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Esbjorn Svensson: "What Jazz Is, Not Was" 2004 Interview Re-Featured at All About Jazz

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We're featuring this 2004 interview in memory of Esbjorn Svensson. Svensson died on June 14th at the age of 44.

Esbjorn Svensson: What Jazz Is, Not Was

By Joshua Weiner

Pianist Esbjorn Svensson leads the Swedish group EST, one of the most exciting and original piano trios in jazz today. They've been playing together for over 10 years, an extraordinary length of time for a jazz lineup, and have known each other much longer than that. The group has evolved a distinctive style, in which Svensson's alternately impressionistic and driving songs are given novel textures by double-bassist Dan Berglund's ingenious use the bow and effects pedals, and drummer Magnus Ostrom's hybrid of jazz, rock, and electronica-derived rhythms. A top-20 act in Sweden, EST has won numerous honors, including this year's European Jazz Award and a BBC Jazz Award, and have gained a steady following in the States with 2002's A Strange Place for Snow (Columbia) and their latest, Seven Days of Falling (215 Records).

I caught EST's show on November 10, 2004 at the Dakota Jazz Club in downtown Minneapolis, and was fortunate enough to sit down with Esbjorn Svensson to talk about the band's recordings, touring, and the state of jazz today.

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