Xieyi

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Anders Jormin is a double bassist, a very good one, much recorded as a sideman, particularly on ECM. He is also a composer and leader of distinction. Xieyi is primarily an album of solo bass pieces. As solo bass albums can be something of an acquired taste, Jormin has had the good sense (at producer Manfred Eicher's suggestion) to intersperse the solo bass pieces with his own compositions for a brass quartet (trumpet/flugelhorn, French horn, trombone, bass trombone).

Of the seventeen tracks here, eleven are solo bass, six for the brass quartet. The brass pieces all have a tranquil, calming atmosphere, and achieve the twin effects of adding variety to the album and of demonstrating Jormin's wider talents. However, they are all short (the longest by far is 2 minutes 16 seconds), and are completely composed with no improvisation. Consequently, it is largely on the success of the solo bass pieces that this must stand or fall as a jazz album.

Jormin has been eclectic in his choice of source material for the bass pieces - a hymn by Sibelius, Ornette Coleman's 'War Orphans', tone poems by Swedish composers Evert Taube and Stefan Forssen, plus several original pieces by Jormin himself - the common thread being that they are all strongly melodic. As Jormin himself comments, "I've tried, in my own way, to sing with my instrument some of these songs". Jormin always concentrates on the melodic aspects of the bass, not really sounding like a jazz bassist. Even on his original, 'Tenk', where he largely plays percussion on the body of the instrument, he achieves great tonal variety.

Throughout, the bass playing is technically excellent and also very varied. Sometimes Jormin lets the wooden sound of the bass resound naturally, at other times being more percussive. On 'War Orphans' (the nearest thing to a jazz composition here, and particularly noteworthy because of Charlie Haden's version), Jormin uses the bow throughout, achieving a melancholy mood appropriate to the piece. He sets up an interesting contrast by alternating longer bowed phrases and more staccato passages, achieving a call-and-response effect with himself.

Forget the fact that this is an album of bass pieces. More importantly, it is an album of beautiful and intriguing music.