Trygve Seim

Helsinki Songs brings Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim back to the classic jazz quartet for the first time in about two decades. His eighth album as a leader for ECM collects eleven of his own tunes, written mostly in an apartment in the Finnish capital, and they are songs in the plain sense: strong melodies, slow tempos and a lyricism that rarely raises its voice.

Seim plays tenor and soprano saxophones, and over the years his writing has drawn on Nordic tradition and on Egyptian, Indian and Armenian music, which he studied in part in Cairo. Kristjan Randalu, the Estonian pianist, was new to ECM here and takes many of the solos. Mats Eilertsen is on double bass and the Finnish drummer Markku Ounaskari, who can move from the dramatic freedom of Edward Vesala's school to the simplest time, completes the line-up. The album was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo in January 2018, engineered by Peer Espen Ursfjord and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Many of the pieces are dedications. Sol's Song and Ciaccona per Embrik are written for Seim's daughter and son, and Birthday Song grew from four notes and a chord he gave Eilertsen for his fortieth birthday. Katya's Dream was prompted by the film Coco and Igor and imagines Stravinsky's first wife, who gave up her own ambitions for his. The title track rests on a four-note ostinato from Eilertsen, with snare and cymbals building beneath tenor and piano, and Sorrow March has a processional gait that lifts in its resolution. Morning Song ends with a coda in homage to Jimmy Webb, and the closing Yes Please Both, the briefest piece, lets some of Ornette Coleman's spirit in.

Critics welcomed the change of setting after the unusual line-up of Rumi Songs (2016), with voice, accordion and cello. Thom Jurek at AllMusic heard "rich melodic engagement and painterly textures" and placed the record among the standouts of Seim's catalogue. Rob Adams in The Herald recalled that Seim had tended to avoid the standard quartet since his award-winning ECM debut Different Rivers in 2001, and praised Randalu as "a special talent". Simon Adams in Jazz Journal noted that nothing moves much above a slow stroll, yet the quartet coheres perfectly.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2607, released on 31 August 2018.