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Europe Jazz Network
BOBO STENSON |
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Bobo Stenson has effectively defined the meaning modern piano in
Sweden since the late 1960s. Early in his playing career he
accompanied a long line of visiting American players, including Sonny
Rollins, Stan Getz and Gary Burton, worked closely with Don Cherry
from the beginning of the trumpeter's residency in Scandinavia, was a
member of George Russell's Nordic orchestra, played with local giants
such as the still-too-little-known tenorist Bent Rosengren,.. and was
part of the ECM Story from the beginning. He first recorded for ECM in
April 1971 on the album Sart (ECM 1015), with Jan Garbarek, Terje
Rypdal, Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen. The following month his
trio album Underwear (ECM 1012) was taped: this was certainly one of
he first European piano trio albums that could he considered as a
response to American developments in post-Bill Evans piano. Stenson
had obviously monitored the mixture of lyricism and abstraction that
fuelled the early trios of Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett but was able
to assimilate this influence in a style which even then was clearly
his own and his interaction with Norwegian drummer Christensen was
already remarkable. Christensen and the pianist continued their
creative association through the mid-1970s in the popular ]an
Garbarek-Bobo Stenson Quartet (they swept the Jazz Forum poll year
after year), whose recorded legacy is the albums Witchi-Tai-To and
Dansere. In a five star review of Witchi-Tai-To, Down Beat
suggested that Stenson's soloing was "more melodically aware than
McCoy Tyner's, and praised the group for the way in which it burned
with a brilliant flame, forging a sturdy sound within a classic
tradition." The latter assessment is apt: Stenson has always been both
a forward-looking player and a player very conscious of jazz history.
The late 70s and easy 80s found the pianist concentrating primarily on the development of his Swedish projects, particulary the cooperative band Rena Rama (with Lennart Åberg and Palle Danielsson - and, in a later incarnation of the group, Anders Jormin) whose discography includes the ECM/Japo album Landscapes. In 1988, he joined the revamped Charles Lloyd Quartet, and played on Lloyd's four ECM albums, Fish Out Of Water, Notes From Big Sur, The Call and All my Relations. Jon Christensen was the drummer on the first of these, Anders Jormin the bassist on the other three. Biography courtesy of Uli Fild Concertbüro. |