Daniel Herskedal: A Single Sunbeam

What Del Close did for the art of improv comedy or Jacques Torres for the art of chocolate, Daniel Herskedal does for the tuba. An occasional star such as Bob Stewart has taken the instrument somewhere fresh outside the time-honored contexts of orchestra or marching band, but it is another thing to make the entire tradition feel new—good luck trying to name anyone else who could adapt the tuba to chill-ambient, Arabian travelogue and Norwegian yoik chanting with equal skill. After a globe-spanning string of recordings themed around different locations and traditions, A Single Sunbeam steps off the road and offers a simple meditation on the beauty of nature anywhere and everywhere.

The overall tone will still be familiar to listeners of his past recordings, which have tended to revolve around some combination of brass, piano, percussion and strings. The piano disappears here, to be replaced by some bewitching wordless singing by past collaborator Marja Mortensson (she of the aforementioned yoik), which only gives the proceedings an extra touch of the otherworldly. Her swooping vocalese is not always easy to distinguish from Ola Kvernberg's violin, but these pieces are arranged to blend all the elements into a beautifully natural whole already. Subtle shadings without fireworks are the order of the day.

This is not quite Herskedal's most minimalist outing (that would be 2020's Call for Winter (Edition), a truly solo soundscape made of self-overdubs), but A Single Sunbeam shows the same subtlety and patience even with a somewhat wider palette. Again, his striking compositional smarts are still equalled by the nuances of his playing. His tuba and bass trumpet can murmur or bounce or simply croon in a background drone while the other players do their thing. The percussion is the deep and earthy kind that roots the grooves in contrast to the voice and strings floating into the clouds.

As the nature-themed titles imply, these tracks are a series of tone paintings and the flow is charmingly organic. Herskedal is eloquent when putting his low-end lines in the lead, yet content to shade in the background more often than not. The group mostly basks in simple motifs, from the slowly sweeping "Eclipse Cycles" with the gravitas of a Viking funeral, to the title track smoothly building to the buzz of a spring morning, to the closing "Your Inner Shadow" floating on Mortensson crooning at her most mysterious. In any mode, it is gorgeously hypnotic and ready to oh-so-slowly carry a listener away.

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