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Norwegian Digital Jazz Festival 2020, Part 1
by Mark Sullivan
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Norwegian Digital Jazz Festival Sentralen Oslo, Norway November 6-17, 2020 With the physical 2020 festival cancelled, the Big Ears Festival has turned its attention to broadcasting filmed and live streamed concerts, under the moniker “Sites & Sounds From Big Ears." Many of the shows have taken place in the Knoxville area, but for this ambitious series of filmed concerts they have turned to Norwegian ...
read moreTord Gustavsen Trio: The Other Side
by David Bruggink
In spiritual parlance, “the other side" often refers to a realm beyond death. Tord Gustavsen is no stranger to integrating music to religious practice, performing frequent “Musikkmeditasjon" concerts in Norwegian churches. It would be reductive, however, to describe his music in New Age terms. Gustavsen is a master composer and improviser, and The Other Side is introspective music performed with sublime subtlety, always keeping one eye trained on the avant-garde. This marks Gustavsen's first trio recording since Being ...
read moreTord Gustavsen: The Other Side
by Mike Jurkovic
Like a dusty, Southern gothic novel, Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen opens his return to the trio format with the moody, enigmatic “The Tunnel." All his compositions on The Other Side bare their secrets slowly and play out their methodically expressionistic hauntings with a gospel-influenced left hand seemingly rooted thousands of miles away in the muddy Louisiana delta. Though Being There (ECM, 2007) was widely hailed yet often criticized as being cool in nature, The Other Side is a ...
read moreBelgrade Jazz Festival 2016
by Thomas Conrad
2016 Belgrade Jazz Festival Belgrade, Serbia October 26-October 30, 2016 Because of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the Belgrade Jazz Festival, like most good things in the Balkans, went dark for 15 years after 1990. When it started up again in 2005, it was small. By 2008, it was big enough to book names like The Bad Plus, Christian Scott and Patricia Barber. But even then, from the vantage point of the world jazz community, ...
read moreTord Gustavsen with Simin Tander and Jarle Vespestad at Fringe Arts
by Geno Thackara
Tord Gustavsen (with Simin Tander and Jarle Vespestad) Fringe Arts jny: Philadelphia, PA June 20, 2016 The music of this trio project is “a mystical and spiritual journey," Tord Gustavsen declared early in the set during his first-ever appearance in Philadelphia, an endeavor about “finding the divine light within ourselves instead of looking somewhere outside." He's self-effacingly quiet and unassuming at the microphone, which is no surprise to anyone familiar with his ...
read moreTord Gustavsen with Simin Tander & Jarle Vespestad: What was said
by Ian Patterson
An exciting new trio sees Tord Gustavsen and Jarle Vespestad combine with German-Afghan singer Simin Tander to submit Norwegian church music to the push and pull of improvisation and the spell of thirteenth century Persian Sufi mystic, Jalal al-Din Rumi's poetry. What might seem like an esoteric experiment, in fact follows logical currents. Gustavsen's ensembles have often exhibited folkloric colors, while Tander's unique improvisational idiom on her debut Wagma (Neuklang, 2011) and her Pashto-sung arrangements of Afghan poems on Where ...
read moreTord Gustavsen with Simin Tander & Jarle Vespestad: What was said
by Mark Sullivan
What was said introduces a new trio from Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen, featuring German-Afghan vocalist Simin Tander, with the support of longtime collaborator drummer Jarle Vespestad (who has played on all of Gustavsen's previous ECM recordings). The inspiration for the program was the tradition of Norwegian church music, but it is explored in a most untraditional way. The most obvious difference is the polyglot approach to the sung languages. Gustavson's interest in Sufi poetry and enjoyment of the sound of ...
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