'Echoes' with a certain Satie-like feeling of calm and yet mystery is very tantalising to say the least but oh so brief. Of any of the albums known about so far for 2022 the prospect of the trio record from Swedish pianist Joel Lyssarides entitled Stay Now from which the track is drawn is most intense and urgent. The introspective piece which has a very well-conceived dialogue with bassist Niklas Fernqvist begins the ball rolling towards the album's release at the end of January. Put it this way it does not dull interest in the project one bit.

Stay Now to be issued by the German ACT label who made jazz history with the phenomenal success of e.s.t was recorded in a Gothenburg studio Nilento, a studio familiar to among others bass don Avishai Cohen, back in September. Lyssarides, still in his twenties, has already in his short career clocked up huge streaming figures maybe partly why Siggi Loch's label is so interested in putting out this his third album to push him out internationally.

Listening to some of his earlier work his sense of poise and the meaningfulness of his improvisational sense is clear. The pianist has worked with pop act Dirty Loops and the classical mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter crossing quite a few boundaries in the process. And Lyssarides has won more than his fair share of awards along the way back home but remains resolutely unknown abroad. On the record with Lyssarides are the bassist Fernqvist mentioned earlier and drummer Rasmus Blixt. Read more on Joel Lyssarides in a piece run on marlbank earlier in 2021. Joel Lyssarides photo: Björn Arkö