Jazz breaking news: Tord Gustavsen Returns With New Quartet Album Featuring A Cheltenham Jazz Festival Commission

It promises to be one of the first major European jazz releases of 2012.

The past year though has been one suffused with a certain sadness for Gustavsen, as former colleague bassist Harald Johnsen, of the Tord Gustavsen Trio, died at just 41 in July following a heart attack. Gustavsen with Johnsen and the quartet’s drummer Jarle Vespestad were known collectively for their quiet and contemplative almost-hymnal style, recording between 2001 and 2006. The records they made together Changing Places, The Ground and Being There proved popular and sold in relatively large numbers across Europe, remarkably as the trio’s fame in the UK grew mainly through word of mouth and some limited radio exposure. Johnsen left the trio as a result of illness, with the pianist then expanding his group to create the Tord Gustaven Ensemble featuring the new face of Norwegian jazz saxophone Tore Brunborg and singer Kristin Asbjørnsen.

The quartet – Gustavsen with Brunborg, double bassist Mats Eilertsen (whose own record SkyDive made a strong impression this year) and Vespestad – recorded The Well earlier this year in Oslo and it features commissions from both the Cheltenham Jazz Festival and the Oslo International Church Music Festival. Speaking of the title track Gustavsen has said in a recent interview that “‘The Well’ is a bit denser, and darker”, but it’s still, in the classic ECM way all about “breath and the space between the notes”, a quality that makes his approach distinctive and also influential as even a pianist as utterly contrasting in style as talented pianist Matthew Bourne can occasionally, as at a recent Bishopsgate Institute concert, be found to have absorbed something of his phrasing and sense of suspended animation.

Gustavsen for a while became the darling of the late night Radio 3 programme Late Junction and was championed by the programme’s presenter, the Norwegian music specialist Fiona Talkington. He is that rare jazz artist whose music appeals to both a jazz and classical fan base while the quartet’s saxophonist Brunborg brings to mind the music of 1970s-period Jan Garbarek, and Brunborg’s work has also decorated such fine recent albums as Meadow’s superb Edition Records release Blissful Ignorance, which saw the saxophonist teamed up with the great English pianist John Taylor and Food drummer Thomas Strønen.

There are 11 tracks on The Well: ‘Prelude’, ‘Playing’, the sombre and ascetic ‘Suite’ the Cheltenham commission performed at this year’s festival, at more than eight minutes the longest track, plus ‘Communion’, ‘Circling’, ‘Glasgow Intro’, ‘On Every Corner’, ‘The Well’, ‘Communion var,’, ‘Intuition’, and ‘Inside’.

– Stephen Graham

Pictured above: Mats Eilertsen (left), Tord Gustavsen, Tore Brunborg and Jarle Vespestad    

Photo: Hans Fredrik Asbjørnsen/ ECM Records 

The Tord Gustavsen Quartet return to the UK for a major 10-date tour in March 2012. Dates are Turner Sims, Southampton (Friday 16 March); Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester (17 March); Queen Elizabeth Hall London (18 March); The Apex, Bury St Edmunds (19 March); The Edge Arts Centre, Much Wenlock (20 March); The Venue, Leeds College of Music in Leeds (21 March); St George’s, Bristol (22 March); CBSO Centre Birmingham (23 March); Queen's Hall, Edinburgh (24 March); and Gateshead Jazz Festival, the Sage in Gateshead (25 March).