Alt Er Luft (Air as the arche) is the fifth album of the Danish Simon Toldam Trio, featuring pianist-composer-bandleader Simon Toldam with his faithful, close friends – double bass player Nils Bo Davidsen and drummer Knut Finsrud. This trio has been working since 2010 and has established a deep, telepathic interplay, whether parading or drifting, deafening or silencing and playing as one organism.

Alt Er Luft suggests a new sonic landscape – literally – for the trio. It was recorded at Lundsgaard Gods – Anexet at Lundsgaard Gods – Anexet, a concert hall in a rebuilt barn at Lundsgaard Manor and a space that elevates the sonic element in the music and enriches it with «air and tailwind», in the countryside town of Kerteminde. The nine-movement suite  (eight movements were composed by Toldam except for the movement by the trio) draws on the exploratory tonal language of contemporary music, performed with the improvisational spontaneity of a classic jazz trio.

The trio enjoys the great, spacious acoustics of the concert hall that fits perfectly its own introspective and understated spirit of the music, where every sound and nuanced gesture energizes the trio’s expressive dynamics. Toldam’s complex yet lyrical melodic themes and experimental, fractured piano lines are intensified beautifully by the commanding arco and pizzicato work of Davidsen (who is also an accomplished cellist) and the orchestrated percussive touches of Finsrud and suggest an organic flow of stimulating synergy. This kind of thoughtful and reserved, unhurried and collective dynamics serves the music beautifully and creates some of the most intense and profound musical landscapes in the trio’s history, allowing the listener to fully immerse in the many wonders of such inspiring music.

Eyal Hareuveni

Knut Finsrud (drums), Nils Bo Davidsen (double bass), Simon Toldam (piano)