Footprint Records – FR106
An undecet is an ensemble of eleven, but Harald Svensson has not assembled a miniature orchestra merely to make his piano compositions sound larger. The unusual lineup places a string quartet beside trumpet, trombone, clarinet, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, double bass, drums, percussion and piano, creating a group that can behave like chamber music, free jazz or an organism inventing its own anatomy. The title explains the method beautifully. These are sketches rather than sealed blueprints, and the musicians are invited to supply the fancies: responses, detours and spontaneous details that allow the written material to keep changing while it is being performed. Svensson provides direction without building walls around the players.
The six titles create the outline of an entire day. “Dawn” and “Nightfall” form the outer frame, while “Promenade,” “Siesta” and the journey implied by “Latcho Drom” occupy the hours between them. The two longest pieces, “Dawn” and “Latcho Drom,” give the ensemble time to gather gradually rather than announce its full strength at once. Strings can appear as mist, friction or sustained color; horns and reeds can move between melody and rougher collective speech; piano, bass and drums can suggest a jazz rhythm section before letting that identity dissolve. The shorter “Promenade” feels proportionally like movement through open air, while “Siesta” creates a place where activity can loosen without disappearing. The sequence is less a literal program than a change in musical light.
Svensson has been one of Sweden’s important improvising pianists since the 1970s, with a history reaching through EGBA, the Eje Thelin Group, Entra and numerous encounters with jazz, contemporary composition and choral music. That breadth is audible in the undecet’s refusal to choose between refinement and freedom. The string writing can be delicate without becoming decorative, and the improvisation can become unruly without reducing the ensemble to eleven simultaneous soloists. Nina de Heney’s bass and Henrik Wartel’s drums give the music weight and elasticity, while Staffan Svensson, Signe Lykkebo Dahlgreen, Isak Hedtjärn and Niclas Rydh provide a wind and brass choir capable of becoming either one mass or several independent characters. Violinists Karin Wiberg and Eva Lindal, violist Sara Nilsson and cellist Emma Augustsson bring another four-way conversation, so almost every moment contains several possible alliances.
“Latcho Drom,” a Romani phrase commonly translated as “safe journey,” sits near the album’s center and offers a useful image for the whole recording. Svensson gives his musicians a road, but safety does not require everybody to walk in formation. The pleasure comes from hearing individuals leave the path, discover another route and return with information for the ensemble. Even “Weed,” the smallest and most mischievously titled piece, suggests growth that ignores the gardener’s intended design. Improvisation behaves similarly: an accidental phrase takes root, spreads through neighboring instruments and may become more interesting than the original plan. By “Nightfall,” the record has not reached a conventional resolution so much as a shared resting point after a day spent testing what these particular eleven people could become together.
The entire album was captured during one January 2019 session, which helps preserve the sense of immediate group discovery. It does not sound like a composer displaying an impressive arrangement in front of obedient performers. It sounds like Svensson has chosen musicians whose individual judgment he trusts, then created enough structure for those judgments to interact. Sketches & Fancies is generous, alert ensemble music: composed enough to carry memory, free enough to remain surprising and spacious enough for eleven distinct personalities to appear without crowding one another from view. Its real subject is not the piano or even the compositions. It is the delicate social art of giving people direction while leaving them room to find their own way.
The six titles create the outline of an entire day. “Dawn” and “Nightfall” form the outer frame, while “Promenade,” “Siesta” and the journey implied by “Latcho Drom” occupy the hours between them. The two longest pieces, “Dawn” and “Latcho Drom,” give the ensemble time to gather gradually rather than announce its full strength at once. Strings can appear as mist, friction or sustained color; horns and reeds can move between melody and rougher collective speech; piano, bass and drums can suggest a jazz rhythm section before letting that identity dissolve. The shorter “Promenade” feels proportionally like movement through open air, while “Siesta” creates a place where activity can loosen without disappearing. The sequence is less a literal program than a change in musical light.
Svensson has been one of Sweden’s important improvising pianists since the 1970s, with a history reaching through EGBA, the Eje Thelin Group, Entra and numerous encounters with jazz, contemporary composition and choral music. That breadth is audible in the undecet’s refusal to choose between refinement and freedom. The string writing can be delicate without becoming decorative, and the improvisation can become unruly without reducing the ensemble to eleven simultaneous soloists. Nina de Heney’s bass and Henrik Wartel’s drums give the music weight and elasticity, while Staffan Svensson, Signe Lykkebo Dahlgreen, Isak Hedtjärn and Niclas Rydh provide a wind and brass choir capable of becoming either one mass or several independent characters. Violinists Karin Wiberg and Eva Lindal, violist Sara Nilsson and cellist Emma Augustsson bring another four-way conversation, so almost every moment contains several possible alliances.
“Latcho Drom,” a Romani phrase commonly translated as “safe journey,” sits near the album’s center and offers a useful image for the whole recording. Svensson gives his musicians a road, but safety does not require everybody to walk in formation. The pleasure comes from hearing individuals leave the path, discover another route and return with information for the ensemble. Even “Weed,” the smallest and most mischievously titled piece, suggests growth that ignores the gardener’s intended design. Improvisation behaves similarly: an accidental phrase takes root, spreads through neighboring instruments and may become more interesting than the original plan. By “Nightfall,” the record has not reached a conventional resolution so much as a shared resting point after a day spent testing what these particular eleven people could become together.
The entire album was captured during one January 2019 session, which helps preserve the sense of immediate group discovery. It does not sound like a composer displaying an impressive arrangement in front of obedient performers. It sounds like Svensson has chosen musicians whose individual judgment he trusts, then created enough structure for those judgments to interact. Sketches & Fancies is generous, alert ensemble music: composed enough to carry memory, free enough to remain surprising and spacious enough for eleven distinct personalities to appear without crowding one another from view. Its real subject is not the piano or even the compositions. It is the delicate social art of giving people direction while leaving them room to find their own way.
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