The Ground is the second album by the Tord Gustavsen Trio, the Norwegian piano trio that ECM introduced with Changing Places. Gustavsen's music is quiet and contemplative, yet he reaches back to early jazz, to the blues and gospel, and to the meeting point of Caribbean music and New Orleans. The record was an immediate popular success and, according to ECM, topped Norway's pop charts in its second week of release.
Gustavsen wrote all twelve pieces and plays piano, with Harald Johnsen on double bass and Jarle Vespestad on drums. Vespestad is also the drummer of the Norwegian group Supersilent. The trio recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo in January 2004, with Jan Erik Kongshaug engineering and Manfred Eicher producing. ECM hears a stronger sense of purpose than on the debut, and more freedom to improvise inside the structure of the tunes. Gustavsen has called his drummer's way of playing "expressive minimalism", a phrase quoted in Stereoplay.
The melodies are short and clear, often built on repeated figures, and the tempos rarely rise. In Jazzthetik, Rolf Thomas heard echoes of old New Orleans in Vespestad's playing on the opener Tears Transforming, and praised the plain, songlike elegance of Twins, carried by Johnsen's bass. Token of Tango belongs to what Phil Johnson of The Independent on Sunday called the album's ghostly tangos. The title track closes the set and, at over seven minutes, is its longest piece.
Stereophile made it a Recording of the Month, and the French magazines Jazzman and Le Monde de la musique each gave it a Choc. In Australia it won the Bells Award for International Jazz Album of the Year. In Jazzwise, Stuart Nicholson described Gustavsen as "a pianist of poetic cast, an exceptionally lucid soloist with a sure sense of melodic structure". In The Guardian, John Fordham wrote that "Gustavsen may not play many notes but he does make them all count".
This is the CD edition, ECM 1892. ECM issued it first in Australia, in time for the Wangaratta festival, and in Europe and North America in January and February 2005.
