Mattebo – Adami Quintet — Sketches of Cool: A New Swedish Jazz Language in Motion
There are albums that arrive quietly, asking the listener for patience, and then there are albums that seem to have been waiting for precisely the right moment to open their doors. Sketches of Cool, the new recording by the Mattebo–Adami Quintet, belongs to the latter category. Led by tenor saxophonist Sebastian Mattebo and trombone player Hampus Adami, the album is rooted in the long and fertile tradition of modern Scandinavian jazz, yet it never sounds imprisoned by tradition. Instead, it treats jazz history as living material: something to be remembered, reshaped, questioned and brought into the present.
The title Sketches of Cool immediately suggests an aesthetic world—coolness not as emotional distance, but as balance, restraint, elegance and an almost architectural sense of space. The album understands that the most compelling jazz does not always need to shout. Sometimes it is the placement of a single note, the length of a breath, the slight hesitation before a phrase, or the way two horns meet in harmony that creates the deepest impression.
At the centre of this music stands the remarkable partnership between Mattebo’s tenor saxophone and Adami’s trombone. Their instruments occupy different areas of the brass-and-reed spectrum, yet they communicate with an extraordinary sense of affinity. Mattebo brings the tenor its familiar combination of warmth, muscularity and lyrical flexibility, while Adami’s trombone contributes a darker, rounder and more tactile voice. Together they create a sound that can be simultaneously smoky and luminous, intimate and expansive.
Their dialogue is one of the album’s defining qualities. Rather than simply functioning as two soloists waiting for their respective turns, the saxophone and trombone frequently seem to think together. Phrases are passed between them, answered, transformed and sometimes deliberately left unresolved. There is a conversational quality in the writing and improvisation, as though the two musicians are engaged in an extended musical discussion in which agreement is never the only objective.
That is one of the great pleasures of Sketches of Cool: the music understands that jazz is conversation.
The quintet format gives this conversation an especially rich dimension. Behind the two horn voices is an ensemble capable of providing both harmonic definition and rhythmic freedom, allowing the music to breathe rather than forcing it into predetermined shapes. The result is a sound that feels carefully composed but never over-controlled. Even when the arrangements are precise, there is room for surprise—the essential element that keeps jazz alive.
The album’s relationship with the idea of “cool” is particularly fascinating. Historically, cool jazz has often been associated with understatement, melodic sophistication and an avoidance of unnecessary dramatic excess. But Sketches of Cool does not attempt to recreate an old-school cool-jazz atmosphere as a museum piece. Instead, it takes the principles behind that tradition—clarity, space, tone, interaction and elegance—and gives them contemporary life.
The music therefore occupies an intriguing space between past and present.
One can sense the great tradition of horn-led jazz behind the project, but the quintet does not merely imitate the masters. There is an awareness of the language developed by generations of jazz musicians, yet the musicians are clearly interested in discovering what that language can still say today. Their answer is not nostalgia. It is renewal.
Sebastian Mattebo’s tenor playing is central to this renewal. His sound has the authority expected of a modern tenor player, but it is his phrasing that becomes most memorable. He understands how to shape a line, how to let a melodic idea develop gradually and how to allow silence to become part of the sentence. His improvisations do not feel like collections of technically impressive gestures; they feel constructed, with ideas introduced, examined and transformed.
There is an appealing combination of strength and vulnerability in his playing. The tenor can become broad and forceful, but it can also retreat into a more intimate register, where the smallest inflection becomes meaningful. This ability to move between intensity and understatement is particularly appropriate for an album whose title places so much emphasis on the aesthetics of cool.
Hampus Adami, meanwhile, brings an unmistakable character to the music. The trombone is sometimes treated in jazz as a supporting voice, a colour inside the horn section rather than an instrument of complete expressive independence. Adami resists that limitation. His playing gives the trombone a remarkably individual personality, capable of lyricism, humour, density and dramatic weight.
His relationship with Mattebo is especially rewarding because their contrasts become complementary. Where the tenor can slice through the texture with a bright melodic edge, the trombone can soften the contour. Where Mattebo may push a phrase forward, Adami can give it gravity. Their interaction produces an almost cinematic sense of depth.
There are moments when the two horns seem to form a single composite instrument, and others when their individuality becomes sharply apparent. It is precisely this tension between unity and difference that makes their partnership so effective.
The rhythm section deserves equal attention. The musicians understand that accompanying a horn-led quintet is not simply a matter of establishing tempo and harmonic support. The rhythm section becomes an active participant in the music’s architecture. Bass and drums provide the foundation, but they also influence the direction of the improvisations, while the harmonic instrument contributes colours rather than merely filling spaces.
This gives the album a sense of movement beneath its apparent calm.
That movement is important. Sketches of Cool may favour elegance over excess, but it is never static. Rhythmic accents emerge and disappear; harmonic expectations are subtly redirected; melodies open into improvisational passages and then return with altered meanings. The music has the patience of a landscape, but it also has the restless curiosity of musicians who are listening carefully to one another.
