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Jazz Articles about Daniel Herskedal
Daniel Herskedal: Movements of Air
by Geno Thackara
Quick--when you think of instruments that sound airy, what comes to mind? Piccolo, mandolin, some kind of synthesizer or possibly the theremin? Most of us would take quite some time before guessing the tuba. It takes some imagination to look past its conventional low lines and thumps, but Daniel Herskedal is just that kind of thinker. Even if the tuba's role in jazz commonly involves features or solos, it is rare to hear any player handle it with such gentleness ...
Continue ReadingDaniel Herskedal: Call For Winter II: Resonance
by Chris May
Among the strangest all-horns discs ever heard in this parish is How It All Started (Hat Hut, 2007) by the Swiss quartet Mytha. Led by free improv and third stream trumpeter Hans Kennel, the group plays music made almost entirely on alphorns, heavy wooden horns ten to twelve feet long with curved bells that rest on the ground. They look a little like Tibetan dungchen, though those are made of metal. Alphorns seem to have been developed back in the ...
Continue ReadingDaniel Herskedal: A Single Sunbeam
by Geno Thackara
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. ...
Continue ReadingDjango Bates: Tenacity
by Pat Youngspiel
Few jazz artists go to such great lengths to make their audience feel at the same time bewildered by humor-infused technical exhaustion and smitten by charm and sheer musical beauty as Django Bates does. The English pianist and composer has gained a reputation over the years, for bringing the quirkiest and widest range of ideas and styles to a, more or less, aesthetically-serious art form. Some might even claim he's the Frank Zappa of jazz. Then again, who's to say ...
Continue ReadingDjango Bates: Tenacity
by John Kelman
It's been a long time since that late May, 2013 week in Luleå, Sweden, where pianist Django Bates and his Belovèd Trio first collaborated with the renowned Norrbotten Big Band. Fully documented in the All About Jazz article Django Bates: From Zero to Sixty in Five Days, Bates, bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Peter Bruun, along with other non-Norrbotteners, including guitarist Markus Pesonen, tubaist Daniel Herskedal and trombonist/vocalist Ashley Slater, made the lengthy trek to this small coastal town, located ...
Continue ReadingDaniel Herskedal: Call For Winter
by Geno Thackara
Everyone has to go home sometime. Daniel Herskedal and his tuba have covered a good many miles both figurative and literal over the course of seven albums, particularly with the travel-themed triptych of Slow Eastbound Train (2015), The Roc (2017) and Voyage (2019) that preceded this recording. Where each of those had its own small cast and geographical settings, Call for Winter is the sound of the artist returning home and settling down in solitude. That expression isn't ...
Continue ReadingDaniel Herskedal: Call For Winter
by Ian Patterson
Tubaist Daniel Herskedal is on a roll. In 2019, shortly after the release of Voyage (Edition Records), he picked up a Norwegian Grammy as part of Marja Mortensson's trio for the outstanding Mojhtestasse (Vuelie, 2018). This was followed by the soundtrack on the closing credits of Joe Talbot's award-winning film Last Blackman in San Francisco (2019). Towards year's end there was another stunning collaboration with Mortensson, the duo album Lååje--Dawn (Vuelie), a loving homage to Norway's nature. Call For Winter, ...
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