Tord Gustavsen TrioChanging PlacesReview

Though at one point in ECM's history it was tempting to think that every pianist Manfred Eicher signed up was under direct orders to play like Keith Jarrett, (or 'The Eicher Sanction" as it became known amongst the jazz cognoscenti here at BBC towers), it's really Paul Bley who's been the most pervasive influence on the label's ivory tinklers. Bley took the chamber jazz approach of Bill Evans to its apotheosis, stripping it down even further but still retaining a deeply emotive core and in the process buffing up some of the shiniest jewels in the ECM catalogue.

Tord Gustavsen's taken Bley's example to heart on his debut solo album. Changing Places is a beauty, less abstract perhaps than Bley, but soaked in a hushed, delicate romanticism that's hard to resist. Most of the record is pitched at a whisper, with the spaces between the notes easily as significant as the notes themselves. Drummer Jarle Vepsestad (also of Supersilent) is felt rather than heard much of the time, while bassist Harald Johnsen provides gentle, intelligent support and lovely, guitar-like solos.

The leader's improvisations are yearning, tender meditations, occasionally coloured with the palest of the Blues, and the compositions (all Gustavsen originals) have the quiet, sometimes folky ecstacies of Pat Metheny's or Keith Jarrett's ballads, with a quiet insistence that'll have you humming them for days to come.

Though the theoretical writings on his site talk of (gulp) "moving creatively in a neo-Hegeliankind of way", Gustavsen'smusic is free of such intellectual baggage;fresh, intuitive and heartfelt. A truly beautiful record that (if there's any justice) will find a place as one of ECM's finest releases of the last few years, and probably a place in your heart too. Gorgeous.