Review: Tord Gustavsen & Tore Brunborg, St George’s

He’s a deceptive man, Tord Gustavsen. What you see is a slight and unassuming figure in a neat black suit, softly spoken (a problem when he couldn’t get the announcement mic to work) tidily seated at St George’s grand piano. Gently stroking the keys he laid the foundation for Tore Brunborg’s well-modulated tenor saxophone as the lyrical form of a tune took shape. So far, so neat and tidy – a bit like a Schubert lieder. But things began to shift as the piano grew more raucously pleading and the sax reasserted itself in an agonising and intense conversation from which the piano eventually withdrew as if exhausted. The lyricism returned in the horn part, placatory, then there was another ruefully defiant upsurge from the piano that saw Tord rise from his seat, head down hunched into his instrument. But things evened out again and shifted into another tune, a kind of laid back and jazzy Scandinavian blues bar number to dissipate the intensity. Only afterwards did I discover that the first tune was called Desperate and marvelled at how explicitly and intensely the instrumental duo had communicated that theme.

As the evening progressed Tord’s playing revealed more paradoxes. Border Music somehow conjured a playful, Satie-like waltz but with brooding chord changes. The right hand twinkled, the left glowered into a threatening rumble leaving the saxophone to rescue the melody and carry it forward. A later tune, unannounced, took what felt like an inspirational song from a lost West End musical and ramped up the schmaltziness with ruthless conviction. Was it ironic? It was certainly impressive.

After the interval it became clear the concert itself was a game of two halves. Tore had switched to soprano sax to lead in Melted Matter, a tune from Gustavsen’s first album, and the fluency of his playing swept along the piano in an easy duet for a minute or so. Then the pounding keyboard swept away the saxophone and a ferocious piano solo began that threw down huge hunks of chordage against nimble melodic improvisation. Tord rose and fell repeatedly, visibly wrestling the music until the tune was lost in the turmoil and, by that great jazz alchemy, it emerged that we were listening to a tango version of Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me To The End Of Love. The sax re-appeared (now a tenor) and the piano slipped into a swampy New Orleans tribute.

It was a riveting ten minutes, and the rest of the second half kept to that vivid standard as tunes slipped and shifted into each other and the mood changed from cabaret jazz to Arabic modalities, and hard bop moments reformed as the kind of Nordic Gospel that established the pianist’s reputation over fifteen years ago. Throughout the set you felt his inner battles as seething passions struggled with Calvinist restraint, yet for all that wrestling neither player seemed to break sweat, nor wrong-footed the other.

The music had a perfect balance of spontaneity and structure, evinced by an encore featuring ‘a standard’ as Gustavsen described J.S. Bach’s Jesu Meine Freude. This anthem was solemnly stated, then exalted with ornamentation in what felt like a sincerely spiritual improvisation – at one point cascades of bells chimed from the piano while angelic sax hung in the air. Played acoustically in St George’s ecclesiastical surroundings to a rapt and hushed audience it was a sublime moment that confirmed the special relationship that Tord Gustavsen has long held with the venue.