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About Ingi Bjarni Skúlason

Album Review

On Hope, Icelandic pianist and composer Ingi Bjarni Skulason opens a quiet interior, one shaped by listening as much as by sound. Joined by bassist Anders Jormin, guitarist Hilmar Jensson, and drummer Magnus Trygvason Eliassen, he presents a quartet steeped in introspection, where each note seems to arrive after careful consideration, as if feeling its way forward. The album gathers itself around loss, tracing the many chambers of grief that followed the death of his mother, yet it never settles ...

Album Review

Ingi Bjarni Skúlason: Hope

by Glenn Astarita
July 22, 2025

Ingi Bjarni Skúlason's seventh album, Hope, released on January 17, 2025, is a poignant exploration of grief and resilience, exquisitely woven into a Nordic jazz tapestry. This Icelandic pianist and composer, joined by truly estimable artists--Anders Jormin on double bass, Hilmar Jensson on guitar and Magnús Trygvason Eliassen on drums--crafts a soundscape that is both introspective and expansively beautiful. The quartet's synergy, finely honed at the Reykjavik Jazz Festival, shines across nine tracks, each a quiet meditation on loss and ...

Album Review

Ingi Bjarni Skúlason: Farfuglar

by Chris May
January 4, 2024

Appropriately enough for an album on NXN, a subsidiary of classical label Naxos, which only relatively recently diversified into jazz, the Icelandic pianist Ingi Bjarni Skúlason's Farfuglar spans both traditions. Is it classical? Is it jazz? Both? Neither? Check the YouTube below and decide for yourself. Whatever it may be, Skúlason's music is definitely cerebral, a quality which it shares, perhaps coincidentally, but probably not, with other releases on NXN. One thinks in particular of Norwegian saxophonist ...

Album Review

Ingi Bjarni: Lessons

Read "Lessons" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
June 5, 2021

In the very brief liner notes accompanying this solo debut record, the Icelandic pianist-composer Ingi Bjarni Skúlason talks about the difficult challenge it proved, to record and produce his piano music all by himself. With regard to the timing of the recording, he admits he does not believe there is ever a “right time" for doing anything, “so why not do it now?." As many jazz releases have proved, Bjarni was not the only one to have this idea during ...

Album Review

Ingi Bjarni: Tenging

Read "Tenging" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
February 15, 2020

Almost deliberately, Tenging doesn't make a terribly memorable impression at first. It is subtle enough not to stick in the listener's head and seems shorter than its respectable 42 minutes. This understated quintet recording is patient and quietly confident enough to exist in its own bubble. As it happens, that's exactly the point--Ingi Bjarni Skulason's approach here is about rejecting the world's fast-paced distractions in favor of intuition and mindfulness. The pieces were simply grown with no particular agenda, all ...

Album Review

Ingi Bjarni Skúlason: Tenging

Read "Tenging" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
September 21, 2019

Icelandic composer and pianist Ingi Bjarni Skúlason lived in Gotheburg, Copenhagen and Oslo while studying his Masters degree in composition. It is in these European cities where he met and performed with the musicians heard on this record. Jakob Eri Myhre and Merje Kägu join on trumpet and guitar with Daniel Andersson and Tore Ljøkelsøy forming the rhythm section on bass and drums. The music on Tenging was conceived especially with them in mind, not necessarily the specific instrumentation, but ...

Album Review

Ingi Bjarni Trio: Fundur

by Mike Jurkovic
November 23, 2018

Hailing from Reykjavik, pianist and composer Ingi Bjarni fluidly melds the extreme landscapes of his native Iceland with an innate, resilient melodicism that shifts willfully within the body of his music like a slideshow of the wild Icelandic terrain. Translated roughly as 'finding/discovery' or 'to have found something' Fundur immediately captures the ear with the openly expressive language that Bjarni, double bassist Bárður Reinert Poulsen and drummer Magnús Trygvason Eliassen bring to the trio format.Telepathic in nature, tenor, ...