Esbjörn Svensson (centre) with EST, whose final record Leucocyte is released in September
Munich's ACT Records has just announced the September 1 release of a final studio album by Esbjörn Svensson, the 44-year-old Swedish pianist who died in a scuba diving accident last month. The album was already done and dusted before that catastrophe for Svensson's family, fans, and the pursuit of creative music-making happened.
Entitled Leucocyte, the recording that was intended as simply another chapter in the decade-long and globally popular story of the trio known to everyone as just EST now becomes the group's unexpected legacy. The release of the set was decided by the surviving band members - bassist Dan Berglund, and the departed leader's childhood friend and drummer Magnus Öström - after discussion with their manager Burkhard Hopper and ACT Records.
Great music touches hearts before it touches minds, of course, but the devotion of Svensson's admirers has an intensity of gratitude and regret about it that has more in common with premature losses in the pop world than in the more cerebral climate of jazz and exploratory contemporary music.
The condolences page on ACT's website includes such comments as Jon's: "Esbjörn, Dan and Magnus are our contemporaries in age and with each new album and tour began to feel more like our friends as well"; Bibi's "what a wonderful person must one be so to write and play music like Svensson did - EST music makes my heart and mind melt", or "I promise that I become a great musician in your name", from 15-year-old Chilean boy José Tomás Gálvez.
From small beginnings at obscure Swedish festivals in the mid-90s, Svensson's music raced around the world - reigniting lapsed jazz fans' interest in the music, making instant converts of kids who didn't know jazz could sound so seductively hip yet surprising at the same time, and combining rock-show drama with a risk-taking spontaneity drawing on the music of Keith Jarrett or Brad Mehldau, and even abstract free-improv.
I met Svensson a few times, and he was one of the most likeable individuals ever to become a musical celebrity. The downbeat realism of the jazz culture always helps a talented artist with a populist knack to avoid being unhinged by stardom anyway - Svensson was never hard to reach, he stayed with the small ACT label that had discovered him, and he saw music-making as an open, practical and participatory activity rather than an awesome creative-genius mystery.
But for all that, he produced music of immense warmth, singularity and lyrical power. Reviewing his last album will be a tough job. But the body of work he leaves has reinvigorated jazz fans around the world over the past decade, and created thousands of new ones. It's a contribution that won't be forgotten any time soon.
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