Tord Gustavsen: What was said. With Simin Tander and Jarle Vespestad | ECM Records

Tord Gustavsen: What was said
w/ Simin Tander and Jarle Vespestad

Tord Gustavsen: piano, electronics
Simin Tander: voice
Jarle Vespestad: drums

+++++ CD / 180g Vinyl / Streaming: https://ecm.lnk.to/Kn3LW

What was said brings new colours to Tord Gustavsen’s musical palette. His latest trio project builds upon the subtle understanding of his long musical association with drummer Jarle Vespestad, introduces the entrancing Afghan-German vocalist Simin Tander, and explores the tradition of Norwegian church music in a most untraditional way: “For the repertoire of the new project, Simin and I have been working with Afghan poet B. Hamsaaya, translating and shaping a selection of hymns that I grew up with in Norway into Pashto,” Gustavsen explains. “This process has been challenging and really fruitful. We have gone quite far in interpreting the lyrics in a more ‘integral’ manner, reaching into a space where I feel that Sufism and Christianity actually meet. The Norwegian hymns are my ‘standards’ – reaching deeper down in my musical and spiritual being than the typical jazz canon. The sound and feel of the Norwegian hymns in Pashto is truly captivating.” Simin Tander also sings, in English, verse of Persian mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-73) and US proto-Beat poet Kenneth Rexroth (1905-82). As a pure play of sounds, too, the combination of Tander’s voice and Gustavsen’s piano and discreet electronics has an emotional persuasiveness of its own, outside the limits of language.
'What was said' was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio in April 2015 and produced by Manfred Eicher.

ECM 2465

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