Jazzwise Magazine just put the ”E.S.T Symphony” album on their list of Top 20 jazz albums of 2016. Super fun news!
Arranged and adapted for symphony orchestra by Hans Ek, his writing has succeeded in capturing the emotionally engaging element of Svensson’s playing that appealed to those both inside and outside the jazz constituency. He has even managed to evoke the subtle electronics that Svensson occasionally used, creating an ambient haze of strings to surround the melody. In 2003, Svensson himself wrote three arrangements (Dan Berglund three also) for a project with 16 strings at Jazz Baltica in 2003, and one of Svensson’s arrangements, ”˜Dodge the Dodo’, is enlarged by Ek here. On ”˜When God Created the Coffee Break’ Ek has inserted a Svensson solo transcribed from Live in Hamburg for orchestra and it is fascinating how Svensson’s improvisation sounds like a composition in its own right and highlights how he actually seems to ”˜play’ silence, which left windows through which we could enter his musical world.
