As It Was gathers on four CDs all the albums made for ECM Records by the trio of drummer Peter Erskine, British pianist John Taylor and Swedish bassist Palle Danielsson. You Never Know, Time Being, As It Is and Juni were recorded between 1992 and 1997. The box appeared in July 2016, a year after Taylor's death, and it puts his writing in the foreground, since he was the group's main composer.
The three had first played together as the rhythm section of Kenny Wheeler's touring band. All four albums were recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, produced by Manfred Eicher and engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug. You Never Know dates from July 1992, Time Being from November 1993, As It Is from September 1995 and Juni from July 1997. Erskine and Danielsson also brought pieces, and the repertoire is topped up with tunes by Vince Mendoza and Wheeler, a Cole Porter standard and songs by William Walton and Peter Warlock. In the booklet Erskine explains the idea: to "get audiences to lean forward in their seats", treating solos as "non-events".
The first album opens with Taylor's New Old Age, a slowly shifting piano figure over Danielsson's bass, with the drums entering late. That patience runs through the set. Walton's Touch Her Soft Lips and Part, on As It Is, is reduced to a spare, quiet reading, and Mendoza's Esperança on the same album is purely lyrical. Juni is the freest and most abstract of the four, though it still finds a rocking groove on Erskine's The Ant & The Elk and hard swing on Twelve.
Reviewing the box for DownBeat, John Ephland gave it five stars and wrote: "This stuff hasn't aged a bit. Probably never will." In BBC Music Magazine, Roger Thomas found the trio's rethinking of the piano trio "refreshing even now". In The Irish Times Cormac Larkin heard Erskine turning, across these records, from a good drummer into a great musician.
This is the four-CD box on ECM Records, catalogue number ECM 2490-93, released on 1 July 2016 in the Old & New Masters series, which collects earlier ECM albums in box sets. The booklet has new liner notes by John Kelman.
