Dan Berglund is a Swedish jazz bassist and multi-instrumentalist best known for his membership in the Esbjörn Svensson Trio (E.S.T.). An active session and touring musician, he's worked with Lisa Nilsson, Jeanette Lindstrom, Fire! Orchestra, Nils Landgren, and dozens of others. Berglund plays in avant jazz-rock outfit Tonbruket, who've issued several albums since 2010 including 2016's Forevergreens and 2023's Light Wood, Dark Strings. In 2017, he and E.S.T. drummer Magnus Öström formed Rymden with Norwegian keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft. Reflections & Odysseys, their debut, appeared in 2018, followed by Space Sailors a year later. In 2023, they issued Rymden + KORK, a collaboration with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and their own Valleys and Mountains. With Joel Lyssarides (piano and keyboards), Magnus Lindgren (saxophone), Verneri Pohjola (trumpet), and Ulf Wakenius (guitar), Berglund and Öström gave two major concerts in Cologne and in Stockholm, playing pieces from the E.S.T. repertoire. Selected recordings from those shows were released as e.s.t. 30 in 2024. Berglund was born in 1961 in Sweden in the tiny village of Pilgrimstad, its population was well under 400 residents. He grew up in a musical home and was exposed to folk, pop, and rock music early. At ten, he took up the guitar, influenced by his idols in the bands Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath. Berglund actively studied music in high school at Birka Folkhögskol in Östersund. At 14, he switched to the electric bass guitar. At school, an encounter with an influential teacher led to leaving electric bass for the acoustic upright double bass. Interestingly, it coincided with Berglund's first exposure to jazz via Weather Report's Heavy Weather album. He hit the practice room and studied his new instrument relentlessly. The effort paid off when he earned a gig with the local state-run orchestra. After high school, Berglund moved to Stockholm, where he continued his studies at Kungliga Musikhögskolan and played bass with Lina Nyberg on her sophomore outing, When the Smile Shines Through. Her pianist was Esbjörn Svensson. While on tour, Svensson asked him if he wanted to join his jazz trio with Öström. The band began rehearsing almost immediately. In 1993, they issued their studio debut, When Everyone Has Gone. The following year the trio recruited trumpeter Magnus Broo and saxophonist Per Texas Johansson to cut and release the eponymous Jazz Furniture in 1994. Though E.S.T. worked together live, its members supported themselves with other gigs. In addition to E.S.T., Berglund played and recorded with singer Lisa Nilsson, the Jeanette Lindstrom Quintet, and others. In 1995, E.S.T. released the live offering Mr. & Mrs. Handkerchief on Swedish independent Prophone. (It was later licensed by ACT and issued as E.S.T. Live '95.) After guesting on Koop's Sons of Koop, Berglund reunited with his bandmates for E.S.T.'s Winter in Venice on Superstudio Gul. The trio began touring outside Sweden, winning fans at jazz festivals and as a support act in clubs. That same year, they supported saxophonist Krister Andersson on his Intromotion. In 1996 they issued Esbjörn Svensson Trio Plays Monk to critical acclaim in Europe, and Winter in Venice in 1997. Between 1999 and 2003, E.S.T. released four albums on Superstudio Gul that established them as superstars in Europe -- From Gagarin's Point of View, Good Morning Susie Soho, Strange Place for Snow, and Seven Days of Falling -- all sold in the six figures and charted. They seamlessly shifted between styles and genres with deep interplay, wry humor, and warmth amid an acoustic base adapted with looped polyrhythms and electronic ambience. In 2005, Viaticum appeared on Germany's ACT label. It received excellent distribution in the United States. Viaticum resonated with North American jazz critics, who commented that E.S.T. were the missing link between Radiohead and Keith Jarrett. The album charted in four countries. That same year, they backed poet Kristina Lugn on her album Jag Vill Aldrig Me Vara Ful Och Ensam. 