Simon Toldam
Fem Små Stykker Med Tid
DENMARK ILK MUSIC ILK351LP (2024)
Danish musician Simon Toldam seems equally at home wearing any number of musical jackets – jazz, free improvisation, modern classical, and composition, and besides his own group the Simon Toldam trio he’s played in Band of the Universe (the backing group for the Danish singer Mads Beldring), The Surface Constructors (who play jazz spliced with electronics), and many others; and has collaborated on stage with big-name improvisers, including Han Bennink.
He’s here today with a solo piano record. The title translates into English as “five little pieces of time”, and there may be some conceptual musings which underpin this – something to do with gaps and spaces. One senses that Toldam likes to pause and reflect about life, and this is embedded in the music here – the meditative silences are punctuated with hesitant propositions (small tinkling notes), or with definitive statements, like when he slams down a powerful chord in the lower registers and lets it echo out into the ether, with the help of the sustain pedal.
I like the suggestions of great empty spaces one can explore – a large white room almost appears as you listen – but the overall scheme of Toldam’s compositions eludes me, perhaps because they’re being played so slowly and in a rather disconnected, diffuse manner, making it hard to join things up. If he has a philosophy of life, it might be one that tends to doubt the solidity of everything, proposing instead the gaseous nature of a vapour floating in the atmosphere. Cold, cerebral, unengaging music results. Available as a transparent vinyl pressing. (02/02/2024)