Dino Saluzzi, Palle Danielsson, José María Saluzzi

Responsorium is a trio album by the Argentinian bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi with his son José María Saluzzi on acoustic guitar and the Swedish bassist Palle Danielsson. It picks up where their earlier trio record Cité de la Musique left off, with Danielsson in the place of Marc Johnson. All nine pieces are Saluzzi's own, songs of yearning, sadness and hope that draw on tango and on the criollo roots music of his country.

The album was recorded in November 2001 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. With Danielsson on board the harmony widens, and the three players have more room to move inside the structures of the compositions. As the German magazine Stereo observed, the bassist's sparse, full-toned accents leave the harmony open for improvisation, and the younger Saluzzi is far more than an accompanist. Wolfgang Sandner of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung read the title literally, as a solo song with choral answer, and heard the trio's exchanges in that light.

The record opens with A mi hermano Celso, dedicated to Saluzzi's brother Celso. Responso por la muerte de Cruz, a lament of nine minutes, lets the guitar carry much of the weight over the low register of the bass. The fourth track is the first to pick up speed, with the tango pulse at its centre. In Cuchara Danielsson's spare punctuation comes to the front. Stereo also heard Saluzzi phrase at times like a wind player. In Songlines, Chris Moss heard a bandoneon closer to the church organ than to the barrel organs of early tango.

ECM lists a Songlines Top of the World for the album and a Choc du mois from both Jazzman and Le Monde de la Musique. Audio made it its Jazz CD des Monats. In The Independent, Phil Johnson called it "an absolute triumph", following "a marvellously airy, dancing aesthetic". He singled out the quick, daring ensemble passages, set against the leader's subtle improvising. Don Heckman of the Los Angeles Times traced its rhythmic drive to Danielsson and to the growing jazz skills of José María Saluzzi.

This is the CD edition, ECM 1816, first released on 27 January 2003.