Jazz Articles about Jan Bang

About Jan Bang

Live Review

Punkt FestivalTeateret/KunstsiloKristiansand, Norway September 3-5, 2026 Kristiansand does not announce itself the way a festival city usually does. The southern Norwegian port sits low along a coastline of pale granite and pine, its old town a grid of white wooden houses running down to Fiskebrygga, a fishing-harbor district where cruise ships dock a short walk from the quay. Just across the water, the wooded hill of Odderøya--once a naval base, now laced with ...

Album Review

Nils Petter Molvaer: Be Quiet

by Neil Duggan
July 7, 2026

For over three decades, Norwegian trumpeter and composer Nils Petter Molvaer has stood as one of the most influential figures in European jazz. On Be Quiet, he continues to push the boundaries of his already remarkable body of work, collaborating with a different artist in a different location on each of the nine tracks Molvær is no stranger to bold concepts. Since first attracting attention through his work with Arild Andersen in Masqualero, his brand of Nordic restraint ...

Album Review

Jan Bang & Arve Henriksen: After The Wildfire

Read "After The Wildfire" reviewed by Nenad Georgievski

by Nenad Georgievski
November 15, 2025

Commissioned by the Skopje Jazz Festival and premiered at its 42nd edition in 2023, After the Wildfire was performed live in an evening marked by the dim glow of the stage, an orchestra breathing with the electronics, the wealth of sounds conjured by sampler Jan Bang, and Arve Henriksen's trumpet cutting through the hall like a quiet flame. The premiere offered an immersion into a unique sonic world. Now released as a physical album, the recording feels both familiar and ...

Album Review

Jan Bang - Arve Henriksen: After The Wildfire

Read "After The Wildfire" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
November 9, 2025

Jan Bang is a musician, composer and record producer who was born in August 1968, in Denver, Colorado, but grew up in Kristiansand, Norway. Arve Henriksen is a trumpeter, vocalist and composer who was born in March 1968, in Stranda, Norway. For the 42nd Skopje Jazz Festival in 2023, Bang and Henriksen were commissioned to work together on new music. The result was After the Wildfire. It was first performed at the Festival with Bang on live sampling and electronics, ...

Album Review

Sidsel Endresen, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré: Punkt Live Remixes Vol.2

Read "Punkt Live Remixes Vol.2" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
October 12, 2024

The person who ought to be reviewing this album is, of course, the longtime AAJ writer and editor John Kelman/Dave Binder. Dave attended Punkt festivals on behalf of AAJ from the mid 2000s to the late 2010s, when ill-health stopped him making the long-haul flights to Norway. He was fascinated by Punkt's live- remixes, reporting on them in detail on a daily basis during the festivals. Dave was probably the first North American-based jazz writer to latch on to the ...

Album Review

Hu Vibrational: Timeless

Read "Timeless" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
December 18, 2023

An Adam Rudolph recording is less a collection of musical pieces than of sound paintings. The elements he works with are musical ones--any instrument known to mankind might be used, and often even used to play notes--but traditions of form and melody tend to be tossed out the window from the start. The tones are treated as daubs of paint on a palette, splashed here and there whenever they will add something to whichever imaginary landscape he is evoking at ...

Liner Notes

Arve Henriksen: Solidification

by John Kelman
May 26, 2023

Constellations and the Something of Discovery Music as a chosen profession may suggest occupying the minds of its makers far beyond the 9-to-5 hours of your average job, but for some it goes further still. Transcending mere preoccupation, trumpeter Arve Henriksen seems to eat, drink, sleep and dream music, 24/7, 365 days a year. “I was sitting in my car recently, driving from Oslo to Gothenburg," Henriksen relates, “and I just started to sing and sing and sing. And I ...