Tord Gustavsen Trio

CD version. The Other Side is the first piano trio album by Tord Gustavsen since Being There in 2007, and it returns the Norwegian pianist to the format that made his name on ECM. Twelve pieces set his own slow, melodic writing beside three Bach chorales, a hymn tune by Ludvig Mathias Lindeman and a traditional Norwegian hymn. All are played with a spare touch rooted in gospel and the blues.

Drummer Jarle Vespestad, who played on Changing Places, The Ground and Being There, is still at the kit. The new member is double bassist Sigurd Hole, whose playing draws on folk music as well as modern jazz, and this is his recording debut with the trio. He takes the place of Harald Johnsen, the bassist on the three earlier albums. In the years between, Gustavsen had led an ensemble, a quartet and a trio with singer Simin Tander, heard on What Was Said in 2016. The title, he has said, also points to the way the trio plays, as "the other side of virtuosity". The record was made at Rainbow Studio in Oslo in January 2018 and produced by Manfred Eicher. Gustavsen explained the approach to Ian Mann of The Jazzmann: "We're interpreting the church music that I grew up with in an abstract way."

The opener, The Tunnel, sets the tone with a moody theme over a slow, gospel-coloured left hand, and features a bass solo from Hole. Lindeman's Kirken, den er et gammelt hus starts with unaccompanied bass and light electronics before the piano enters, then opens out from an impressionistic start into something gently celebratory. Bach's Schlafes Bruder is introduced by the drums and turns into one of the most groove-based moments of the set. Elsewhere Jesu, meine Freude is joined to the Norwegian hymn Jesus, det eneste, and originals such as Re-Melt and Left Over Lullaby No. 4 answer the chorales in Gustavsen's own language.

In The Guardian, John Fordham heard a trio that is "sometimes swinging and hip, more often tiptoeingly gospelly". Robert Shore wrote in Jazzwise that the playing is "spare and highly sensual" and the results "deeply romantic and sweetly hypnotic". Jane Cornwell in the Evening Standard named Taste And See the highlight of the set.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2608, first released on 31 August 2018.