Ad Lucem is a song cycle in Latin by the Swedish bassist Anders Jormin, written for an ensemble he formed for the Swedish Jazz Celebration 2010. Jormin wrote the Latin lyrics himself and added a poem by the Danish writer Pia Tafdrup, setting them for two singers and three improvisers. "Latin seems to carry an almost magic ability to embrace and express whatever humanity has needed to communicate," he explained, and the album tests that idea against the immediacy of improvisation.
The voices belong to Mariam Wallentin and Erika Angell. Fredrik Ljungkvist, one of Sweden's leading free saxophonists, plays clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone, and drummer Jon Fält is Jormin's partner in the Bobo Stenson Trio. The session took place in January 2011 at Studio Epidemin in Göteborg, engineered by Johannes Lundberg, with Manfred Eicher as executive producer. It follows Xieyi and In Winds, In Light as Jormin's own ECM projects. On the label he is better known as a sideman for Charles Lloyd, Tomasz Stańko and Don Cherry.
Twelve pieces run just over fifty minutes. Hic et nunc ("here and now") opens with bowed bass and distant drums beneath the two voices. Inter semper et numquam sets Tafdrup's text. Two pieces come from the group as a whole: Vigor, credited to Jormin and Fält, and the 34-second Lignum, credited to all five. Ljungkvist's clarinet carries the melody of Vesper est, and his tenor is at its most delicate on Lux. The album ends with Matutinum - Clausula, a one-minute coda to the earlier Matutinum.
Reviewers valued its patience. In Jazzthing, Reinhard Köchl heard vocal scores that open up spaces for the instrumentalists to explore from within, and insisted the result was no montage of two genres but still jazz. "Here is music that gently unfurls, making its point by its refusal to yield its secrets immediately," wrote Stuart Nicholson in Jazzwise. John Kelman of All About Jazz noted how rarely Jormin records as a leader, and concluded that "any new recording from Jormin proves well worth the wait".
This is the CD edition, ECM 2232, released on 16 March 2012.
