Within a Dream Emil Brandqvist Trio

• 1 Stay a Little Longer 05:20
• 2 Starlings 05:14
• 3 View from Above 05:20
• 4 Metropol Round 04:01
• 5 Interlude 02:15
• 6 Dream 05:55
• 7 Under the Starry Sky 05:58
• 8 I Miss You 04:18
• 9 Landscapes 04:53
• 10 Back on the Ground 05:41
• 11 Frid 04:28
• 12 Time for a Change 02:15
• Total Runtime 55:38

Info for 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 “Within A Dream”, 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, “Falling Crystals”. 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, “Jazz Au Plateau Picard” 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. By the way, it wasn’t too long ago that Tuomas A. Turunen released a highly expressive solo CD on SKIP (SKP 9139 “Ornaments Of Time”). Though most of the compositions are by Brandqvist, this time several by Turunen and Thornberg accompany the trio on its imaginatively laced journey, and without generating clefts in the trio’s unique soundscapes.

As was already the case on “Seascapes”, 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 “Stay A Little Longer”, where the instruments mirror the title via gradual introduction including a little Celesta stardust, “Starlings” presents the typical Emil Brandqvist Trio sound. On “View From Above” the synthesizer plays a more distinctive and even unexpected role before the tempo picks up remarkably in the composition by Tuomas A. Turunen entitled “Metropol Round”. A decidedly tricky rhythm makes “Landscapes” one of the highlights on the album, while “Back On The Ground” delivers a late-night blues of the sort you wouldn’t necessarily expect to hail from Scandinavia. “Time For A Change”, 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.

Emil Brandqvist Trio

Emil Brandqvist Trio
The reactions to Emil Brandqvist?s debut album with SKIP in 2013, ?Breathe Out? (SKP 9115), were nothing less than enthusiastic. The recording together with the Sjöströmska String Quartet not only clocked in as CD of the Week at radio broadcasters WDR3 and HR Mikado, it was the Audio Tip for STEREOPLAY magazine. The German periodical Jazzthetik attested to ?an intriguing alternative draft to the general view of what a drummer does.? As for festival and club appearances, though there weren?t many last year he cast a spell that left audiences in a rapt, attentive and even euphoric mood.

One could say that this drummer and composer from Göteborg, Sweden is more an audiophonic painter than ?the guy who sets the beat’. Fearless and persuasively convincing, he has the courage to put the melody first, to live out his folkloric influences from the far north and his penchant for quiet drum-playing. The trio?s line-up equally comprised of Tuomas Turunen, pianist and composer from Finland, and bass-player Max Thornberg from Stockholm, provides copious support. Turunen is a discovery all by himself: Inclined toward the classic vein, his playing is at times cheerfully bubbly, other times reserved, with dabs and dashes. A pianist who knows how to set distinctive accents. Following ?Breathe Out? with its string quartet arrangements, on ?Seascapes? (SKP 9128) Emil Brandqvist has now turned to winds & horns. In his inimitable way he manages to create an atmosphere ranging between levity (for instance on the track ?Silloin lennän? by Turunen), melancholy (on ?Vals?, the opener), spontaneous surprise and magic moments. The album also features Johan Asplund / flugelhorn, Martin Brandqvist / flutes, clarinet and bass clarinet, and Nils Börén / clarinet, all of whom strive to add to ?the big picture’ without soloist allures. The final touches on ?Seascapes? came from Stefano Amerio at the studio ARTE SUONO in Udine, Italy, a world-class audio engineer who most recently put the ?spit & polish’ on a number of albums for ECM, not to mention the last four Tingvall Trio productions for SKIP.

This time the CD is predominantly presented as a trio. For Emil Brandqvist, it’s tracks like ?Vals? that come closest to his ideal of lyrical pieces playfully wrought for a trio. ?Skog? (?the forest’) describes a feel-your-way stroll, the magical ?Du haller min hand? the balance between the tension and happiness of a jaunt to the big city with his child. Encounters with ?Bobergs udde? and ?Grimsholmen?, places where Brandqvist spends the summer, along with thoughts given to ?Den sista isbjörnen? (?the last polar bear’) belong to the widely varying points for listeners to enter the world of Emil Brandqvist. German magazine STERN: “Magical music: weightless melodies…a blend of film score in wide-screen format and chamber play, sweet melancholy…thoughts on love, homesickness and yearning – 5 Stars, Highest Rating.”

This album contains no booklet.