Steve Kuhn was already a player of legendary repute by the time he came to ECM in 1975. Fifteen years earlier he had been the original pianist in Coltrane’s first quartet. Influential work with Art Farmer and Stan Getz followed, and Kuhn’s own October Suite collaboration with Gary McFarland had established benchmarks for an emergent “chamber jazz”.

With Trance, Kuhn had rich experience to draw upon. “Trance is as unpredictable as it is compelling,” declared All About Jazz., while the BBC Music Magazine noted that “you could scarcely ask for a more powerful yet

responsive support team” than Swallow, DeJohnette and Evans: “Kuhn is prompted into some of his most direct, open and lyrical playing.”