Piano is Norwegian jazz musician Kjetil André Mulelid’s first solo album. Ordinarily to be found leading a trio with drummer Andreas Skår Winther and bassist Bjørn Marius Hegge, the pianist had been encouraged to make a solo piano album nearly two years before recording the two locked-down sessions in June and September of last year that yielded Piano.

The eleven pieces here were each performed on the 1919 Bösendorfer grand piano located at Halden’s Athletic Sound studio. Mulelid talks about the instrument’s imperfect sound being a direct contributor to the tone of the album, but unless you are a pianist of his calibre, it’s hard to detect. Instead, what you hear are pieces like the fragile, introspective ‘Le Petit’ or the pretty ‘Skjong’ that straddle the gulf between classical music and jazz.

The majority of the album was recorded during a heatwave. Strange, then, that in these pieces I can hear rain. Specifically, I find myself imagining being sat in an empty café – probably in Paris; when my heart aches I usually find myself transported to the Paris of my mind – staring out onto puddles forming in the road. Perhaps it’s because I hear a sort of muted, haunting lightness of touch in Mulelid’s playing, or maybe it’s just the frame of mind I’ve found myself in every time I’ve put this album on. There is undoubtedly euphoria and beauty here in the languid note formations of a piece like the tender ‘For You I’ll Do Anything’ or closing track ‘The Sun’, but I also hear a sadness, a contemplative dimension that feels oddly anguished.

Lockdown may have limited Mulelid’s options to get his band together, but in Piano he has produced a striking, transcendent album that I expect to return to endlessly.

https://open.spotify.com/album/7yRzVFzD4b5aTWlXsFIm6k?si=ac_tzZeJQjWZs_h3K0h3bQ

Piano by Kjetil Mulelid was released March 19 2021 by Rune Grammofon. Thanks to Jim.

(c) 2021 Further.