Tord Gustavsen, the lyrical and scholarly Oslo-born pianist, got big with a blend of pensive improv and Norwegian hymns, but lately he has moved closer to jazz. This album, however, finds him returning to simple songs with religious roots, and to collaboration with a remarkable singer (he has previously worked with compatriots Solveig Slettahjell and Silje Nergaard) in the tender-toned German-Afghan Simin Tander. Tander sings Norwegian traditionals and hymns in Pashto, and Beat icon Kenneth Rexroth’s stark renewal poem I Refuse and Persian sufi mystic Rumi’s writings in English, while Gustavsen gradually adds melodic embroidery, glimpsed grooves and electronics, with Jarle Vespestad’s fragile percussion the only other instrumental sound. The set occasionally suggests an early Gustavsen band spliced with Susannah and the Magical Orchestra, and the mixture of the instrumentalists’ distilled reflections with Tander’s palette of hummed tones, sighing note-bends and pristine inflections represents a beguiling new Gustavsen collaboration.
