Esbjörn Svensson Trio
Strange Place for Snow

“…Music is sufficient in itself, it is a kind of basic thing, it never needs to have a special meaning, it's always fine exactly as it is, just music, of course it can suggest many thoughts and images to you... but for me music is just music and I don't want to explain it, there is nothing to explain. Precisely there is nothing to say about music because music speaks for itself quite clearly…” (interview published on Ciaojazz)

The speaker is a certain ESBJORN SVENSSON, a Swede and a rising star of the jazz scene.
Even though calling someone a “rising star” who has already recorded six albums with his trio, including this one, seems incorrect to me. But I call him that because too few Italian people are talking about him yet.
I’ll tell you more, I'm writing this review with the sad certainty in my heart that half of those reading won't care about the album and will never listen to it (yes, this is jazz education in Italy, today) while the other half won’t even finish reading. Because Jazz is (sigh!) seen as a form of “musician's snobbery” and thus discarded. Jazz is stuff for “old people”, for the melancholic and nostalgic.
Well, I'm twenty-seven years old and I get thrilled with Jazz. If you don’t want to listen to this album which is a shining pearl in a sea of crap music, do whatever you want. If you want to hold your nose because you can’t smell and savor the harmony with which the trio develops songs far from the stereotype “theme-improvisation of instrument A - reprise of the theme - improvisation of instrument B - etc, etc.” I certainly cannot come over there and hit you! Do as you believe. My task is to assure you that this album contains all of contemporary jazz.

From a careful listening of the album (I, in fact, had the good fortune to enjoy it alongside a great fan of theirs, who knows everything, absolutely everything, about the trio) it is evident that the group was inspired for this album not only by the “usual suspects“ Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Count Basie, but also by bands like E.L.P and, believe it or not, Radiohead! Not bad for “music snobs”…
In reality, we do not want to argue too much in this context. I return to the “classic” review.
Within the songs, you can find distant hints of ambient and classical music (the author himself has declared that he was inspired by the compositional technique of classical music).

The three Swedes should not be understood as the typical piano trio that has already narrated so much in the history of music (not just jazz), freeing themselves from comparison thanks to the refined and modern search for themes developed with great simplicity, avoiding the proposition of virtuosity for its own sake. I don’t even want to attempt to recover the points in common with the other two trios that are always used as a benchmark for this kind of music, the trio of Brad Mehldau and, above all, that of Jarrett, since it annoys me that everyone must necessarily go through the comparison with the divine Keith to obtain formal recognition of their artistic greatness.

I conclude by repeating my hopes that you can savor the creative capacity of Northern European Jazz, a Jazz that perhaps might be slightly indigestible for those who prefer the more classical type.