2006's Tuesday Wonderland made Sweden's Top 40; it also charted in Germany and Switzerland. The trio supported it with international touring, including their first appearances in the United States, where they toured with fellow piano trio innovators the Bad Plus. 2007's Live in Hamburg charted in the States as well as in Europe. Shortly after completing an album and tour in June 2008, Esbjörn Svensson was diving at Ingarö outside Stockholm. He went missing and was eventually found unconscious by his diving companions on the seabed. He was transported by helicopter to a hospital but died due to injuries sustained in the accident. That August, Leucocyte, the band's final album, appeared on ACT in Germany and Emarcy everywhere else; strangely, it marked the trio's first North American release. After a distinct period of mourning and feeling lost, Berglund re-engaged with music. In addition to playing on albums by Marie Bergman and Freddie Wadling, he formed Dan Berglund's Tonbruket. His collaborators included Johan Lindstrom (whom the bassist met while playing live with the Per Texas Johansson Band), pianist/keyboardist Martin Hederos (Soundtrack of Our Lives), and drummer Andreas Werliin. The driving vanguard jazz-rock band released Dan Berglund's Tonbruket on ACT in 2010. A year later he and guitarist Pat Metheny joined Öström on "Ballad for E" from the drummer's first solo album Thread of Life, while Berglund's quartet shortened its name to Tonbruket and released their second album, Dig It to the End. Berglund played on five more albums in 2011 from Nils Landgren's Funk Unit, Jessica Pilnas, Led, and Svante Thuresson. In 2012, in cooperation with Esbjörn Svensson's estate, Berglund and Öström issued 301. Titled after a recording studio in Sydney where they recorded Leucocyte with longtime recording and live sound engineer and collaborator Åke Linton, they assembled, remixed, and sequenced the leftover tracks from Leucocyte, which was originally intended as either a double, or two-part, album. This set featured even more of the trio's shift toward a sound-texture feel, not dissimilar to the ever-evolving sound palette of Australia's the Necks. The album made the American jazz album charts and the Top 100 in Europe. In 2013, Berglund joined saxophonist Matt Gustafsson's Fire! Orchestra for Exit! Tonbruket issued the widely celebrated and experimental Nubium Swimtrip. The following year Berglund reunited with Fire! Orchestra on Enter. He also made his first record with Norwegian keyboardist/composer/producer Bugge Wesseltoft and his duo partner DJ/producer Henrick Schwarz on Trialogue. He joined singer/songwriter Ane Brun's studio band on When I'm Free. In 2016, Tonbruket's Forevergreens charted in Europe and the band toured as far away as Asia. 2016 also saw the release of E.S.T. Symphony. The trio's remaining members shared the late pianist/keyboardist's desire to expand their cinematic take on the jazz piano trio with electronic rhythms, textures, and an orchestra. The trio had played live with chamber orchestras several years earlier. Further, Berglund and Öström spent three years playing E.S.T.'s music with various European orchestras. E.S.T. Symphony found them collaborating with pianist Iiro Rantala, steel guitarist Johan Lindström (Tonbruket), saxophonist Marius Neset, trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hans Ek, all performing E.S.T.'s tunes. Over the next two years, Berglund played sessions and toured with Tonbruket -- their Live Salvation album appeared from ACT in 2018. On the tenth anniversary of Svensson's death, ACT and the remaining members of E.S.T. released Live in London, a 106-minute double-length offering recorded during their 2005 sell-out performance at Barbican Centre. The previous year, Berglund and Öström formed a trio with Wesseltoft they called Rymden. In 2018, they released Reflections & Odysseys, their acclaimed debut on Jazzland. The following year, Tonbruket issued the charting studio outing Masters of Fog just a month before Rymden released Live on Earth. The E.S.T. rhythm section also joined Jeanette Lindstrom on the star-studded Queen of the Hillside. In 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns around the globe, Tonbruket recorded Doom Country in collaboration with singer/songwriter Christian Kjellvander under the name Kjellvandertonbuket. Rymden's Space Sailors, recorded the previous year, also appeared in 2020. Berglund's session work with Brun and others was abundant. In 2023 he managed to release Rymden + Kork with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and their own studio set, Valleys and Mountains. The year also saw the release of Fossils by Kjellvanderbucket and Tonbruket's Light Wood, Dark Strings. In 2024, Öström and Berglund played concerts of E.S.T.'s music in Cologne and Stockholm with close friends Joel Lyssarides (piano and keyboards), Magnus Lindgren (saxophone), Verneri Pohjola (trumpet), and Ulf Wakenius (guitar). Their approach to the E.S.T. repertoire rendered it anew and they treated it with intimacy, sensitivity, warmth, and humor, not unlike the original musicians. Titled e.s.t. 30, the album was recorded and released in June 2024 to commemorate the groundbreaking trio's 30th anniversary. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi