Tord Gustavsen Trio - The Ground
|
Our Price: $17.98 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $9.35 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for The Ground
Free Music Review: Really wonderful music
Hit: 5 Stars
I read a review of this trio in the Guardian (uk newspaper), which was very positive. On the basis of that I bought tickets to see them play recently, as I always prefer to listen to bands live before buying their CDs. They were fantastic, so I ordered the CD immediately. Since then I've not listened to much else! This has been a good year for jazz, and I'd ilke to heartily recommend this CD. It often reminds me of Bill Evans, so you can perhaps now understand the quality of this music. It is really very special.Free Music Review: No Bill Evans
Hit: 2 Stars
Nice simplistic mood music...but dont metion this guy in the same breath as Bill Evans just yet.Free Music Review: What makes Tord Gustavsen so popular?
Hit: 5 Stars
That's an honest question, and I'll try to give an honest answer. Is it because in English his first name is one vowel removed from naughty scatological bodily excreta? Could be, but I don't think so. Is it because he plays the piano really slow? Again, that's certainly a possibility, but there's got to be more to it than that. After all, haven't there been other jazz pianists who played really slow? Help me out here. None readily comes to mind, so maybe one of you readers can give me a hand. In any case, there's got to be another jazz guy that played really draggily like the Tord-meister.
Is it because he's a Scandinavian, a denizen of that wonderland of social beneficence, where more than 50 cents on the dollar--way more, if my sources are accurate--goes to marvelous tax programs that give everybody and his uncle free college, and--who knows?--probably free Volvos and Saabs (though who'd want 'em, if you ask me) and allow the average citizen to retire at the age of 27? Perhaps. But somehow I think there's more to it than that.
Tord, you see, has figured out a new way to play jazz. He's fused, I'm thinking, classical rigor with a way cool cocktail lounge vibe in a manner that no one else in the long and, one must admit, sad, history of the world has done. Yeah, that wacko Ryuichi Sakamoto did something similar years before, but he's from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak.
Anyhoo, this Tord guy is the bomb. Two measly discs under his belt and he's the next frickin' Bill Evans. Ten or 50 or a thousand years from now, he'll probably have faded from our collective consciousness. But right now, he's riding high. And jazz, being ephemeral by nature, readily accords him that fame.
Who am I to complain?
Free Music Review: Echt ECM
Hit: 4 Stars
I'm not a huge fan of this kind of nouvelle-cuisine ECM piano trio music but it's hard to deny that this is an excellent example of the genre. The tempos and dynamics never get much more pulse-quickening than a slow simmer but they always have a pulse--there's plenty of space & pauses for reflection but this never turns into tempoless navel-gazing. The stylistic reference-points--jazz, gospel, Satie, pop, bossa, tango, the odd Spanish tinge, &c--are so abstracted & quietened down that they blur imperceptibly into each other. The tunes more or less run together too, ranging from melancholic languor to, er, languorous melancholy. This is mood music--but it's _good_ mood music.Free Music Review: absolute music
Hit: 5 Stars
The simplest things in all art forms are the hardest things to achieve. A pleasure from beginning to end. Enjoy.