Another sold out concert for the highest caliber crossover jazz trio around: regardless of your personal taste about music, these three gentlemen really know how to play with elegant perfection and reach a “complex simplicity” that is by no means easy to achieve. And still, you will not stumble into anything resembling a virtuous complacency in the dynamics of the trio, it all rather seems a wonderful game of fraternal complicity between three giants who play with the same naive enthusiasm of three young kids strumming cover songs in the house’s cellar after school. Having never attended a JK3 gig with the previous drummer Jonas Holgersson, there is luckily no way to make comparisons, but the young Ikiz (Turkish but naturalized Swedish) is a phenomenon, a pure instigator, with a couple of gears above the average: his ability to transform and his groove.Actually, to be truthful, it is only the birth certificates the lie about the other two on stage.

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Concert at the Salon IKSV, Istanbul, Turkey, January 18, 2014
 

A completely sold out concert in a city where jazz really beats like few other places in Europe and the world. A musical scene to pay close attention to, and one that pays close attention to what is going on. Turkey is hungry for innovative and quality music. And the age of the listeners is often incredibly young compared to other countries, I have never seen so many boys and girls at a jazz concert, ever. Magnus Öström is really at home here, everything that is related to the Esbjörn Svensson Trio enjoys the status of a loving and warm cult. “Loving" is not an adjective chosen at random, it is different from “adoring”. In fact, the gap between audience and stage is tiny and the liquid boiling energy which abundantly fell on the audience was repaid with delirious shouting, applauding and sighing that no one cared to hold back. I have never experienced anything quite like that at a jazz concert before.

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