Purcor, subtitled Songs For Saxophone And Piano, is the first record by the duo of Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim and pianist and composer Andreas Utnem, released by ECM in November 2010. Utnem calls their music "improvised church music". The programme brings together new settings of parts of the Mass, folk songs, theatre music and free improvisations, and the mood is quiet, melodic and devotional from start to finish.
The partnership began in the 1990s, when Utnem, then working with Norway's Church City Mission foundation, invited Seim to play with him at selected church services. They improvised on variations of the psalms and played each other's compositions, and the meetings grew into an informal, semi-regular engagement. In May 2008 they recorded at Tøyen Kirke, a church in the older part of Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug and Peer Espen Ursfjord as engineers. Seim plays tenor and soprano saxophone and Utnem piano and harmonium, with Manfred Eicher producing.
The Kyrie opens the album on Seim's soft, breathy tone, and the other sections of the Mass, Credo and Agnus Dei, return through the sequence beside a traditional Pater Noster. In Responsorium Utnem moves from piano to harmonium, which gives the piece the feel of an organ hymn. Seim also revisits Bhavana, his duet first heard on Different Rivers, and three short improvisations, a prelude, a Gloria and a postlude, sit between the written pieces. Two traditional melodies, Solrenning and Når Mitt Øye Trett Av Møye, close the circle of sacred and folk material, alongside the anonymous tune 312.
Stuart Nicholson noted in Jazzwise that Utnem has no jazz background, yet his "sure sense of melodicism" puts him "at one with Seim's breathy yet warm tone and beautifully sculpted phrasing". Reviewing it for London Jazz News in March 2011, Chris Parker drew attention to the audible breathing that opens many pieces and to the microtonal bends and smears in Seim's phrasing. In Vibrations, Jacques Denis heard a depth of melodic song close to mystical meditation.
This CD is the 2022 reissue of ECM 2186, first released in November 2010. It belongs to the Touchstones series, through which ECM has been bringing catalogue albums back into print in card packaging since 2008.
