Mats Eilersten

Mats Lidström opens his notes for this exciting and varied new release with these emphatic words: “Let it be known that cellists’ repertoire is unlimited”! In that spirit this outstanding duo offer us a feast of fine fare from the neglected French repertoire. This includes the remainder of the Breton song arrangements by Koechlin which where unknown to the players when they recorded the first set and have here been recorded for the first time from the manuscript in the composer’s family’s collection. As for Widor, he has come down in history ………….

Norwegian bassist Mats Eilertsen has been a strong and supportive presence on a dozen ECM sessions to date. With Rubicon he steps forward to present his own music, with an international cast. The album features compositions originally written in response to a commission from the Vossajazz Festival. All About Jazz reviewed the premiere performance: "Rubicon proved to be a very dynamic work. Eilertsen ensured that each of the instrumentalists took their share of the spotlight, brought together combinations of players that emphasized tonal variation, and created ensemble sections bursting with life." After fine-tuning the material on tour, Mats brought his septet to Oslo's Rainbow Studio, where Manfred Eicher produced this definitive version of Rubicon in May 2015.

Writes the session producer Lars-Goran Ulander in his liner notes: "We were rehearsing Barry Guy's orchestral pieces 'Theoria' and 'Harmos,' preparing the Swedish premiere of these masterpieces of structured improvisation with the Swedish Radio Jazz Group After hours of rehearsing, the 'Gang of Four'......

Having bought this cd as a complete blind purchase [usually not, i have to admit, a successful venture] i was pleasantly surprised. it is a daring, envelope-pushing guitar cd, and mats bergström's executes the difficult repertoire with finesse and panache. The music is all 20th century [none of your romantic spanish guitar here…], including steve reich's 'electric counterpoint' [originally written for pat metheny and reproduced here in all its chattering, cascading glory] and toru takemitsu's characteristically difficult but rewarding 'all in twilight'.

With his Rigoletto Fantasy Mats Lidström revives an extremely popular form of music from the past both in form and spirit, the cobbling together of famous/popular operatic tunes to create new vehicles for instrumentalists done frequently in the 19th century. In his notes for the booklet he outlines some of the background to this and Verdi’s triumphant opera, of which “almost every aria instantly became famous. For me, this created the pleasant problem of having to choose what not to include in my fantasy: a first version ran to 55 minutes!”