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Trondheim Jazz Orchestra & Espen Berg: Maetrix
by Chris May
Lana and Lilly Wachowski's The Matrix (1999)--an inspiration for Norwegian pianist and composer Espen Berg's Maetrix--divides opinion. The movie is regarded by some, including one assumes Berg, as a prescient masterpiece addressing the existential threat posed to humanity by digital technology. Others say it is pretentious twaddle. No worries. Discord is unlikely to greet Maetrix. Berg's gift for writing good tunes is front and center, the toplines and soloists riding rhythmic platforms which are borderline reminiscent of ...
Continue ReadingFlukten: Flukten
by Chris May
A supergroup of the best sort--based on talent rather than streaming numbers--Flukten consists of four musicians from some of the most creative bands in Norway, a stylistically varied crowd including Hanna Paulsberg Concept, Atomic, Espen Berg Trio Trio and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. The group--tenor saxophonist Hanna Paulsberg, guitarist Marius Klovning, bassist Bárður Reinert Poulsen and drummer Hans Hulbækmo--debuted in 2021 with Velkommen Håp (Odin). The sound was, approximately, in the same bag as Britain's similarly constituted Partisans: jazz-rock played with ...
Continue ReadingKjetil Mulelid: Agoja
by Chris May
Over the course of three albums with his trio between 2019 and 2022, and the exquisitely pretty solo set Piano (Rune Grammofon, 2021), keyboardist Kjetil Mulelid has emerged as a bright new star in Norwegian jazz. His playing is vivacious, his composing melodic and his overall sound consonant but full of unexpected twists and turns. Mulelid has been mentioned in the same breath as Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau, and the comparisons, though excitable, have some merit.
Continue ReadingEspen Berg: Water Fabric
by Chris May
The Norwegian pianist and composer Espen Berg has already carved out a formidable reputation with his trio. Earlier in 2023 he began a parallel strand with The Trondheim Concert (NXN), the recording of a wholly in-the-moment improvised solo concert, in the Keith Jarrett tradition, which he gave in 2019. Berg has since released two more albums in the same vein: The Nidaros Concert and The Hamar Concert (both NXN, 2023). Berg is also heard to advantage in ...
Continue ReadingAndre Roligheten: Marbles
by Chris May
Tenor saxophonist André Roligheten is best known outside his native Norway, and wider Scandinavia, as a member of drummer Gard Nilssen's Acoustic Unity and as a composer/arranger in the berserker big band, Supersonic Orchestra. Nilssen returns the favour on Marbles, one of Roligheten's infrequent own-name releases. The album has grown out of a band Roligheten put together in spring 2021 for the Trondheim Jazz Festival, which had commissioned a new piece from him. The band was called ...
Continue ReadingHanna Paulsberg Concept: Daughter Of The Sun
by Chris May
Ever since Jan Garbarek put Norwegian jazz on the map in the late 1980s, and even more so after the international success of his singularly ascetic Officium (ECM) in 1994, the music has acquired a reputation for being, if not entirely lacking in passion, then at least emotionally detached. Since the millennium, with the emergence of a new generation of musicians at the forefront of the electronica movement, showcased annually at Norway's influential Punkt festival, the country's jazz has, justly ...
Continue ReadingGard Nilssen's Acoustic Unity: To Whom Who Buys A Record
by Chris May
In July 2019, Gard Nilssen will be Artist-in-Residence at the prestigious, future-facing Molde Jazz Festival. It will be a busy week for the Norwegian drummer, composer and sonic adventurer. As well as guest appearances, he will perform with several of his bands--SpaceMonkey, an electronica/dance music mash-up he co-founded five years ago; Bushman's Revenge, which may be the missing link between Albert Ayler and Black Sabbath and which he co-founded in 2003; the more recently formed Amgala Temple, which draws comparisons ...
Continue ReadingEspen Berg Trio: Free To Play
by Chris May
If you ask a jazz fan to name the greatest piano-trio albums ever made, the probability is that their top twenty choices will include most, if not all, of the following: Erroll Garner's Concert By The Sea (Columbia, 1955), Ahmad Jamal's But Not For Me (Argo, 1958), Bill Evans's Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside, 1961), Keith Jarrett's Standards Volume 2 (ECM, 1983) and Brad Mehldau's The Art Of The Trio Vol. 1 (Warner Bros., 1996), or in the cases ...
Continue ReadingGard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra: If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours
by Chris May
Fasten your seat belt, please. Get ready for the full tilt, barely tamed, beautiful monster that is Gard Nilssen's sixteen-piece Supersonic Orchestra. Audacious and experimentalist, like everything the Norwegian drummer and composer touches, Supersonic flouts convention and, in particular, realigns the longstanding relationship between pre-composition and improvisation in orchestral jazz. If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours, its debut, was recorded live at the adventurous Molde International Jazz Festival in 2019, where Nilssen was Artist in Residence. The band's ...
Continue ReadingFlukten: Velkommen Håp
by Chris May
The first thing that may strike you about Norwegian quartet Flukten's debut album is the sleeve art. This shows a naked man with his back to the camera, limbs spread wide and with something dangling between his legs. It looks like a penis, but smaller. Flukten (in English the name means The Escape and the album title means Welcome Hope) comprises four of Norway's most distinctive musicians: tenor saxophonist Hanna Paulsberg (Hanna Paulsberg Concept, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra), ...
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