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Johan Berthling
Nacka Forum: Peaceful Piano
by Vincenzo Roggero
Dopo una serie di album che hanno marchiato a fuoco la scena svedese, dopo aver presenziato nelle playlist di mezzo mondo, dopo acclamati tour in USA, Giappone, Europa e Scandinavia ecco che viene dato alle stampe, naturalmente per la benemerita Moserobie, Peaceful Piano, l'album che celebra il venticinquesimo anniversario di Nacka Forum. Per l'occasione Jonas Kullhammar e soci presentano nuove composizioni e in due degli otto brani ospitano il sassofonista Lars-Goran Ulander, decano del jazz svedese, ricordato per alcune leggendarie ...
Continue ReadingAngles + Elle-Kari With Strings: The Death Of Kalypso
by Chris May
As a genre, jazz-opera is thinly populated. The recorded archive is marked more by quality than quantity, with albums by Mike Westbrook and Kate Westbrook, Carla Bley and Charlie Haden to the fore. But the best ever jazz-opera, in this parish anyway, predates anything by these musicians. Composer Todd Matshikiza and lyricist Pat Williams' King Kong premiered in the Great Hall of the University of Johannesburg in February 1959 to rapturous reviews, and went on to romp through sold-out proscenium-arch ...
Continue ReadingFire!: Testament
by Chris May
Recorded and then played back at reduced speed, even a seemingly simple two-note bird call reveals elaborate complexity and detail. It is worth hanging on to that thought when approaching the deceptively straightforward Testament. On a cursory listening, most of the album--an amalgam of Mats Gustafsson's slow-and-deliberate long-held low-end baritone notes and Johan Berthling and Andreas Werlin's matching bass ostinatos and drum patterns--sounds primordial. The recipe goes reductio ad absurdum on track two, “The Dark Inside Of A ...
Continue ReadingFire! Orchestra: Echoes
by Chris May
The story of supersized jazz orchestras is not pretty. The scene was set by the bleaching deracination of Paul Whiteman and the elephantine bombast of Stan Kenton, bandleaders whose craving for approval by the music establishment fatally compromised their art. Good taste came later with leaders such as Carla Bley and London's Keith Tippett, who proved that, in the right hands, swing and nuance could co-exist with size and power. Since around 2010, there have been some ...
Continue ReadingAngles: A Muted Reality
by Mark Corroto
For Swedish saxophonist Martin Küchen, all music is folk music. Proof of that statement is the Angles' release A Muted Reality. Whether he is referencing Balkan, African, Swedish, American jazz or Spanish dialects, he is drawing on kindred spirits in his music. With the various editions of his Angles projects, from trios to 10-piece small big bands, he releases music of the people, i.e. people music. This version of Küchen's Angles is an octet and the eleventh in a continuous ...
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Johan Berthling
Instrument: Bass, acoustic
