Anders Jormin/Lena Willemark
Pasado en claro

Anders Jormin double bass
Lena Willemark vocals, violin, viola
Karin Nakagawa 25-string koto
Jon Fält drums, percussion
Recorded December 2021 at Studio Epidemin, Gothenburg
Engineer and coproducer: Johannes Lundberg
Cover photo: Fotini Potamia
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 20, 2023

Since breaking ground on 2004’s In Winds, In Light, bassist Anders Jormin and singer/violinist/violist Lena Willemark have charted old and new territories in an increasingly fertile partnership. Their collaboration reached the next stage of development when they welcomed Japanese koto player Karin Nakagawa into their midst on 2015’s Trees Of Light. To that milieu, they’ve added drummer Jon Fält, whose name will be familiar to Bobo Stenson Trio fans. Although Willemark’s roots in Swedish folk heritage and its preservation are at the core of what’s being articulated here, the improvisational packaging has been deepened. The settings touch down on the landing strips of many times and places, including poetry from ancient China and Japan, contemporary Scandinavia, Mexican luminary Octavio Paz (whose “Pasado en claro” gives us this album’s title), and Renaissance humanist Petrarch.

The latter’s Poem no. 164 from Canzoniere, the eponymous subject of “Petrarca,” flickers like a candle flame. It is one of many musical settings by Jormin, whose loose strata give his bandmates plenty of room to look for fossils and regard their shapes melodically. Long before that, “Mist of the River,” his take on Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072), opens with the gentlest shimmer of koto. The poem paints a picture of a fisherman whose cast is obscured by mist and storm, resolving into groovy textures. With the clarity of a statue, Willemark etches the scene one frame at a time until they mesh into a flowing whole. Brushed drums add jazzy touches: water and silver combined. “Glowworm” looks even further back to the 8th century. The tanka by Yamabe no Akahito, rendered here in an evocative Swedish translation, finds Willemark and Jormin’s instruments in a cloudy slumber while percussion and koto yield just enough light to see the contours of their dreams.

Most of Jormin’s tapestries are woven from more recent material. And yet, despite the brief appearance of artifice—as in Jörgen Lind’s “Blue Lamp,” which contrasts hospital buildings against a starkly natural scene—all the modern verses are steeped in an unbroken respect for the organic. This is especially true in “Kingdom of Coldness,” where the haikus of Tomas Tranströmer seep through liquid gongs and arco bass as Willemark’s voice draws maternal lines across Nakagawa’s constellations, and “Returning Wave,” where Anna Greta Wide’s words accumulate against the barrier of closed eyelids.

The remaining tracks consist of original songs by Willemark, who has her bow and throat on the pulse of something so genuinely folkloric that they seem as weathered by time as the rest. “The black sand bears your footprints / trampled by many, but seen by none,” she sings in “Ramona Elena,” forging a scene of heartache, loss, and sisterly love that demands motionless listening. “The Woman of the Long Ice” brings more of that briny sound through her fiddle as she laughs with joy at the power of music to run beneath even the most frozen waters. (This track is also a highlight for its freer playing.) Between the instrumental “Wedding Polska” and the leaping strains of “Angels,” the quartet never loses sight of its roots, which run deep and wide, sustaining forests older than us all.