Sinikka Langeland, Arve Henriksen, Trygve Seim, Anders Jormin, Markku Ounaskari, Trio Mediaeval

The Magical Forest brings together the Starflowers quintet of the Norwegian singer and kantele player Sinikka Langeland with the three voices of Trio Mediæval. It is a cycle of nine songs by Langeland built on myths of the world tree, the pillar that joins earth and heaven. Folk melody, old rune-song texts and open improvisation meet in a sound that feels archaic and of the present at once.

The quintet first recorded for ECM on Starflowers in 2007, with the same line-up heard here. Arve Henriksen plays trumpet, Trygve Seim tenor and soprano saxophones, Anders Jormin double bass and Markku Ounaskari percussion. Trio Mediæval are Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Berit Opheim. The title work was commissioned in 2012 by the Finnskog exhibition and the Oslo International Church Music Festival. The album was recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo in February 2015, with Jan Erik Kongshaug engineering and Manfred Eicher producing.

The forest of the title is Finnskogen, the wooded border region with Sweden where Langeland lives, settled by Finnish migrants in the 17th century. The opening Puun Loitsu sets a traditional rune song text from that region, with the trio answering Langeland's chant over long kantele tones. Jacob's Dream retells the biblical vision of the ladder and opens in its second half into an improvisation for Seim and Henriksen. The title piece is instrumental, with bird-like calls from the horns over Jormin's bowed bass. Elsewhere Kamui takes its name from the Ainu word for god.

John Kelman of All About Jazz called it "hands down, the most impressive album of Langeland's career" in 2016. John Fordham in The Guardian heard "a stream of entrancing sound in which long, ringing harp tones drift across vocal laments and thudding low drumbeats". He also compared Henriksen's slow motifs on Jacob's Dream to the Miles Davis Sketches of Spain track Solea. Henning Bolte of London Jazz News, present at the night premiere in the forest, heard "a third entity" that is neither ambient music nor ordinary song.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2448, first released in July 2016. The booklet carries the song texts with English translations.