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Jan Harbeck Quartet: Balanced
by Neil Duggan
Should you find yourself sitting by the fireside late at night, perhaps swirling something in a glass, and you fancy listening to some elegantly refined jazz, then this album should fit the bill. Jan Harbeck is a Danish saxophonist, bandleader and composer and Balanced is his sixth album with his long-standing quartet. The Jan Harbeck Quartet play to packed houses around Denmark and Europe and have multi-million streams on Spotify. Previously, they have often used the Great American ...
read moreMikkel Ploug: Balcony Lullabies
by Dan Bilawsky
Upset, isolated and frustrated during the early stages of the near-global COVID-19 quarantine, Danish guitarist Mikkel Ploug did what he does best; he picked up his instrument and started playing. Sitting on his balcony and reflecting on the moment, Ploug set beauty in strings, allowing his sound to hold aloft. His appreciative neighbors listened with rapt attention, applauding at the conclusion of that otherwise personal performance. And so began the balcony lullabies. At 6:15 p.m. every evening, ...
read moreCarsten Meinert: C.M. Musictrain
by Jakob Baekgaard
Collectors of rare Danish jazz are in much better position in 2020 than they once were. Little labels like Centrifuga and Frederiksberg Records are dedicated to digging out lost pearls and the big Danish jazz labels are following suit. Not long ago, Storyville brought the classic album Sentiments (Storyville, 1972) by saxophonist Sahib Shihab back into circulation and now Stunt Records has reissued an ultra-rare album of modern Danish jazz that will whet the appetite of even the most seasoned ...
read moreJakob Dinesen: Keys & Strings
by Jakob Baekgaard
In the liner essay for Jakob Dinesen's double album, Keys & Strings, writer Eddie Michel Azoulay mentions the tenor saxophonist's quest for truth and beauty. The romantic poet John Keats is not mentioned directly, but his lines from the famous poem “Ode on a Gracian Urn" immediately come to mind: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Indeed, it would be correct to call Dinesen a ...
read moreEnrico Pieranunzi / Thomas Fonnesbæk: Blue Waltz - Live at Gustavs
by Jakob Baekgaard
The best thing about a live recording is that it captures music made in the moment at a particular time and place. Indeed, when Italian pianist, Enrico Pieranunzi and Danish bassist, Thomas Fonnesbæk teamed up for two evenings of live recording at Gustav's Bistro, nobody could know how special it would be. In fact, Pieranunzi had played at Gustav's before and connoisseurs of Copenhagen Jazz Festival would know that the restaurant was a special spot for hearing music in tandem ...
read moreJan Harbeck Quartet: The Sound The Rhythm
by Jakob Baekgaard
Jan Harbeck is a Danish tenor saxophonist whose debut with his quartet, In the Still of the Night (Stunt, 2008), received a Danish Grammy. At that time, Kresten Osgood was playing the drums. On the quartet's second album, Copenhagen Nocturne (Stunt, 2011), he was replaced by Anders Holm, but otherwise the line-up with bassist Eske Nørrelykke and pianist Henrik Gunde was intact. On these two albums, the musicians perfected a stylish noir universe of softly swinging jazz with interpretations of ...
read moreTobias Wiklund: Where the Spirits Eat
by Jakob Baekgaard
Who is the man behind the beard? This is the question one could be tempted to ask when seeing the cover of the young Swedish-born cornetist Tobias Wiklund's album, Where the Spirits Eat. The eyes of the horn-player are hidden, but if the saying goes that the eyes are the windows to the soul, there's no need to look any further. The music itself has plenty of soul. Wiklund might be young, but his swinging feeling goes back ...
read moreUS4: My Scandinavian Blues: A Tribute To Horace Parlan
by Chris Mosey
In the year of his birth Horace Parlan suffered an attack of polio that left him with a partially crippled right hand. He developed his own style of playing (involving a percussive left hand) and went on to become one of the most prolific and soulful pianists of the hard bop era. He played for two years with Charles Mingus and made eight Blue Note albums under his own name. In 1972, at the age of 42, ...
read moreOscar Pettiford & Jan Johansson: In Denmark 1959-1960
by Chris Mosey
Oscar Pettiford was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, in 1922, of a Choctaw Indian mother and a half Cherokee, half African American father. He became one of the most influential bass players in the history of jazz, building on the innovations of Jimmie Blanton to make the bass a genuine solo instrument. He jammed with the founders of bebop at Minton's Playhouse then followed Blanton by joining the Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1945-48. In 1958 ...
read moreOscar Pettiford & Jan Johansson: In Denmark 1959-1960
by Jakob Baekgaard
If anyone should doubt how much it has meant to the Danes that a number of prominent American jazz musicians have lived in Denmark for a shorter or longer time, they just need to walk around the streets of Copenhagen. Here you will find street names such as Ben Webster Street, Ernie Wilkins Street and Kenny Drew Street. Another jazz street is named after bassist Oscar Pettiford. Pettiford, along with Swedish pianist Jan Johansson, is the subject ...
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