My review of Mats Eilertsen's Rubicon, today at All About Jazz.

It's no news to learn that we're the confluence of our many experiences: life, love, music....everything that we are comes from where we've been, what we've done, what we've experienced. That said, it doesn't mean that we can't move in completely new directions or try something completely foreign to us. Still, it's almost impossible to do anything--even things that are intentionally new and different--without there being some inescapable links to our past. With Mats Eilertsen's evocative Rubicon, the double bassist manages to create something altogether new while, at the same time, being an inevitable confluence of the 41 year-old Norwegian's many musical (and, no doubt, life) experiences since first emerging to public attention in Norway with the late '90s quintet Dingobats and then, soon after, the beginning of international attention with his tenure in the early quartet incarnation of Thomas Stronen and Iain Ballamy's Anglo/Norwegion improvising collective, Food.

Of course, Eilertsen's career was already in full motion by the time the new millennium came, with the bassist featured on recordings by guitarist Jacob Young (1998's Pieces of Time (Curling Legs)), pianist Maria Kannegaard (2000's Breaking the Surface (ACT)) and Nymark Collective (2000's First Meeting (Sonor))--all recordings which, in addition to others from the time, found the bassist already beginning to meet other musicians with whom he would regularly engage in later years, either as a member of their group(s) or they, as members of his own various projects.

Examining those three recordings, in fact, reveal a number of names now more internationally known, and with whom Eilertsen has subsequently recorded and/or toured in conjunction with releases on Munich's ECM Records: guitarist Young's Evening Falls (2004) and 2008 follow-up, Sideways; Nymark Collective pianist Tord Gustavsen's trilogy of (largely) quartet recordings, beginning with 2010's Restored, Returned and concluding with 2014's Extended Circle; and Kaanegaard Trio percussionist/drummer Thomas Strønen, whose 2006 quartet date, Parish, also included Eilertsen.

Continue reading here...