The late poet Robert Creeley was no stranger to jazz. His own work descended from Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, and he provided the link in the new American poetry between the Black Mountain school and the Beats; early on, he composed his work to the music of Bud Powell. Later he collaborated with the jazz musicians preeminent among them: Steve Swallow (whom Creeley collaborated with on numerous live occasions and on the bassist's ECM Home album in 1979, where his poems were sung by Sheila Jordan), and the late Steve Lacy. As evidenced on So There, Swallow is the perfect aural illustrator and collaborationist for Creeley because he allows the poet free rein, giving him a place to truly speak for himself. Swallow composed the music to follow the flow and rhythm of Creeley's taut, sometimes elliptical line and his rhythmic breath. The work for So There began in 2001, when Swallow got his old friend to read numerous poems into a microphone at Tom Mark's Make Believe Ballroom Studio in New York. Swallow began working his way through the poems, listening to them dozens of times to find those he most wanted to compose to. He worked on the music for years; creating compositions not only involving his bass, but also for piano. More startlingly, he began composing pieces for string quartet based on what he said were "not just the rhythms of Bob's speech, but the colors and atmospheres implicit in the poems as well." In January of 2005, Creeley died, never having heard any of the finished work. In March of 2005, along with pianist Steve Kuhn and the Oslo Cikada String Quartet, Swallow and company began recording the work with ECM producer and label owner Manfred Eicher in Norway.

1		Oh No
2		Names
3		Here Again
4		Ambition
5		Indians
6		From Histoire de Florida
7		Sufi Sam Christian
8		Later
9		From Wellington, New Zealand / From Eight Plus
10		Miles
11		Just In Time
12		Return
13		Echo
14		Sad Advice
15		Riddle
16		Blue Moon
17		I Know a Man
18		A Valentine for Pen