Bobo Stenson Trio

Indicum is the Bobo Stenson Trio at its most open. The programme moves from free group improvisation to a Carl Nielsen song, tunes by Bill Evans and George Russell, a Norwegian hymn, a Wolf Biermann protest song and Argentine folk material. Wide-ranging repertoire has long been the mark of Stenson's albums, but here the far-flung sources become one organic, breathing music. The record follows Cantando and adds a stronger share of collective improvisation to the trio's way of working.

Stenson has been an ECM artist since the first years of the label. He played in the 1970s quartet with Jan Garbarek and later in the bands of Charles Lloyd and Tomasz Stanko. His partners are the Swedish bassist Anders Jormin, a long-standing member of the trio and the composer of two pieces here, and the drummer Jon Fält. The album was recorded in November and December 2011 at the Auditorio RSI, Radio Svizzera, in Lugano, with Stefano Amerio as engineer and Manfred Eicher producing.

The disc opens with Stenson alone on Evans's Your Story, dedicated to Paul Motian, who had played with both pianists. Three collective pieces, wittily titled Indikon, Indicum and Indigo, are spread through the sequence. In the title track Jormin's bowed bass meets sombre chords and Fält's cymbal scrapes and mallet rumbles, while Indikon rides on Fält's percussion and a loose bolero pulse. Ariel Ramírez's La Peregrinación is taken at an airy, dancing pace. The album closes with Ubi Caritas, a choral piece by the Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo, here carried by Jormin's high arco sound. The balance is the point: clear-edged lyrical piano, a bass rooted and sparing in its choice of notes, and detailed, textural drumming.

Reviewers heard a group of unusual focus. Writing in London Jazz News in 2012, Chris Parker called it "one of the most focused and subtly interactive units in contemporary jazz". In The Irish Times the same year, Cormac Larkin described the album as "another shaft of light in an already luminous discography". Alessandro Topa in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung singled out Fält's minimal drum kit, played with sticks, brushes and bare hands, and the way it locks with Jormin's singing bass.

CD edition, ECM 2233, first released by ECM in October 2012.