The aptly titled Wide Open follows four previous items from this increasingly impressive Danish piano trio. Their debut Yonder (2016), was followed by Little North (2020), Finding Seagulls (2021) and Familiar Places (2022). I reviewed Little North, and Derek Ansell welcomed the “moody, melodic” ambience of Seagulls.
Invited to contribute the sleeve-note to Familiar Places, I appreciated both the (integrated) breadth of the programme and the care the trio had taken to expand their tonal range, with occasional, telling contributions from Victor Spasov (elg) and Kasper Tranberg (t).
Excellent as Familiar Places remains, it’s great to hear the original trio concept again, set in service of music as lyrical and flowing, as distilled in execution yet expansive in poetic effect, as one might wish. And look out for Little North’s tempered blue and funky contributions to the upcoming debut album on April Records by Danish vocalist Nana Rashid (whose reflective and questing work can bring Nina Simone and Radka Toneff to mind).
Can one have too much of a good thing? In the present instance, my answer would be a resounding “No!” Sample, e.g., the intelligence and beauty of the spare ostinato bass figure and initial “fluttering” drum accents which set off the spacious and mesmeric pianism of Floating, or the patience with which the astutely cast measures of the mysterious Elna and With Four Shadows evolve.
Three short, diversely inflected improvisations punctuate a programme which, ad libitum and exquisitely cast as it chiefly is, is very much rhythmically alive: witness the swelling trio dynamics of Dissolving Points or the probing solo arco power of Swell, the prepared piano figures of Improv 3 or the delicious weight of Rasmussen’s pizzicato lines on Lullaby. Superb music, this, from first note to last.
Discography
Improv n 1; Floating; Sunyata; Improv n 2; Elna; With Four Shadows; Dissolving Points; Swell; Improv n 3; Lullaby For A Say Fly; Isolation Song (39.14)
Benjamin Nørholm Jacobsen (p); Martin Brunberg Rasmussen (b); Lasse Jacobsen (d). Copenhagen, 8-9 May 2021.
April Records APR 102CD
