CD of the week: TORD GUSTAVSEN TRIO Being There ECM *****

This, the third album from pianist Tord Gustavsen's trio with Harald Johnsen (bass) and Jarle Vespestad (drums), is less a refinement of the music of its predecessors than an intensification of it. It's saturated in the concentrated, spacious, nuanced interplay that gives the trio's work such beauty and emotional power.

They stake out their ground with the opener, At Home. Slow and contemplative, it's a striking example of how the trio mines its repertoire for fresh, dynamically shaded interpretive detail. Despite its restraint and the complete absence of rhetorical flourish, the music manages to be both probing and fresh, and retains a sense of rightness and inevitability. Freedom and form are continuously held in balance.

For Gustavsen, that balance seems to be part of his musical DNA. It's explicit in Interlude, a spontaneously created solo piano performance whose improvisations are grounded in a single motif. In Sani, an improvised rubato duet with Vespestad, the piano references the original like a compass bearing while ranging away from the basic material.

The influence of gospel music and hymns grew clearer over the trio's previous releases, Changing Places and The Ground. This time that influence is more strongly evident than ever. Pieces such as Wide Open, Still There and the grooving Draw Near are reverential, direct and melodic, sacred music filled with touches so subtly and naturally done that they slip by almost unnoticed. And Vesper is a solemn, simple, spiritual balm, very beautiful, with Johnsen's bass solo a moving soliloquy on

the material. Even Blessed Feet, which Gustavsen wrote as a folk-like melody inspired by his little nephew, grooves with a congregational feel, down home with a European accent.

But the trio's identity is asserted in other, more secular ways: in the assertive dances of Vicar Street and Where We Went, and in the warm, lyrical romanticism of At Home, Around You and Karmosin (the only piece not written by Gustavsen). It's best summed up in Cocoon, which reconciles surprise with formal detail in a performance of melancholy beauty. www.musicconnection.org.uk

RAY COMISKEY