Steve Swallow, Robert Creeley

So There sets eighteen readings by the poet Robert Creeley inside music written for them by bassist Steve Swallow, scored for bass, piano and string quartet. Creeley recorded his readings in 2001 and died in 2005, before the follow-up sessions they had planned. Swallow built the music around the voice he already had. The album returns to the poet he had set on Home (ECM 1160, 1980), and appeared on XtraWATT in November 2006.

Pianist Steve Kuhn, who also played on Home, is the other jazz voice, and the strings are those of the Cikada String Quartet. The album joins two sessions. The first took place on 25 August 2001 at The Make Believe Ballroom in West Shokan, New York, with Tom Mark engineering. The second followed on 27 and 28 August 2005 at the Kunsthogskolen in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug. It was edited at Flymax Studio in West Hurley and mixed back at The Make Believe Ballroom. Swallow produced it.

The music rarely follows the rhythm of the speech, and the poet often enters late. In Sufi Sam Christian Creeley is first heard well over two minutes in, after a melancholy bass solo and mournful strings. Riddle starts as a Monkish solo for Kuhn until Swallow's bass brings in the voice, and Kuhn gives Later a light, bluesy touch. Indians, Return and Blue Moon are set up in bass and piano before a word is spoken, with the quartet entering only where needed. Echo shares its title with a piece on Home, and the record closes with the short A Valentine For Pen.

In The Irish Times (2007), giving four stars, Ray Comiskey found that "Creeley's parchment-dry voice and meticulously uninflected reading seem perfect for the deceptively simple, studiously unshowy words". In his view the music has to support the readings without commenting on them or competing with them, and for the most part it does. Joe Bendel, on his blog J.B. Spins (2006), called the album "a high water-mark for jazz and poetry".

This is the CD edition, catalogue XtraWATT/12, first released on 7 November 2006.