WITHIN A DREAM

As a narrative tale the way the Emil Brandqvist Trio has evolved reads like a dream come true. The current chapter is appropriately titled quot;Within A Dreamquot; the fourth album they have recorded on SKIP Records. Plenty of attention has been bestowed upon the ensemble lined up around drummer Emil Brandqvist from Gothenburg Sweden: an ECHO JAZZ nomination Longlist for the German Music Critics Award and most recently a No. 7 ranking on the German Jazz Charts for the preceding album quot;Falling Crystalsquot. Enthusiastically received gigs at the Palatia Jazz and Gezeitenkonzerte festivals numerous sold-out club concerts and a series of joint appearances together with Max Moor in the course of Jazz & Literature events have ensured that they are first-tier players in Germany when talk revolves around the piano trio genre. The audience feedback at the jazzahead! Trade fair & festival 2017 in Bremen verified that their performance made a distinct mark on the entire scheduled showcase program. The result: a big bunch of booking queries but this time from abroad. And the facts: live appearances at the Conversations Festival in Ireland quot;Jazz Au Plateau Picardquot; in Paris and the Nordic Culture Festival in Seoul enabled the trio to convince on an international scale too. If there s a secret to this trio it surely lies in the rare talent to have developed a sound all their own. The hallmarks include intricate audiophonic paintings by none other than Emil Brandqvist on drums neo-classicistic elements from Finnish pianist Tuomas A. Turunen - sometimes sensitively dashed & daubed other times a product of racing runs that roll away into the beyond - and the almost stoically advancing strength heard in the playing of Max Thornberg on upright bass. As was already the case on quot;Seascapesquot; the second album Emil Brandqvist again employs bass clarinets flutes and even synthesizer accents he plays himself to give greater clarity to the atmosphere felt in the compositions. Options like these are equally used to make surprising extensions within the pieces possible yet never as solo instruments always as a pointed element toward enhancing the mood. Ever the romantic Tuomas A. Turunen shines with his sparkling poetic input only to change pace and act as the solid rhythmic foundation for the catchy compositional elements. Once listeners have felt their way into the cosmos of the trio on quot;Stay A Little Longerquot; where the instruments mirror the title via gradual introduction including a little Celesta stardust quot;Starlingsquot; presents the typical Emil Brandqvist Trio sound. On quot;View From Abovequot; the synthesizer plays a more distinctive and even unexpected role before the tempo picks up remarkably in the composition by Tuomas A. Turunen entitled quot;Metropol Roundquot. A decidedly tricky rhythm makes quot;Landscapesquot; one of the highlights on the album while quot;Back On The Groundquot; delivers a late-night blues of the sort you wouldn t necessarily expect to hail from Scandinavia. quot;Time For A Changequot; the finale and a composition jointly written by Turunen and Thornberg has all the makings of the closing soundtrack to a feature-length film that kept you riveted to your seat.