CD ECM Records Steve Swallow, Robert Creeley: So There

2006

Steve Swallow - bas
Robert Creeley - voce
Steve Kuhn - pian
Henrik Hannisdal - vioara
Odd Hannisdal - vioara
Marek Konstantynowicz - viola
Morten Hannisdal - violoncel

Jazzman, Choc du mois
Jazz Magazine, Disque d'émoi

So There is extensively notated, with all components interacting in myriad ways. But improvisation plays a major role as well; Kuhn and swallow are in characteristically fine form as soloists. This is very much a jazz record, although the Cikada String Quartet provides sumptuous colors and prickly textures. The poetic segments themselves are fairly short. They essentially function like the “head” of the tune, even if they fall in the middle or at the end of a given track. At times Kuhn will begin a piece in full soloing mode, with Creely’s verse occurring a good deal later – a canny reversal of the head-solo format.
David R. Adler, Jazztimes

Poetry and jazz together can be treacherous territory, forcing narrators into a mannered mimicry of swing, but these short pieces strike an almost ideal balance between Creeley’s offhand, pragmatic pieces, Kuhn’s glossy postbop fluency and Swallow’s famously melodic, zither-like electric bass sound, with a string quartet sometimes adding dolorous mysteries. The jazz is straightahead, classy enough to hook the music’s regular audience; the strings writing is very sophisticated, and it all enhances the musicality of Creeley’s hypnotic narrative.
John Fordham, The Guardian

Mr. Swallow’s desire to set lines to music is basically one great bassist recognizing another. He took bits of Creeley poems, read by the author, and used their rhythmic nuances to suggest tunes, both in jazz settings with the pianist Steve Kuhn and in classical settings with the Cikada String Quartet, or sometimes in a jazz-with-strings formation. It’s a record with a soul, remarkably curious and thoughtful, and it gets you thinking about what kinds of things stimulate music.
Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

Creeley’s reflective readings are the heart of this work in which words and music play against one another. In an effort to transcend the music-and-poetry genre, Swallow has said that he tried to “get inside Bob’s breathing as he spoke the lines.” The resulting warmth and intimacy reveal that Swallow has admirably succeeded. Over the course of 18 tracks, Creeley muses on life’s beauty and frailty while Swallow and company provide a soft bed of sparsely arranged sound, buoyed by gorgeous string-quartet charts and melodic bass lines. Throughout, Kuhn and Swallow produce a wide range of sounds and styles that perfectly compliment Creeley’s gentle ruminations.
Greg Cahill, The Absolute Sound

Swallow’s compositions respond to the rhythmic phrasing and contours of Creeley’s readings in sensitive fashion, employing a wide variety of idioms in the process, and his own playing – often sounding guitar-like in his extensive melodic use of the upper register on his five-string electric bass guitar – is consistently excellent. Kuhn is in top form on piano, and the string players add further rich variation of colour and timbre to the mix. A very successfully realised project.
Kenny Mathieson, Jazzwise

It does all come together, largely because the music supports but never dominates the lyric. Swallow is extraordinarily reticent for a leader, his bass heard in the background as a supportive presence, although his occasional high-register pizzicato lines are spellbinding in their effectiveness. The foreground is occupied by Kuhn, whose rhythmically adventurous lines and sometimes abstract chording echo the cadences of the poems. … The Cicada Quartet is used sparingly, adding tremolo trills and sweeping string accompaniments as texture and commentary.
Simon Adams, Jazzreview

'For people who love emotional, intelligent, creative texts with
original music' 'This is a must have'
Ken Vos, Jazzism (Netherlands)