One of the quietest concert tours of the year started last night at Turner Sims in Southampton, with the other dates below. The ECM album What Was Said by pianist Tord Gustavsen, vocalist Simin Tander and drummer Jarle Vespestad (as one commentator put it it) “is like listening to silence.” Gustavsen talks about this project bringing the trio into a “shared spiritual universe.” It is the kind of gig you hope people don’t bring their coughs, conversations and crisp packets to.

Simin Tander was the daughter of a German mother and an Afghan father, both of whom died when she was young. She grew up in Cologne, studied jazz singing and went to live for eight years in the Netherlands, and had a long working partnership with fine Dutch pianist Jeroen van Vliet. Tander felt drawn to discover her father’s Middle Eastern heritage and language. She has been interested in slow ballad singing for some years. A version of Windmills of your Mind shows this focus, as does a tribute to Maria Schneider (no not that one, but the French actress), with back-projections of Antonioni’s The Passenger. The tour is not coming to London – yet.

UK tour dates

March 3rd Turner Sims, Southampton
March 4th Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh
March 6th St John the Evangelist, Oxford
March 8th Apex, Bury St Edmunds
March 10th St George’s, Bristol
March 11th CBSO, Birmingham