I’m not really a jazz guy. I’m admittedly quite ignorant in the genre, and find much of it to be “noodley” to a degree as to be incoherent. A few years ago, when I was living in London, a friend of mine introduced me to Esbjorn Svensson’s music. It caught my imagination in a way that jazz really hadn’t to that point. The way he pushed boundaries and wasn’t hesitant to embrace sonic textures that you wouldn’t traditionally hear in jazz music.

Today for some random reason I got a bug up about Esbjörn Svensson went to Youtube started doing searches, then went to Wikipedia to read the article on him. Which is where I discovered that he died in June of last year in a scuba diving accident. It’s well after the fact, I realize that but I find myself, for lack of a better turn of phrase, really bummed out. He was an excellent musician and innovator that helped open my ears to a genre that I might have previously dismissed, and there’s not many artists for whom I can say that.

See below to see what make he and his trio so incredibly special.