Jazz Articles about Espen Aalberg

About Espen Aalberg

Album Review

It has been over a decade since a release from the Norwegian jazz band The Core. Founded in 2001, the quartet released half a dozen albums before mostly going their separate ways. Saxophonist Kjetil Møster worked with Gard Nilssen, Mats Gustafsson, and Per Zanussi, pianist Erlend Slettevoll with Hedvig Mollestad and Petter Wettre, bassist Steinar Raknes with Tord Gustavsen, and drummer Espen Aalberg in the Basement Sessions with Jonas Kullhammar and Torbjörn Zetterberg. Roots, the ensemble's ninth recording, ...

Album Review

Aalberg / Kullhammar / Zetterberg / Santos Silva: Basement Sessions Vol. 4 (The Bali Tapes)

Read "Basement Sessions Vol. 4 (The Bali Tapes)" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
March 28, 2018

Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva joins the core Swedish trio for the 4th installment of this series recorded in Bali, Indonesia. Moreover, each musician uses indigenous Gamelan instruments to induce World Jazz treatments within a variety of motifs. However, the quartet executes a range of alternating flows, combining coarse and meaty horns parts with sonorous thematic statements and free-form improv. At times saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar enacts latter-day Coltrane-isms, yet the band tenders a modicum of tonal contrasts and emotive outbursts, ...