Bobo Stenson Trio
Indicum
ECM 279 4575 **** RECOMMENDED
Young musicians relate to the past in different ways. Some adhere to it closely, some refuse to at all, consciously, at least. In jazz the past is always present, just walk into any record shop or trawl online, the new artists’ music is displayed side by side with that of the masters; at concerts they pay tribute to the greats while at the same time implicitly or explicitly make as if to say: "this is me now; that is them, then." Take the remarkable young Hamburg-based Swedish pianist Martin Tingvall who in the summer during some press interviews was talking about how much he revered the music of his countryman Bobo Stenson, the longstanding ECM artist whose new album Indicum was released just yesterday. It comes after quite a gap of four years since his last trio outing in the company of fellow Swedes bassist Anders Jormin (Stenson and Jormin’s playing relationship encompassing long spells with Charles Lloyd and Tomasz Stanko) and drummer Jon Fält.

Recorded towards the end of last year in southern Switzerland, Indicum, for me Stenson’s most inspiring work since War Orphans recorded in 1997, possibly even surpassing that considerable achievement in terms of sheer rhapsodic expression, begins with a Bill Evans tune, ‘Your Story’, which itself appeared on a live album Letter to Evan recorded at Ronnie Scott’s in 1980, a record that incidentally had to wait some 14 years for release. The Stenson trio album continues with a pair of tracks credited to the trio including the title track. Then there’s a Wolf Biermann protest song called ‘Ermutigung’ (meaning ‘Encouragement’), trio-penned ‘Indigo’, a Jormin composition, folk song by Argentinian composer Ariel Ramírez, George Russell’s ‘Event V1’, a Norwegian traditional rendition of ‘Ave Maria’, and the final three tracks, respectively, by composer Carl Nielson, Jormin once more, and a contemporary composition by the Norwegian Ola Gjello.

At 68 Stenson is well into his prime, and this is a beautiful and at times quite moving record, thoughtful in the best possible sense encompassing special musical insight, with considerable improvising candour and a rugged determination, but one that also indicates the vision of an improviser at the top of his game who has searched within himself at least that’s how it seems to appear given the nocturnal atmospheres evoked. Stenson is also to be heard on the recently reissued and frequently revelatory 1970s Dansere period recordings with Jan Garbarek so his present and past collide at least in terms of audio documentation. Stenson relates to what has gone before by concerning himself with the present on this new record, the here and now. Those who quite sensibly follow in his footsteps know that his past could very well be their present. Stephen Graham

Bobo Stenson pictured above