Jazz Articles about Jon Christensen

Eberhard Weber: Colours

by John Kelman
January 14, 2010

As the jazz-rock fusion movement gained ground from its early years in the late 1960s through its glory days in the early-to-mid-1970s—blending the more sophisticated harmonies of jazz with rock music's rhythmic power and high volume—all too often it was about muscular chops and complex writing for the sake of it. Little attention was paid to nuance and understatement. While guitarist John McLaughlin's high octane Mahavishnu Orchestra and keyboard player Chick Corea's guitar-centric incarnation of Return to Forever were tearing ...

Lars Danielsson: Melange Bleu

by John Kelman
April 21, 2007

Music--improvised or scored--is inextricably linked with how it's arranged or orchestrated, a point made crystal clear by Lars Danielsson's Mélange Bleu. The bonus track on the Swedish bassist/cellist/ pianist's Libera Me (ACT, 2004) hinted at the direction Danielsson would take on Mélange Blue--a blending of acoustic instruments, concert orchestra and technology to create a lush new mix (or Mélange) that retains Danielsson's innate lyricism, but places it in the sonic realm of Nu Jazz. With some of ...

Lars Danielsson: Mélange Bleu

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 31, 2007

Ormai lanciato sulla strada di altri scandinavi, come Nils Petter Molvaer e Bugge Wesseltoft (non a caso presenti nell’organico), il contrabbassista, violoncellista e pianista Lars Danielsson si spinge un po’ oltre il precedente lavoro Libera me (clicca qui per leggerne la recensione) e mette in scena un album molto artefatto, elettrificato e ricreato in studio (il mitico Rainbow Studio di Oslo, sotto la supervisione dell’ingegnere del suono Jan Erik Kongshaus). Ecco così che gli strumenti sono ampiamente sostituiti da sampler, ...

Lars Danielsson: Libera Me

by John Kelman
October 19, 2004

When the bonus track on an album is the most adventurous piece, you know there might be trouble. And that's not to say that bassist Lars Danielsson's latest album, Libera Me , is bad; it isn't. In a year where we've seen other artists mesh jazz improvisation with an orchestra, most notably pianist Steve Kuhn with Promises Kept (ECM) and Charlie Mariano with Not Quite a Ballad (Intuition), it has come to pass that these two disparate concepts--the obvious demand ...

Jon Christensen: Rarum XX: Selected Recordings

by Jerry D'Souza
April 22, 2004

One of the features of the ECM's Rarum series is that the artist chooses the tracks. Jon Christensen has contributed to 51 albums and it is interesting that he has chosen three tracks from Keith Jarrett records and two from Ralph Towner. There is one difference. The Jarrett albums have the same musicians; but of the Towner tracks, one is a duet and the other features a quartet, though both come from the same recording.

Christensen cut his ...