Jazz Articles about Petter Eldh

About Petter Eldh

Album Review

Punkt.Vrt.Plastik has spent nearly a decade demonstrating that the piano trio need not behave like a piano trio. Pianist Kaja Draksler, bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Christian Lillinger established their peculiar chemistry on the excellent Punkt.Vrt.Plastik (Intakt, 2018), pushed it into more intricately constructed territory with Somit (Intakt, 2021) and documented its live potency on Zurich Concert (Intakt, 2022). Kompress continues the group's unconventional methods while tightening them into relatively concise pieces. Calling this outside jazz only gets ...

Album Review

Richard Spaven: Light Of Day

Read "Light Of Day" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
July 22, 2026

Acclaimed drummer, composer and producer Richard Spaven has forged a distinctive musical identity by blending jazz, drum and bass, electronica and hip hop. His technical fluency has seen him collaborate with a wide range of artists, including Cinematic Orchestra, Flying Lotus and Loyle Carner. Spaven, initially grounded in big band jazz, was heavily influenced by the London club scene, immersing himself in drum and bass, garage, dubstep and other styles. This has evolved into a singular approach that ...

Album Review

Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity: Great Intentions

Read "Great Intentions" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
October 29, 2025

Gard Nilssen was born in June 1983 in Skien, Norway, and raised in a musical family consisting of drummers. With a background of marching bands and big bands, it was no surprise that drums became his instruments of choice. He got his musical education on the jazz program at Trondheim Musikkonservatorium. Later on, he became a performer, composer, producer and bandleader and moved to Oslo, becoming one of the most sought-after and active drummers on the European scene. ...

Album Review

Gard Nilssen's Supersonic Orchestra: Family

by Mark Corroto
September 30, 2023

Why can't all music be supersonic? That does not mean supersonic as in a speed exceeding that of sound, but sound that is sonically superlative. Drummer, composer, and bandleader Gard Nilssen's music is seemingly always sonically superb. His 17-piece Supersonic Orchestra was captured in 2022 at the Mondriaan Jazz Festival in Den Haag, Netherlands, for Family, his follow-up to If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours (Odin 2020). The Supersonic Orchestra is made up of seven saxophones ...

Liner Notes

Gard Nilssen's Acoustic Unity: To Whom Who Buys A Record

by Chris May
March 17, 2023

In July 2019, Gard Nilssen will be Artist-in-Residence at the prestigious, future-facing Molde Jazz Festival. It will be a busy week for the Norwegian drummer, composer and sonic adventurer. As well as guest appearances, he will perform with several of his bands--SpaceMonkey, an electronica/dance music mash-up he co-founded five years ago; Bushman's Revenge, which may be the missing link between Albert Ayler and Black Sabbath and which he co-founded in 2003; the more recently formed Amgala Temple, which draws comparisons ...

Album Review

Punkt. Vrt. Plastik: Zurich Concert

Read "Zurich Concert" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 25, 2022

Over the course of the five years since its inception, Punkt. Vrt. Plastik, the trio of Slovenian pianist Kaja Draksler, Swedish bassist Petter Eldh and German drummer Christian Lillinger, has become one of the premier bands on the European circuit. Definitive proof arrives in the shape of Zurich Concert, the threesome's third album, recorded at the 2021 unerhört!-Festival in the titular Swiss city. Although all but one of the selections appear on the outfit's first two releases, they present differently ...

Album Review

Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity: Elastic Wave

Read "Elastic Wave" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
July 1, 2022

The last time we heard from Norwegian drummer Gard Nilssen as a leader was with his Supersonic Orchestra—a three-drummer, three-bassist behemoth whose 2020 album, If You Listen Carefully The Music Is Yours (Odin), proved that, contrary to the precedent set by Stan Kenton, it is possible to assemble a big band packing Death Star-level ordnance which nevertheless allows for subtlety, agility and humanity. Extraordinarily prolific, Nilssen has since 2007 recorded over seventy albums, a fair few of ...