trio E.S.T., one of Europe's most popular ensembles, which was to appear in New York this Saturday as part of the J.V.C. Festival, died on June 14 in Stockholm. He was 44.
Mr. Svensson was killed in a scuba diving accident in the Stockholm archipelago, said the manager of the trio, Burkhard Hopper.
A composer of genre-bending music that drew widely on influences outside of jazz, especially niches of pop like funk and hip-hop, Mr. Svensson was a pop artist of sorts, melding lyrical melodies and electronic effects, classical grandeur and the propulsion of rock, a sumptuous piano sound and frenetic improvisation.
His ensemble, the Esbjorn Svensson Trio, better known as E.S.T., was unsung in the United States in spite of being featured on the cover of Downbeat magazine. But it has a substantial following almost every place else with a jazz scene, especially in Europe, where the trio often packs mostly young people into large auditoriums usually reserved for rock bands and augments the music with light effects, fog machines and multimedia presentations.
