Bobo Stenson Trio

Contra la Indecisión is the first album in six years by the Swedish trio of pianist Bobo Stenson, bassist Anders Jormin and drummer Jon Fält. The same line-up was last heard on Indicum in 2012. As on earlier records, the programme mixes outside material with original writing. A song by the Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, a Bartók arrangement of a Slovak folk song, Satie and Mompou sit beside five pieces by Jormin, one by Stenson and a group improvisation. The trio makes all of it sound like its own music.

Jormin and Stenson have played together for more than thirty years, from the cooperative band Rena Rama and Jormin's 1984 album Nordic Light onwards. Stenson's trio went through several drummers, among them Jon Christensen and Paul Motian. In 2007 Stenson invited Fält, then little known outside the Swedish free scene, to play a few pieces at a Stockholm club. He has stayed ever since. The album was recorded in May 2017 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, with Stefano Amerio as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer.

The title track opens the record, as a Rodríguez song had opened Cantando in 2007. It is a yearning melody over light, brushed time, with Stenson adding counter-melodies and small harmonic turns. Satie's Élégie begins with open chords left hanging, then finds a rocking groove that carries a bright piano solo. Kalimba Impressions is a collective improvisation credited to Jormin and Fält. It grows from an ostinato that Fält plays on two kalimbas of different sizes before carrying the figure onto the drum kit. Jormin's bowed bass leads Oktoberhavet, and Bartók's Wedding Song from Poniky turns into something slow and wintry.

Reviewers singled out the balance of the three players. Barry Witherden wrote in BBC Music Magazine that "this beautiful session proves that there is still much to be explored and revealed within this simple format". In London Jazz News in 2018, Mike Collins noted that "the trio only ever sound like themselves", whatever the source of the material.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2582, released on 19 January 2018.