Jazz Articles about Erik Johannessen

About Erik Johannessen

Album Review

Gard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra: Family

by Mark Corroto
September 30, 2023

Why can't all music be supersonic? That does not mean supersonic as in a speed exceeding that of sound, but sound that is sonically superlative. Drummer, composer, and bandleader Gard Nilssen's music is seemingly always sonically superb. His 17-piece Supersonic Orchestra was captured in 2022 at the Mondriaan Jazz Festival in Den Haag, Netherlands, for Family, his follow-up to If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours (Odin 2020). The Supersonic Orchestra is made up of seven saxophones ...

Liner Notes

Jaga Jazzist: '94 - '14

by John Kelman
February 27, 2023

It's hard to believe that Norway's Jaga Jazzist is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, in 2014. Not that there aren't other groups that have lasted as long, but look for a group whose primary composer was just 14 when the whole thing began, find a band where five out of its eight current members were there when everything started in 1994, and scope out one that has managed to remain as stylistically enigmatic and impossible to categorize as... well, ...

Album Review

Erik Johannessen: Inkblots

Read "Inkblots" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
May 22, 2012

Norwegian trombonist Erik Johannessen is a very busy musician: he is a member of the left-of-center Norwegian jazz outfits Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Jaga Jazzist, Lord Kelvin and Magic Pocket, and contributes to recordings by artful songwriters such as Susanne Sundfør and Synne Sanden, so it is no surprise that he has only now released his first solo album. Luckily, Johannessen justifies the waiting by a beautiful set of short compositions which accommodate the rich vocabulary of his ...