Jazz Articles about Lisa Ullen

About Lisa Ullen

Album Review

Amalie Dahl's Dafnie: Live at Kafé Hærverk

Read "Live at Kafé Hærverk" reviewed by Daniel Mège

by Daniel Mège
September 25, 2026

There is a strange relationship between alto saxophone and marine biology. Akira Sakata, the breathtaking yet unsung altoist of torrential intensity and a marine biology researcher, specialized in daphnia (dafnie in Scandinavian languages), those tiny, endearing-looking crustaceans, as early as 1969; Amalie Dahl made them her orchestra. She knew nothing of this weighty legacy. Dafnie is made up of Jørgen Bjelkerud (trombone), Oscar Andreas Haug (trumpet), Nicolas Leirtrø (bass) and Patrycja Wybrańczyk (drums), standing in here for Veslemøy Narvesen. Dahl plays alto ...

Album Review

Amalie Dahl's Dafnie EXTENDED: Live at Moldejazz

Read "Live at Moldejazz" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
June 17, 2026

Over the course of a mere five years, Danish saxophonist Amalie Dahl has garnered well-deserved praise as a bandleader, improviser, and composer. A year after releasing the critically-acclaimed and award-winning Står Op Med Solen (Sonic Transmissions, 2024), Dahl expanded her quintet Dafnie to a 12- member combo. They appeared live at the Norwegian Moldejazz Festival. The resulting recording is at once earthy and sophisticated, with a sublime balance of stimulating dissonance and captivating mellifluence. The seven tracks are ...

Album Review

Space: Embrace the Space

Read "Embrace the Space" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
January 11, 2025

The second album from the Swedish collective Space, comprising pianist Lisa Ullén, bassist Elsa Bergman and drummer Anna Lund, finds further intrigue and sustenance in the soil that nurtured its eponymous 2022 debut. The three principals share a vision of the piano trio that accentuates the percussive aspects of the format. They have honed that synergy over several years, having first united as the engine room of saxophonist Anna Högberg's celebrated Attack, which can be heard on another eponymous debut ...

Album Review

Space: Embrace the Space

Read "Embrace the Space" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
June 18, 2024

The innovative Swedish trio Space is a collaborative unit that consists of three masters of improvisation. Pianist Lisa Ullen, bassist Elsa Bergman, and drummer Anna Lund separately and together work in the border zone between the modern western classical idiom and that of free jazz. The thrilling Embrace the Space is the ensemble's second release and consists of eight dynamic, interlinked pieces. “Look" starts off the album with an expectant mood as Ullen's percussive chords echo against Lund's ...

Album Review

Lisa Ullén, Elsa Bergman, Anna Lund: Space

by John Sharpe
June 10, 2022

Although pianist Lisa Ullén, bassist Elsa Bergman and drummer Anna Lund supply a formidable bottom end to the surging horn polyphony of Anna Högberg's Attack, on Space they find an alternative means to convey emotion and rapport through collective improvisation. Across five studio tracks, the Swedish threesome practices an egalitarian creed which does not privilege any one instrument over another. It is not an unfamiliar setting. Ullén and Bergman featured in a co-operative which adopted a similar approach on Festen ...

Album Review

Anna Hogberg Attack: lena

by John Sharpe
July 14, 2020

It is a well known gambit to start an album with one of its strongest tracks. But it must have been a difficult choice for Swedish band leader and saxophonist Anna Högberg when programming her group Attack's second release. That she chose “Pappa Kom Hem," which opens with a sustained stentorian bellow from tenor saxophonist Elin Forkelid, leading to a cataclysmic free for all, announces that this is an uncompromising outfit. But the way the cut ends with the emergence ...

Album Review

Anna Högberg Attack: lena

by Samuel Stroup
May 24, 2020

There are moments of lena, the sophomore release from Swedish group Attack, which feel as though the ensemble is as much punk band as it is jazz sextet. Under the leadership of alto saxophonist Anna Högberg, the group plays loud and fast free jazz which is as stylish as it is raucous. Even the monochrome album art and absence of capitalized song titles reflect the album's mood, energetic and effortless. lena's six Högberg-penned tracks revisit the style of ...