Articles

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

ALBUM REVIEW March 9, 2018

Arild Andersen/Paolo Vinaccia/Tommy Smith: In-House Science

Read "In-House Science" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

Arild Andersen's superb trio with tenor saxophonist Tommy Smith and drummer Paolo Vinaccia had previously released two ECM albums, Live at Belleville (2008), and Mira (2014). Smith and Andersen joined the saxophonist's frequent collaborators, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra for Celebration (2015) which included “Independency, Pt. 4" from Belleville. In-House Science is the second live album from the trio.Andersen's long career began in the late 1960s jumping right to well established artists such as George Russell, Don Cherry, ...

LIVE REVIEW April 20, 2015

Vossa Jazz 2015

By Henning Bolte

VOSSA JAZZ Voss March 28 -29, 2015 Vossa Jazz, founded in 1973, an annual three-day event with a great variety of groups and acts, is a highly prestigious jazz festival in Norway. Thanks especially to its commissions and awards, it has an important national and international function. In 1983 the festival became the first in Europe to start assigning commission work. After more than 30 years the series has become an impressive list including ...

EXTENDED ANALYSIS January 22, 2014

Arild Andersen / Paolo Vinaccia / Tommy Smith: Mira

By John Kelman

The debut of Arild Andersen's now longstanding trio with Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith and Italian expat drummer Paolo Vinaccia on Live at Belleville (ECM, 2008) came as no small surprise, even to those familiar with the Norwegian bassist's work on the label--dating right back to its inception on Jan Garbarek's classic Afric Pepperbird (ECM, 1971), as well as with his own fine triptych of more accessible early albums, recently collected on Green Into Blue--Early Quartets (ECM, 2010). Andersen ...

EXTENDED ANALYSIS June 20, 2012

Arild Andersen: Celebration

By John Kelman

Arild Andersen Celebration ECM Records 2012 With all the activities surrounding the 40th anniversary of ECM Records in 2009--from a three-day festival-within-a-festival at that year's Enjoy Jazz Festival in Mannheim, Germany, and the budget-priced Touchstone Series reissue of forty essential ECM titles, to the publication of an all-German book of commissioned writing, Die Blaue Klang (Wolke Verlag, 2010), and the follow-up to 1996's much coveted and out-of-print Sleeves of Desire: A Cover Story (Lars Müller ...

ALBUM REVIEW May 21, 2010

Arild Andersen: Live at Belleville

By Karl Ackermann

More than forty years ago, Norwegian bassist, Arild Andersen joined saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the late Finnish drummer Edward Vesala to record the groundbreaking Triptykon (ECM 1972), one of these musicians' most energized work. It's a happy coincidence that the new millennium has seen both Garbarek and Andersen--ECM artists, both--create what may be their individual masterpieces--Live at Belleville, in the bassist's case. Andersen's intervening ECM years have generated an impressive catalog of high quality work including Molde Concert (1982), Sagn ...

EXTENDED ANALYSIS May 18, 2010

Arild Andersen: Green Into Blue - Early Quartets

By John Kelman

He's one of Norway's “Big Four"—a group of artists who, with the assistance of the emerging ECM label in the early 1970s, kick-started international focus on the music from a country that, despite its relatively small population, has become a truly vital force in the evolution of jazz over the past 40 years. Alongside saxophonist Jan Garbarek, guitarist Terje Rypdal and drummer Jon Christensen—as well as Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson—bassist Arild Andersen has been responsible for a real paradigm shift, ...

ALBUM REVIEW November 18, 2008

Arild Andersen: Live at Belleville

By John Kelman

The general international perception of Norway's jazz scene as “Nordic Cool," is, like most generalizations, inevitably distanced from truth. Atomic, The Core and Motif may possess no shortage of heat, but ECM has undeniably helped define that unmistakable Norwegian aesthetic. One of the “big four," brought to international attention in the early 1970s alongside guitarist Terje Rypdal, saxophonist Jan Garbarek, and drummer Jon Christensen, bassist Arild Andersen's ECM releases have largely avoided the kind of burning improvisational energy of his ...