LAWO Classics has released Personal Best, a new album featuring Eivind Buene and ensemble Trio Accanto.
The album takes its name from Buene's work Personal Best, a six-movement work for saxophone, piano, percussion and live electronics written for Trio Accanto. The work grew out of a series of one-on-one Zoom conversations between Buene and each member of the trio, in which he asked them about their instruments, their childhoods, their philosophies.
Eivind Buene wrote about Personal Best:
Looking at Trio Accanto on stage, you see three very accomplished musicians playing together in a somewhat unconventional combination of instruments. But you also see an ensemble that embody a history of New Music, as collective and as individuals, having performed an enormous amount of repertoire from the last four decades. Writing for these musicians means to engage with this history, these bodies, both in a metaphorical and physical sense, that register so much of our recent past. For me, it also means engaging with my personal history, since I have listened to these musicians in various constellations for more than twenty years.
The album also includes Serious Songs, Buene's adaptations of Brahms' Four Serious Songs, with Buene himself performing as singer. Trio Accanto consists of Nicolas Hodges (piano), Marcus Weiss (saxophone) and Christian Dierstein (percussion). The album was recorded at SWR Experimentalstudio in Freiburg in February 2024.
Details
Out March 2026 (digital), June 2026 (physical)
Eivind Buene, voice
Trio Accanto: Nicolas Hodges, piano; Marcus Weiss, saxophone; Christian Dierstein, percussion
LAWO Classics, LWC1421
