It was a couple of weeks after his tragic scuba-diving accident that I heard about the death of Esbjorn Svensson. Having been a fan of E.S.T. (Esbjorn Svensson Trio) for several years now I was both shocked and saddened to learn that the pianist and composer had been cruelly taken from us at the ridiculously young age of 44. I didn't have this blog at the time but would like to take advantage of it now to write about my experience of Esbjorn's music.
I first came across E.S.T. when I bought the album 'Strange Place for Snow' on a whim whilst browsing through a pathetically small jazz section in the local HMV. I had heard about this trio in the jazz press and knew that they were rapidly making a name for themselves and it was that, coupled with the stickers on the CD listing awards the group had won, which made me put my hand in my pocket and take a gamble.
I'm very glad I did. What made me warm to this trio straight away was the fact that it had a unique and instantly recognisable sound. I always thought the mark of a really good player or group was that you could tell who you were listening to in just a few bars - and E.S.T. certainly fitted that description. If you aren't familiar with the music, I would recommend the excellent album E.S.T. plays Monk as a great place to start.
Although hundreds of groups have combined jazz harmony and improvisation with elements of pop and rock music, few have managed it as cohesively and with as much originality as this trio. The groove-based approach it adopted was always musical and it never struck me as being gimmicky or a blatant attempt to be populist.
Like all the best trios, each individual member made a distinct and irreaplaceable contribution to the group sound; Magnus Ostrom's driving rhythms and Dan Berglund's huge (and often pyrotechnic) bass sound provided the perfect framework for Esbjorn to weave his original melodies and improvised lines across.
I had the privilege of seeing E.S.T. play live at the Royal Festival Hall for the opening of the London Jazz Festival a couple of years ago and they produced an absolutely electrifying and mesmerising performance that left me grinning like a cheshire cat for days afterwards. It was so exciting to hear a new sound in Jazz as it's sometimes easy to feel that pretty much everything has already been done. Every now and again, I come across an artist or group who reminds that there's still a world of new musical discoveries to be made and I'll always be grateful to Esbjorn and his trio for reminding me of that.
As a pianist, to my ear, Esbjorn's melodic lines owed perhaps a little too much to Keith Jarrett at times and I did feel that E.S.Ts last few albums had become a little predictable and formulaic. Nevertheless, the Esbjorn Svensson Trio stood out as a highly original and exciting voice in jazz and their lyrical tunes and relentless grooves reached out far beyond the normal audience and inroduced a lot of people from the rock and pop world to jazz improvisation.
Many jazz musicians don't reach their prime until much later in life and at 44, I think there was much more to come from Esbjorn. His tragic death is a great loss but I'm sure his music will continue to inspire and influence people for years to come.
