Bobo Stenson: piano; Anders Jormin:double-bass; Jon Fält: drums

“Cantando”, from the Spanish word for “singing”, is the title of a characteristically far-ranging programme by the resourceful Bobo Stenson Trio. Alongside group improvisation and new compositions (including two tunes by bassist Anders Jormin), the Swedish trio play “Love, I’ve Found You”, a standard which Stenson has loved in both Miles Davis and Wynton Kelly versions, back to back with the 1907 “Liebesode” of Alban Berg. Unexpected juxtapositions belong to this group’s methodology: on the “Serenity” album of 1999, Stenson already performed “Die Nachtigall, also from Berg’s “Sieben frühe Lieder” cycle.

The trio play, twice, “Song of Ruth” by Czech composer Petr Eben, who died just a few weeks before this session. A piece originally scored for soprano and organ, it is transformed here. Astor Piazzolla’s intensely expressive tango “Chiqulin de Bachin”, dances at a sultry slow pace. Also from the Latin American corner: the supple “Olivia”, by Cuban songwriter and folk/protest singer Silvio Rodriguez, another Stenson Trio favourite.

The lilting “Don’s Kora Song” is a tune Bobo often played during his long association with the late Don Cherry: “Don had a real affinity for West African music and was strongly inspired by it. When we travelled, there would often be tapes of music from Mali playing in the bus: the sound of that has been in my ears for years.” Cherry also used to tip Stenson off to rarer Ornette Coleman tunes, but the uncommon “A Fixed Goal” reached the pianist by another route. It is one of the pieces Ornette played during his latter day association with Joachim Kuhn, relayed to Bobo by French bassist Jean-Paul Celea. No other pianist plays Coleman like Bobo does, however, with the darting horn-like figures in the right hand, and an exultant feeling .......
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