Pianist Esbjorn Svensson's sudden death last year robbed jazz of a major talent and an important ambassador.
He and the Esbjorn Svensson Trio or E.S.T. - the remaining members being double bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Ostrom - were of the born-in- the-60s rock generation, and they played jazz with a rock attitude, quite often to a rock audience.
Svensson loved and covered Thelonious Monk, but grew up listening to Bach, Hendrix and Zappa. His music drew from diverse sources and ignored stylistic boundaries.
E.S.T. was the centre of its members' musical lives, and it is hard to think of another recent jazz ensemble so focused and self-contained. With the exception of one album - E.S.T Plays Monk (1996) - the trio's forays into standards were rare. Almost everything they played was self-composed.
Svensson's recorded work was mostly recorded with the same rhythm section. He had known and played with Ostrom since childhood, and in 1991 a gig accompanying Swedish singer Lina Nyberg introduced them to bassist Berglund.
Guest appearances by other artists with E.S.T. were likewise rare. Pat Metheny, trombonist Nils Landgren and singer Viktoria Tolstoy played with them live, but only Josh Haden, who wrote and sang the lyric Love is Real set to Believe, Beleft, Below, recorded with them.
Between 1993 and Svensson's death, they cut 12 albums, and tracks from seven of them have now been collected on their first serious compilation CD, Retrospective: The Very Best of E.S.T. on ACT. (Another compendium CD for the American market came out in 2001 but featured tracks from only two albums.)