Jazz Articles about Peter Asplund

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Vivian Buczek: Le Grand Michel

by Neil Duggan
October 22, 2024

The title of this album, Le Grand Michel, refers to French composer, pianist and arranger, Michel Legrand. In a glittering career, he wrote hundreds of film and television scores. He won three Oscars (from 13 nominations) with “The Windmills of Your Mind," featured in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), perhaps his best- known work. This song had English lyrics written by Marilyn Bergman and Alan Bergman, the couple formed a long-lasting songwriting relationship with Legrand, also winning three Oscars.

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Peter Asplund: Asplund Meets Bernstein

by Chris Mosey
April 29, 2010

This reverent but highly accessible and creative tribute to Leonard Bernstein, by Swedish trumpeter Peter Asplund, will undoubtedly be a leading contender for his homeland's next Golden Record (Gyllene Skivan) award. It's the most important jazz album to emerge from the Nordic Area in a good long while. Asplund's collaboration with Mats Hålling--a composer and arranger who writes everything from modern classical music to Swedish pop--brings to mind, in a low key kind of way, Miles Davis' ...

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Peter Asplund Quartet: As Knights Concur

by Jack Bowers
June 29, 2008

As I listened to Swedish trumpeter Peter Asplund's quartet on As Knights Concur, I was reminded of another trumpeter somewhat closer to home. Whether consciously or not, Asplund channels Miles Davis in his “transitional" phase shortly before Davis passed through the esoteric “door of fusion" into the sleep-inducing twilight zone that marked his later years as a jazz icon.

Indeed, one of Asplund's three original compositions, “Wonderyear," is reminiscent of Davis' “Milestones." And there's a palpable Davis slant to his ...

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Peter Asplund: In a Swedish Way

by Chris Mosey
April 23, 2008

Peter Asplund, one of Sweden's most talented jazz trumpeters, gets his inspiration from giants like Louis Armstrong, Clifford Brown and Miles Davis but funnels it through his own, very Nordic filter. “I don't pretend to sound like an American trumpeter," he says. “I'm Swedish and that has to come across. As I see it, you have to be uncompromisingly yourself, pursue your own musical vision." He pauses and smiles ruefully. “Then of course you have to get people to like ...

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Peter Asplund: As Knights Concur

by Chris Mosey
March 26, 2008

Swedish trumpet player Peter Asplund wears a good many musical hats, but it is with his jazz quartet that he's really starting to make waves. His last album with the group, Lochiel's Warning, made him something of a local hero. Now As Knights Concur seems set to put him on the road to international recognition. Forget the pompous title, it's the music that counts. Asplund's idea is that listeners should be led gently into improvisation. The opener, his own composition, ...

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The Peter Asplund Quartet: Lochiel's Warning

by Jack Bowers
October 22, 2004

It took me a while to warm to Lochiel's Warning, the latest album by Swedish trumpeter Peter Asplund, and that's partly because the sequencing is flawed. As a result, it's one of those sessions wherein the whole seems less than the sum of its parts, if you follow my drift.

Asplund is a splendid trumpeter, one of Europe's finest, and his companions are world-class. Having said that, the opinion here is that not much happens before track three, Rodgers and ...