Changing Places

Already in the year of the album’s release, Stereophile’s Richard Lehnert said that “with his first record as a leader, Tord Gustavsen has created an instant classic”. Lehnert went on to call Gustavsen “a master of pianistic control and restraint” – traits the Norwegian pianist had already perfected back then and has continued to apply in varying contexts on ECM ever since. All of the qualities that make the pianist’s compositional voice so unique – and from a retrospective point of view influential – were already fully intact when Changing Places was first released in 2003: This is music that sings, at once gentle and robust. Gustavsen writes sound like standards-in-the-making. Lyrical, immediately memorable songs, songs of an appealing freshness, yet sophisticated in their involvement with the melodic line. From the start, Gustavsen drew inspiration from gospel music and chorales, blending traditions organically as the trio improvises, with flair and originality, inside their structures. Reissued on vinyl for the very first time as part of the Luminessence series, the album arrives on two LPs in a tip-on gatefold jacket.