Live at Belleville catches the Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen with Scottish tenor saxophonist Tommy Smith and Italian drummer Paolo Vinaccia, recorded in front of a crowd in Oslo and Drammen. Apart from Duke Ellington's Prelude to a Kiss, all the music is Andersen's. ECM calls it possibly his most powerful trio recording since Triptykon, made with Jan Garbarek and Edward Vesala in 1972.
The trio grew out of Independency, a work commissioned in 2005 for Andersen and Smith as a duo, and became his main group. The concerts were taped in September 2007 at the Belleville club in Oslo and at the Drammen Theatre, with Asle Karstad and Syver M. Frøislie as engineers. Andersen, Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher edited and mixed the tapes at Rainbow Studio, and Eicher is credited as producer. Andersen plays double bass with live electronics, and Smith stays on tenor throughout.
The four parts of Independency fill more than 44 minutes. BBC Music Magazine heard the suite as a celebration of the centenary of Norway's independence from Sweden, without any simple folk colouring. Part 1 starts from taps of the bow and plucked figures, and Part 2 opens on a long Smith improvisation before bass and drums lock into a hard swing. Part 3 is quiet and sparse. Andersen uses the electronics to layer his own lines in real time, building what The Herald called "big, warm structures". Outside the suite, Outhouse runs for ten minutes on a skittering, forceful groove, and Smith plays Prelude to a Kiss with much feeling.
British reviewers were enthusiastic. BBC Music Magazine made it a Music Choice, with Roger Thomas calling it "absolutely and unreservedly marvellous, and sonically impeccable, too". In The Scotsman Kenny Mathieson named it his jazz album of the year, and in The Guardian John Fordham heard something of Garbarek's melodic style in Andersen's writing and Smith's controlled tone. Duncan Heining asked in Jazzwise "how often do just three musicians produce music as vast and panoramic in its scale and vision?" In France it was a Choc of the year in Jazzman.
CD edition, ECM 2078, first released in October 2008.