The compositions themselves benefit from this approach. They feel less like rigid containers for solos and more like environments in which the quintet can exist. A theme establishes the atmosphere, the musicians enter it, and gradually the boundaries begin to move. The written material remains present, but improvisation gives it a second life.
This is where the word “sketches” in the album title becomes especially suggestive.
A sketch is not unfinished in the negative sense. A sketch captures the essential form of something before every detail has been fixed. It leaves room for imagination. In jazz, that idea is fundamental. A composition can be clearly drawn, yet the musicians must still decide what happens inside its contours.
Sketches of Cool embraces precisely that freedom.
The album also demonstrates the particular qualities often associated with Scandinavian jazz: an appreciation for atmosphere, uncluttered arrangements, melodic intelligence and the expressive potential of silence. But again, these qualities are not used as stereotypes. The music does not depend on a vague idea of “Nordic melancholy.” Instead, it develops a more nuanced sense of space, where warmth and coolness coexist.
There is sunlight in this music, but it often arrives through glass.
The emotional atmosphere is therefore subtle rather than theatrical. The listener is not constantly instructed what to feel. Instead, the quintet creates conditions in which feeling can emerge naturally. A melody can sound nostalgic without becoming sentimental. A harmonic change can suggest melancholy without announcing it. A rhythmic passage can generate excitement without resorting to obvious dramatic devices.
That restraint is one of the album’s strengths.
There is also an important sense of maturity in the way the musicians treat improvisation. The best improvisation is not simply spontaneous invention; it is the ability to hear what has already happened and respond to it. On Sketches of Cool, the musicians seem constantly aware of the musical present. A phrase from the tenor can influence the trombone. A rhythmic figure can alter the direction of a solo. A harmonic colour can change the atmosphere of the entire ensemble.
In this sense, the quintet operates almost like a single organism.
That collective quality is perhaps more important than individual virtuosity. Certainly, there is no shortage of instrumental skill here, but the musicians do not use virtuosity as an end in itself. Technique serves expression. The most impressive passages are not necessarily the fastest or most complicated ones; they are those in which the musicians discover something together.
The album therefore rewards repeated listening.
On a first encounter, the listener may be drawn primarily to the beautiful contrast between tenor saxophone and trombone. On subsequent listens, the rhythmic details begin to emerge. Then the harmonic relationships become clearer. Eventually, the spaces between the notes become as significant as the notes themselves.
That is a sign of a successful jazz recording: it does not reveal everything immediately.
Sketches of Cool also feels contemporary because it refuses to divide composition and improvisation into separate worlds. The written music establishes identity, while improvisation provides motion. Neither dominates. Instead, they exist in a productive tension, creating a recording that feels composed and spontaneous at the same time.
For Sebastian Mattebo and Hampus Adami, this is a particularly compelling musical statement because the album presents their shared artistic vocabulary not as a collection of stylistic references, but as a language of their own. Their voices are distinct, yet their collaboration gives the project a coherent personality.
The result is an album of contrasts: warm and cool, composed and spontaneous, lyrical and rhythmic, intimate and expansive, traditional and contemporary.
Most importantly, Sketches of Cool reminds us that “cool” in jazz has never truly meant coldness. At its best, cool jazz is intensely human. It is music that trusts the listener. It does not need to underline every emotion. It leaves room for the imagination.
And that room is where this quintet’s music comes alive.
The deeper achievement of Sketches of Cool is therefore not simply that it sounds elegant. It is that elegance becomes a method of communication. The musicians understand that restraint can carry enormous emotional weight, that a melody can speak through understatement, and that the most sophisticated jazz can remain immediate and accessible without sacrificing depth.
There is a quiet confidence throughout the album. Nothing feels hurried. Nothing feels forced. The music knows where it is going, yet it remains open to the possibility that the journey may change along the way.
That balance is difficult to achieve.
The Mattebo–Adami Quintet achieves it through listening.
And perhaps that is ultimately what Sketches of Cool is about—not coolness as an aesthetic pose, but coolness as a form of musical intelligence: knowing when to speak, when to answer, when to leave space, when to intensify and when simply to let a beautiful phrase hang in the air.
Sebastian Mattebo’s tenor and Hampus Adami’s trombone become the principal voices of this conversation, while the quintet around them provides the breathing architecture that allows every idea to develop naturally. The album does not attempt to overwhelm the listener. Instead, it invites the listener closer.
The closer one comes, the more there is to discover.
Sketches of Cool is consequently more than a collection of jazz compositions. It is a carefully drawn portrait of contemporary ensemble jazz, one in which tradition is not abandoned but continually reimagined. It is sophisticated without becoming distant, lyrical without becoming sentimental, restrained without becoming passive.
Above all, it is music with atmosphere. Music with space. Music with conversation.
Music that understands that sometimes the coolest thing a jazz musician can do is simply listen—and then answer with exactly the right note.
