Arild Andersen with Vassilis Tsabropoulos and John Marshall
The Triangle

It's not easy to define beauty. Beauty is a thrill, a hypnosis, a charm. A daydream. A magma of emotions, joy, fulfillment, and even fear. Fear of losing it, of not having it anymore. So, this album is above all beauty. In all its forms. Beauty that is sometimes aloof, distant, and unreachable, and sometimes present, physical, and fiery. An album jazz with quietly expressionist sounds, a jazz that feeds on the classical training of Vassilis Tsabropoulos, a Greek pianist who knows how to blend the poetics of Bill Evans with Nordic sounds reminiscent of Grieg and Scriabin. So, beauty is also an encounter, a meeting where, alongside a note poet like Tsabropoulos, comes the dense sound of Arild Andersen's bass and the inspired and gentle drumming of the great John Marshall.

And the first track "Straight" couldn’t have a better title. Because beauty is the first thing you notice in anyone and anything, it comes straight, as in this piece. With its enchanting, orientalist, and intimate theme. And so, it leaves you. Enchanted, in front of ethereal and unreachable beauty. Beauty that explodes unreal as a firework in the next "Pavane", where the right hand of Tsabropoulos radiates a soothing melody of icy beauty, fleeting and impalpable as the rays of a November sun. Waves of music that expand on the substantial notes of Andersen's bass, with splashes of drums cold and enchanting as the first frost.

After the Apollonian start of the album, the music becomes flesh in "Saturday", a piece reminiscent of the Norwegian quartet sound of Keith Jarrett. But the atmosphere quickly returns to meditative and rarefied sounds in the next three pieces, "Choral", "Simple Thoughts", and "Prism". Splendid, gentle pieces, with a bitter aftertaste, like the memory of two eyes you loved but no longer shine in the mist of memory.

The atmosphere changes decidedly in the next lively "Lines", where improvisation takes center stage, with melodic lines vertiginously crossing among the three musicians who give free rein to their virtuosic abilities in a piece brimming with vitalism. Again the mood transforms in "European Triangle", a piece centered on a theme obsessively repeated on the bass, a sort of Bachian passacaglia disguised as jazz. A must-hear. The album closes in a fairytale way with "Cinderella Song", suspended between fantasy and reality, in an atmosphere of unrealized dreams. With that sweet-sour and intimate mood where everything is more intense. And more intensely beautiful. Like this album.