Jazz Articles about Sven-Åke Johansson

Sven Åke-Johansson: Two Days at Cafe OTO

by Fran Kursztejn
August 28, 2025

Sven Åke-Johansson's death in 2025 felt distinctly like a chapter closed. There is a cliche in Jazz to characterize players of a certain class and longstanding influence as “youthful" or otherwise endlessly inventive despite multi-decade, multidisciplinary careers. Its excessive use is justified by elements of the medium's own construction and history. Jazz itself appears to be an eternally youthful tradition, a set of lofty and difficult characteristics which coalesce into an incorruptible, universal playground. What results is an often tumultuous ...

Bengt "Frippe" Nordström: Vinyl Box

by Mark Corroto
December 27, 2023

Sometimes an artist can tilt the axis of a genre. Tilt it by just a degree or two. The effects might not be felt as such in the moment, but after decades their imprint is profound. Peter Brötzmann was one example, as was Derek Bailey. Add to that list, the Swedish saxophonist Bengt “Frippe" Nordström (1936 to 2000). As a musician born into a family with wealth, he was spared the necessity of playing gigs to earn his livelihood. In ...

Sven Ake Johansson: Jazzbox

by Mark Corroto
August 23, 2013

Funny how listening to the five-CD Jazzbox by free jazz drummer Sven-Åke Johansson may remind you of the British punk rock band The Clash's first hit single “Train In Vain" (1980). Like Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, Johansson's career has been one that has worked to challenge the language of American music. In The Clash's case, it was American pop and disco. For Johansson and his European colleagues (Peter Brotzmann, Manfred Schoof, Peter Kowald, and Alexander von Schlippenbach) it was ...

Sven-Ake Johansson: Die Harke und der Spaten

by Mark Corroto
April 26, 2012

Part performance piece, part free improvisation, Die Harke und der Spaten ("The Rake and the Spade") is a musical stage play composed by Swedish jazz legend Sven-Åke Johansson. This recording, made in Malmö, Sweden in 1998, features a Who's Who of European improvisers and proponents of free jazz--a European free jazz that distinguishes itself from American music.Johansson was there at the beginning of the European free scene, recording with founding fathers Peter Brötzmann, Alexander Von Schlippenbach, and Manfred ...

Ake Johansson: Trio 77

by Craig W. Hurst
March 23, 2004

Trio 77 is a CD release of a 1977 recording made for Swedish Radio by pianist Ake Johansson. Johansson, who emerged on the Swedish jazz scene while barely out of his teens in the late 1950's, has performed and recorded with many great jazz artists, having held the distinction of being the accompanist for many American players when they visited Sweden. Johansson also has recorded on the Dragon label with Chet Baker and Toots Thielemans. Trio 77 presents a retrospective ...

Sven-Ake Johansson, Axel Dorner, Andrea Neumann: Barcelona Series

by Glenn Astarita
October 1, 2001

The musical implications portrayed here, seemingly hearken back to drummer, Sven-Ake Johansson’s flirtations with mechanistic noise music, most notably “Concerto for 12 tractors” and a concerto for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. With that notion in mind, the trio of trumpeter, Axel Dorner, Johansson and pianoharpist (a stripped down piano sans keys) Andrea Neumann engage in some unorthodox banter on this most interesting production. Furthermore, all of these pieces are untitled and categorized in numerical order while many of the passages feature, Dorner ...

Sven-Ake Johansson: Six Little Pieces For Quintet

by Glenn Astarita
November 1, 2000

Drummer Sven-Ake Johansson proclaims, “The compositions and improvisations in my quintet represent, stylistically speaking, a period of free jazz, which may, at first sight, recall the Sixties. On Six Little Pieces For Quintet, the drummer, armed with his 60’s Slingerland kit, shoots for the stars with these invigorating pieces along with band-mates who counteract the leader’s throbbing pulse, sweeping press rolls and gyrating rhythms via simply stated choruses and fierce soloing.

Johansson and co. admirably seize the spirit of those ...