Jazz pianist Esbjörn Svensson, 44
Posted: Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 4:50 pm
April 16, 1964 - June 14, 2008
Few bands demonstrated that jazz is no longer an exclusively American art form better than the trio led by the Swedish pianist Esbjörn Svensson. Mixing sparkling and virtuoso performances of jazz standards by the likes of Thelonious Monk with programmes of entirely original material, EST (as the trio were known) blurred the boundaries between jazz and both rock and classical music. They were widely regarded as Europe’s leading contemporary jazz group. Performances were brilliantly tailored to their audiences so that deeply-felt romantic ballads had the grey heads nodding in approval at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham whereas their gritty urban funk propelled by the drumming of Magnus Öström, with howling electronic bass effects from Dan Berglund, turned the Miles Davis Hall at Montreux into a teeming, sweaty mosh-pit for 18 to 25-year-olds.
At the heart of everything they did was Svensson’s piano playing…
The band had just finished recording its twelfth album, Leucocyte, and were about to begin an international tour encompassing this summer’s Edinburgh and Brecon jazz festivals. Svensson was scuba diving with a group in the Stockholm archipelago when he was found severely injured on the seabed. Attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful. … Read full obituary
