[CD REVIEWS ]

On Cantando he’s comfortable sharing equal space with his long-time bassist, Anders Jormin, and his new drummer, Jon Falt. It’s a thoughtful, moderate performance, using bass and drums more for coordinated melodic counterpoint and color than for groove or swing. And this moderation continues for nearly 80 minutes: Song of Ruth, a beautiful melody by the Czech composer Petr Eben (so beautiful it appears in two versions here) has the same quiet confidence as Pages, a long track made up of several different free trio improvisations fused together. It’s all relatively quiet music, and not too stylized. It’s pulsating, lumpy with long improvised phrases; it’s alive.

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