EST return this month with their tenth album, their first since the live version of Viaticum was issued as a special package last year along with the original studio album. Such a remarkable record company response was indicative of the initial album’s popularity, with strong demand in the UK and many other parts of Europe. So much for the album’s title tease that the group was performing its last rites. The group over more than a decade has achieved extraordinary levels of success for a jazz trio on the international jazz circuit, especially in the last five years.

Even the notoriously insular American jazz community has responded warmly, if tardily, to pianist Esbjörn Svensson, bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Öström. With their hi-tech light show, cranked up concert hall sound, and positive overtures to young rock fans – crucially without the lovingly honed but ubiquitous Radiohead covers – plus a finely honed post-Jarrett European group mentality, EST make perfect sense. It’s with a sense of the baroque that EST turns to as the backdrop to their new album, as Esbjörn Svensson tells Stuart Nicholson 31.08.06

Out of the blue, with little fanfare and no advance warning, the Esbjörn Svensson Trio has just released a double CD Live In Hamburg recorded a year ago during the tour for the group’s last studio recording, Tuesday Wonderland. While live albums only occasionally work in their own right as a fair or satisfying representation of the full picture of what a musician has to offer, the Hamburg album makes an immediate impact by the group and displays a remarkable level of virtuosity given that little post production work was done to “improve” any of the imperfections a live performance almost invariably contains. The album, in the years to come, could stand as a landmark within the band’s discography in the way that the live Köln Concert album marks a special place within Keith Jarrett’s work. Selwyn Harris talks to Esbjörn Svensson about that remarkable day in Hamburg. 30.11.07