Never-before-heard Esbjörn Svensson solo album discovered. Worldwide release November 18th 2022 on ACT.
Audio-visual concerts on September 15-18 in Stockholm. Online event and book release in planning.
2022-07-26 Munich / Stockholm (ACT/ Bam & Bat AB) There are only a few figures in music whose work influences and shapes a genre as a whole. This is undoubtedly true of the Swede Esbjörn Svensson. With e.s.t Esbjörn Svensson Trio, the pianist and composer shaped the musical language of the piano trio and wowed audiences beyond age and genre affiliations. His influence on jazz as a whole reverberates to this day and already within the second and third generation of musicians. And he is unforgotten among listeners worldwide.
On November 18, 2022, ACT will release ”HOME.S.” Esbjörn Svensson’s first, previously unreleased solo album. The sheer existence of such a recording and its completely unexpected discovery over a decade after its creation are nothing less than a sensation: Since the early 1990s, Svensson focused almost his entire creative energy and recording activities on his work with e.s.t. . Thus, these new recordings are not only the first, but practically the only ones that show Svensson in a setting other than that of the trio: Intimate, concentrated and completely one with himself.
The recordings for HOME.S. were made only a few weeks before Esbjörn Svensson’s sudden death on June 14, 2008. Svensson recorded the music in his Swedish home. For almost ten years afterwards, the album rested untouched in his wife Eva’s personal archive. She says: “When the solo piano recordings were found at our home it felt like “getting a message smuggled over the border”. A message of love, space, eternity and infinite creation. But also a message encouraging to continue the creation and to find ways for the music to meet the listener. More wanted to be explored, and today we can tell the whole story of HOME.S.”
And so HOME.S. is more than an album. For the first time ever in public, the music will be played in its entirety during a series of audio-visual concerts at Stockholm’s Sven Harry Museum of Modern Art from September 15-18, 2022. It will be played on a surround-sound-system especially designed by e.s.t. sound engineer Ake Linton, accompanied by a visual concept by Anders Amrén, the trio’s longtime light designer. Additional events are currently in planning. From November 17, HOME.S. can also be seen and heard in an audio-visual version by director David Tarrodi on the platform shortly.film. Tarrodi is the director of the internationally acclaimed documentary film about Esbjörn Svensson. A very personal book project to be published at Bam & Bat AB is planned for the beginning of 2023 – featuring photos, sketches and notes by and about Esbjörn Svensson. The book was compiled by Eva Svensson, who, as project manager of HOME.S. set the entire adventure in motion. And it was created in collaboration with editor Helene Boström and designer Johannes Molin.
Digital & physical review copies of the album, and in-depth press material about the album HOME.S. available from September 20th.
Press contacts
Worldwide excl. FR & GB & USA: ACT, Michael Gottfried, michael.gottfried@actmusic.com
France: I See Colors, Damien Besançon, contact@iseecolors.fr
United Kingdom: Baxter PR, Joe Baxter, joe@baxterpr.com
USA: Fully Altered Media, Matt Merewitz, matt@fullyaltered.com