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Bruno R
Bruno R: Ascensio
by Dan McClenaghan
The bottom end is a big presence on Bruno Råberg's Ascensio, fitting for a bassist-led quartet... a solid, emphatic heartbeat for the rest of the band to contend with. Bassist Bruno Råberg, the Swedish-born Berklee educator, incorporated a foundation of Scandinavian folk tunes in his previous Orbis outing, Presence ; as he does here. Shifting meters, unusual time signatures, a muscular rhythmic pulse behind the front line horns, combined with a drummer (Marcello Pelitteri) who divides the spaces ...
Continue ReadingBruno R: Ascensio
by Jerry D'Souza
Bruno Råberg’s third album as leader is firmly concerned with form. The bassist has played in bands of different stylistic pursuits, like Orange Then Blue, which threw everything from free form to mainstream jazz into the stewing pot; and with Eje Thelin, whose band swiped the caboodle from dixieland to free jazz. Here Råberg is contained. He prefers structure to intuitive freedom. While he does not completely tighten the leash, this would have been a more interesting recording had the ...
Continue ReadingBruno R: Presence
by Jim Santella
The title track from bassist Bruno Råberg’s latest album lays down a melody upon which the trio improvises collectively. Thus, the composer’s theme maintains only a mere presence while the three artists “converse" on a common topic. Two other tracks place the trio in a free group improvisation mode, one is a traditional Swedish folk tune, and the rest are from Råberg’s pen. An interesting composer, the bassist blends Northern European folk song ideas with overtly modern jazz elements to ...
Continue ReadingBruno R: Orbis
by Jim Santella
Swedish bassist Bruno Råberg combines the best of both worlds: the folk music of his homeland with the modern mainstream jazz that he’s studied quite thoroughly since he was a youth. Råberg, who earned a bachelor’s degree in Jazz Studies from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1984 and now teaches at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, gathered ideas from his own roots as he wrote all the music for Orbis, his second album as a leader. ...
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