Mira is the first studio album by the trio of Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, saxophonist Tommy Smith and drummer Paolo Vinaccia. After the fiery concert recording Live At Belleville, which helped earn Andersen the Prix du Musicien Européen from France's Académie du Jazz in 2008, the three turned their energy inwards, towards soulful ballads and slow, free-floating explorations of sound.
The album was recorded in December 2012 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug engineering and Manfred Eicher producing. Andersen plays double bass and electronics, Smith tenor saxophone and the Japanese shakuhachi, and Vinaccia drums. Andersen wrote most of the eleven tracks, Smith contributed the brief Kangiten and shared Raijin with Vinaccia, and the closing Stevtone is co-credited to Kirsten Bråten Berg. The one standard is Burt Bacharach's Alfie.
The pairing of Andersen's muscular bass and Smith's vaulting tenor is at the centre of the record, as it was on Celebration, recorded live in Glasgow in October 2010 with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra under Smith's direction. Bygone opens it at a nocturnal, gently swinging pace, with Smith carrying the melody over bass and drums. Alfie, the least expected choice, becomes a slow feature for Smith's tenor. In Raijin he switches to shakuhachi for a ritual-like duet with Vinaccia's drums, and Kangiten is a short solo for the same flute. Andersen's electronics colour Reparate with layered, blurred voices, and on Stevtone they spread into a drone under the saxophone. The title track rests on a full, round bass sound that keeps the background as present as the foreground.
For John Kelman of All About Jazz it was "a long overdue and equally impressive follow-up" to the live album, showing the trio in a different light. In the Norwegian magazine Side 2, Tor Hammerø asked in his headline whether it might already be the record of the year, though it had only just been released. The German Jazz Echo summed up the change of mood in its headline, the calm after the storm.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2307, released on 17 January 2014, in a jewel case with an O-card and an eight-page fold-out insert.
