Steve Kuhn

Trance is the album Steve Kuhn recorded for ECM in New York in November 1974, released in February 1975. Kuhn was already a player of long standing. Fifteen years earlier he had been the original pianist in John Coltrane's first quartet. His October Suite with Gary McFarland had set early benchmarks for what came to be called chamber jazz. On this record he moves between acoustic and electric piano, with a quartet that leans towards modal jazz and open forms.

The band is Steve Swallow on electric bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Sue Evans on percussion, with Kuhn on piano, electric piano and, briefly, voice. Kuhn wrote all eight pieces. The sessions took place at Generation Sound Studios, with Tony May as recording engineer. Jan Erik Kongshaug mixed the album and Manfred Eicher produced it.

The title track opens on a repeated bass figure from Swallow, over which Kuhn plays dreamy modal piano. A Change Of Face brings in the electric piano and sounds more conventionally jazzy. Something Everywhere, the longest piece at almost eight minutes, has a Latin feel and gives Swallow room for an extended solo on bass guitar. Silver is the only solo piano track, short and lyrical. The record closes with Life's Backward Glance, where Kuhn recites a text over his own playing, the oddest moment on the album.

ECM quotes All About Jazz: "Trance is as unpredictable as it is compelling." BBC Music Magazine wrote that "you could scarcely ask for a more powerful yet responsive support team" than Swallow, DeJohnette and Evans, and heard Kuhn at his most direct and open. Reviewing the reissue in Jazz Journal in 2019, Roger Farbey compared the ostinato patterns of the title track to the minimalism of Terry Riley and Steve Reich. He also called Kuhn stylistically divergent and nonconformist.

This CD edition of ECM 1052, first issued in 1975, was reissued on 17 May 2019 in the Touchstones series, in a cardboard sleeve. ECM began the series in 2008 to bring key catalogue albums back into circulation, and added fifty titles in 2019 for the label's fiftieth anniversary.