I just saw this headline, and the news saddens me to no end.

Esbjörn Svensson, a brilliant pianist and composer, died yesterday in a scuba diving accident near Stockholm. He was only 44 years old.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2285789,00.html

What a great loss to the musical community. The Esbjörn Svensson Trio was a group whose evolution I was hoping to follow for many years to come. Led by Svensson, they were young, innovative, and created some of the most exciting yet still accessible jazz today. I hesitate to call their music jazz, though - it is really much more than just one classification.

The track I'm attaching, "When God Created the Coffeebreak" from their album "Strange Place for Snow", shows the boldness in Svensson's playing and writing, and whenever I listen to this track, I am transfixed by the play between the harmony in the right hand and the busy, heavy, urgent melody in the left hand. And it's also unbelievably and infectiously groovy.

Right before I made the move last year from New York to LA, I saw that E.S.T. were playing somewhere outside the city, and thought about going to see them, but the moving expenses took priority over a concert ticket. Wish I had chosen otherwise. I had caught E.S.T.'s show live at Jazz Alley in Seattle back in '03 and found they brought a currency and freshness to music that I had seen many young jazz acts strive for but fall short. Their original compositions stuck in my head like pop songs but were also highly textured and complex, blurring the lines between jazz, pop, rock, electronica. And live, they were rock stars - all thin, intense, Scandinavian-handsome, with unquestionable musicianship. Just three guys, but the magnetic Svensson led the other two - double-bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Öström - in painting vivid aural landscapes around their distinctive and memorable songs.

Another great article paying tribute:

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15579

Rest in peace, Esbjörn Svensson. You will be missed.