Staffan Bråsjö: Stratosfär (Stratosphere)
Staffan Bråsjö
With the world growing ever more cacophonous, how refreshing and welcome it is to be presented with music of humility and stateliness. Recorded in late 2020 at the Årsta church in Stockholm, Sweden, Stratosfär is a recording of contemporary Swedish chamber jazz that's easy to get behind. Issued under Staffan Bråsjö's name, the album pairs the Stockholm-born pianist and organist (b. 1989) with violinist Josefin Runsteen (Göteborg, 1990) and double bassist Vilhelm Bromander (Uppsala, 1988) on nine Bråsjö originals. It's tempting to call it art music, but that might suggest a stuffiness that's never audible in the trio's graceful playing. Instead, the music exudes a relaxed spontaneity that belies its composed nature.
The music's character is consistent with a bandleader who's a jazz pianist by trade but also plays Bach and conducts the Enskede-Årsta boys choir. His partners bring well-rounded credentials of their own to the project, both having recorded and performed with long lists of artists. Like Bråsjö, Runsteen and Bromander are comfortable playing in any number of milieus and imposing personality on the written score. With only three voices in play, the material has every opportunity to breathe, resulting in trio expressions marked by clarity.
Bråsjö's gift for melody is evident throughout. A haunting figure renders the opening “Blidväder (Thaw)” memorable, but as noteworthy is the way parts are distributed amongst the three. At one point, the pianist and violinist trade short solo statements while the double bassist grounds them with an ascending pattern; elsewhere, the three give unison voice to the insistent, yearning theme that lends “Archaeopteryx” its identity. Quietly reverential settings such as “Begravelse (Funeral)” and “Himlavalvets mekanik (Celestial mechanics)” are elevated by stirring themes, and a tender folk quality infuses “I jordens mull (In Earth's Soil),” a feeling amplified when wordless vocalizing adds a hush to the delicate performance. Whereas “Cirrus” features the kind of tasteful piano trio jazz one might hear on an ECM release, the gradually intensifying title track sees the leader on organ for material that's equally melancholy and meditative.
All three musicians favour an uncluttered approach in their playing that heightens the impact of the group performances. Runsteen possesses a singing tone that downplays vibrato, Bråsjö plays with an elegance to match his compositions, and Bromander anchors the pieces with solid note choices. While aspects of Nordic jazz are present on the album, chamber classical elegance is central to its character too, and genre separations largely collapse in the trio's nuanced interpretations of Bråsjö's compositions.March 2022