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Jazz Articles about Thomas Johansson
Rodrigo Amado Northern Liberties: We Are Electric
by Troy Dostert
By all accounts, 2021 was a very good year for Rodrigo Amado. One of the leading lights of the Portuguese avant-garde, the indefatigable tenor saxophonist first released The Field (NoBusiness), featuring his Motion Trio (with cellist Miguel Mira and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini) alongside guest pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, and Let the Free Be Men (Trost), with his now-frequent collaborators saxophonist Joe McPhee, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Chris Corsano. But if these two albums come to overshadow We Are Electric, ...
Continue ReadingFriends & Neighbors: The Earth Is #
by Mark Corroto
The importance of choosing a name for your jazz band is often underestimated. Take the quintet Friends & Family for instance. When it was formed in 2008, it wasn't dubbed the André Roligheten Quintet or the Oscar Grönberg Band. No. From its beginnings, the quintet shared composing duties among its members as well as dutiful deference to each musician's sound. Proof of this friendship among neighbors (all live in Norway) is a string of excellent releases. The Earth Is # ...
Continue ReadingCortex: Legal Tender
by Mark Corroto
The Norwegian quartet Cortex answers the question, what would have happened if the Wynton Marsalis and Branford Marsalis, had advanced the jazz canon instead of looking backwards for inspiration. Remember when the two young lions burst onto the scene in the 1980s with their self-righteous mission to save jazz? They did so by stuffing it, much like a taxidermist, to preserve an endangered species. Their neocon approach actually can make us grateful for bands like Cortex with their inclinations to ...
Continue ReadingScheen Jazzorkester & Thomas Johansson: As We See It...
by Glenn Astarita
Given the breadth of the Clean Feed label's extensive Scandinavian improvisation and free jazz discography, this large-scale orchestra, featuring venerable trumpeter Thomas Johansson, is not strictly framed on avant-garde persuasions. In fact, the predominate x-factor that deals the KO punch is how hummable melodic hooks alluringly coexist with emotive soloing without an endless range of cacophonic dialogue, which is an element that, at times, can pose severe listening fatigue for the willing listener. With forceful melodies and a ...
Continue ReadingThomas Johansson: Home Alone
by Mark Corroto
When does this guy breathe? This might be the question going through your mind while you listen to “Signal This," the fifth track on Side A of trumpeter Thomas Johansson's solo recording Home Alone. The brief, three minute performance is, at first glance, more about physicality than music making. On the surface, a solo trumpet performance is corporeal. This is just the nature of the trumpet, perhaps the most difficult instrument to master because each flub or flaw in execution ...
Continue ReadingThomas Johansson/Øyvind Storesund/Paal Nilssen-Love: Revolution Before Lunch
by Mark Corroto
There is probably no way to avoid the parochial mindset of the American jazz listener. Take the release Revolution Before Lunch by the Scandinavian trio of Thomas Johansson, Øyvind Storesund, and Paal Nilssen-Love. You might listen to a few notes of Johansson's trumpet as “Close As Hail" opens the affair and think, oh yeah, it's Magnus Broo performing. Well, no, Broo is Swedish and Johansson--Norwegian. Mistaking a Norwegian for a Swede is just about as wrong as assuming a New ...
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