Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

The latest jazz albums reviewed

CHRISTIAN WALLUMRØD ENSEMBLE

Fabula Suite LuganoECM***

With their elements of Swedish folk, church, baroque and contemporary clasical music, pianist/composer Christian Wallumrød’s miniatures still seem sui generis – though how much of their final form is owed to his own and his sextet’s ideas, and to improvisation, is uncertain. But he draws a rich range of colour from piano, trumpet, cello, Hardanger fiddle, baroque harp and percussion (with some added doubles) for a music that is, by turns, of the head and heart, celebratory and mocking. The ensemble’s lovely sound is generously deployed on a Scarlatti fragment, the Baroque- flavoured Jumpa and I Had a Mother Who Could Swim. But its close-knit interaction is best appreciated in the intricacies of a lovely Valse Dolcissima, the derisive Dancing Deputies and the uneasy, never-quite-resolved Snake. Is it jazz? No. It’s music that makes its own space. www.ecmrecords. com